Sending it, EP 01: Jackson Hole

SENding it, a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or whenever time permits, blogroll about traveling with the skimakers, skiers, friends and family of Seneca Boards.

Episode 1: Powder week in Jackson Hole;

After 10,000 vertical feet, backcountry faceshots, highfives, and lots of hiking, I had wandered into a tent that said "Private Event" on it in search of food. Instead, I found $100,000 worth of next years skis, all mounted with demo bindings...and a bunch of un-attended beer. Beer in hand, Seneca prototypes on shoulder (though not exactly prototypes for this event), I felt like I fit in enough to not get kicked out. This was Powder week, A week devoted to meticulously demoing 35 of the top brands equipment for the Powder Magazine buyers guide next year.

 

 

I actually ended up in Jackson over Powder week by accident. In fact, we had sold skis to a few friends in the 10th mountain division last month, and as soon as the custom skis were done I had decided to meet up with them in Jackson for delivery.

The trip began with camping out in the parking lot of Smiths, followed by eggs, bacon and coffee in the parking lot of Hoback Sports -- all while in the comfort of our 35 foot tour bus affectionately named chief. A quick lap on Teton Pass, followed by a little work and a few phone calls, and we had already nabbed some tickets to Jackson Hole courtesy of their marketing dept.

The tickets were well used on the second day. We caught an early (ish) tram, bopped out of the boundry and into spacewalk, a tight coulouir that usually has a mandatory air in the middle. The line was so filled in you couldn’t even see the cliff halfway down. Good friends Pat Owen, Leif Routman and Erik Bailly knew the area well, and we spent the rest of the morning exploring the Pinedale area. Once we were back at the resort, we mobbed into the Powder tent and found some energy bars, and it was back to the Tram.

We decided to head towards the park this time - by park I mean Grand Teton Park, not the terrain park. But first, pat and I couldn't resist dropping in on Corbets in front of some scared on-lookers. Pat sent it off the lip over the drop in channel, and I found a nice line on the lookers right. After a quick hike, we found ourselves at the gate to Granite Canyon, 3000 vertical foot runs, and no tracks since the last snow.

 

It was a real treat to ski such a renown and special place with such great friends. The best skiing of the trip, and just enough workout on the hike out to fully deserve the pitcher of beer at the end of the day. Leif and his band, Whiskey Morning/ Black Mother Jones, tore up the après at Whiskey Jacks Saloon.

After a pitcher of beer, I realized I had only eaten a few mini cliff bars all day...I decided to leave the tour bus in the parking lot and camp there. Fortunately, the Teton Mountain Lodge was only across the parking lot by a few hundred yards from where I parked. I mozied on over around 11:00 and found a nice and empty pool and hot-tub, and the perfect way to end Powder week and get back to the shop to build more skis!

Fresh tracks!

-->

The Northern Bridgers with a fresh coat of September snow

September provided the mountains around Bozeman with their first seductive layer of white since last season. Few ranges look as comely as the Spanish Peaks’ northern flanks in the sultry colored half-light of the morning. I looked on wistfully each day on the bike ride to work, weighing the merits of long approach for fresh turns against the core shots that would inevitably result from the thin early season snowpack.

Patience was rewarded the following week, when a snowstorm dumped upwards of a foot in the high mountains around town. The northern Bridgers were socked in and I was able to finagle my way out of work Friday — under the pretense that the adventure get written up for the Chronicle’s Outdoors section — and hit the mountains with my friend Tyler.

Ready to rock

Trust in the two SNOTEL sites in the Bridgers led us first to Ross Peak, where an alleged seven inches waited. By the time we reached the trailhead, however, it was clear that the meadows we originally planned to ski didn’t have enough coverage to make us forget about the rocks underneath.

           
We careened back down the access road and headed to Sacajawea to ski a couloir that Tyler knew about. It had a pretty quick approach and dropped into Frazier Basin. Not only that, but in the small pullout area there was a Subaru containing the wild-eyed teleskier I met skiing Sacajawea in June and while skiing the Blaze in July. Since we were planning to ski the same area, the two of us and the teleskier — his name is also Jason — and his dog, Pepper, trekked up together.

Jason and Pepper assessing the conditions

            
We made it to the top of a distant knob in good time. Snow conditions were excellent there, with thigh-deep light, soft snow. The deep areas were created by wind, which had apparently blown most of the snow out of a chute Jason knew about and had hoped to ski. Instead, Tyler led us over to a neighboring chute farther west that turned out to have the best coverage of what we could see.

           
The first dozen turns were incredible. A brief straight-line to pick up speed. Quick turn to test out the snow. Then a few turns in the drifted gully created by the steepening slope. The 10 inches of cold smoke kicked up around our shins and aroused thoughts of true winter.

A fine start to the run

           
Those thoughts were quickly bedded back down, however. The light snow only concealed the rocks with its beauty rather than offer a loving, supportive barrier to shield P-Tex from jagged stone. As soon as we reached the heart of the slope, it was obvious the coverage was no longer enough to barrel downhill. But we agreed to billy goat our way to the bottom in the interest of traversing the bowl and scoping out other lines before skinning back to the knob.

           
Talk turned a bit to how the early season snowfall could affect the winter’s snowpack, but all apprehension was outweighed by the fun of those turns at the top. There’s little you can do about the weather but enjoy it when it comes. I suppose we could cross our fingers and hope the storms come with some regularity, which they have so far this fall. But if the last several years have shown anything, it’s that storms are going to arrive when they will and it likely won’t be with any dependable consistency.

           
“The storms are acting what I call ‘more bipolar,’ too,” Doug Chabot, director of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center, said in Porter Fox’s new book, DEEP: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow. “We get these crazy swings. We might get a big snowstorm that feels like winter, followed by unseasonable warm, sometimes record-breaking temperatures. They have this manic feeling to them. We can’t just settle into winter anymore.”

           
Fox was kind enough to provide an advance copy of his book and will join the Seneca podcast this week, discussing both the book and some of his experiences around southwest Montana and Jackson, Wyo. He’s familiar with the area, even writing about skiing out the south end of Bridger Bowl for Powder in March.

           
Several lines stood out while we trekked parallel to the southern edge of Frazier Basin. A mental checklist was made for later this season when a big dump — hopefully! — will fill in and prevent skiers from hitting the bottom or any weak layers nefariously left over from these early season storms.

Finally back atop the knob, Tele Jason sent it down the low-angle drainage back to the car first. It was a smooth return with only a couple telltale dinks here and there from rocks while crossing the meadows. The dinks ended up turning my skis into one of the most mangled pair of boards a ski tech at the Round House had ever seen. It was hard to worry too much about that with a beer in hand and a snow covered mountain range in the background, and one more month until hitting 12 consecutive months of skiing.

Skiing back to the car is vastly underrated

-- Jason Bacaj

Gettin' Blazed

Amanda, Jen, Tyler, Brett and dogs Marley and Tero ready to get rad after hiking about 13 miles in two days with loaded packs. They're definitely not thinking about the seven more required to get out.

Bridger Bowl’s opening day is close enough to put a little twinge of excitement in the bowels of any degenerate skier. But right now we’re in the thick of the summer, and a getting turns in requires enough determination to hoof through a 20-mile round trip into the mountains.

Which is what we did in July, hiking out to ski the 10,400-foot Mt. Blaze. It’s the fifth highest mountain in the Spanish Peaks, a small range within the Madison Range just about 40 minutes or so out of Bozeman depending on how comfortable you are bombing down the well-maintained dirt road that traverses one of Ted Turner’s vast properties.

The Blaze is a popular backcountry spot, and one that was suggested by John Graves — a hardcore skier I ran into on Sacajawea in June who had a 5-year stretch where he skied every month of the year. The only questions were just how much snow was back there and how the hell to actually get there. It seems like a large portion of Bozeman’s backcountry aficionados have skied it, but none could provide any more detailed directions than, “hike about four miles, take a right across a creek, take a left across the same creek a while later and then you should see it,” which is roughly how John described the trek. In his defense, the directions were tossed out while he was gearing up for some conference or another in Puerto Rico.

The first question was answered while driving back from the Missoula Marathon on July 14 on I-90. A long tongue of snow ran slightly left of the peak almost to the tree line.

I figured that we’d play the second one by ear after getting a group of four others — Amanda, Brett, Jen and Tyler (and two dogs, of course) — together. We set out at the crack of 10 a.m. or so and reached the Spanish Creek trailhead an hour later.

If you squint just right, you can see the silhouette of Marley (a black lab) on top of the packs

 

Four-and-a-half pretty flat miles later we found ourselves where the trail diverged. We chose to head up to Mirror Lake, half because we weren’t really sure where to go and also it just seemed like a good place to figure out what to do. The last couple miles up to the lake were switchbacked and steep and took their toll on the group. When we got up there and realized how tough it’d be to scale the Blaze from the backside, the decision was made to set up camp and think it over.

They did not taste like boots

Amanda and I hiked up a rise on the way up to Summit Lake and scouted out two potential routes for a backside approach. One was up a scree field capped with a small snowfield and then along a ridge to the top. The other followed an avalanche path up to a northern ridge, which looked like the most do-able from our vantage point -- except for one section that looked awful cliffy for our climbing gear-less party. On the positive side, we found some morels hiking back to camp, thanks to my expert analytical yell of, “Hey, aren’t these sorrels or something?"

After some discussion, we decided to wake up at dawn and hike down, around and up the mountain for our turns.

A fine campin' spot

It was a chilly morning, but we were quickly warmed by the hike back to where the trail split. We ditched gear to lighten the now excessively heavy packs and headed toward the Spanish Lakes, after a brief panic when Tyler’s dog, Marley, disappeared. He popped up on the trail maybe a quarter mile and several minutes of quiet freaking out later.

Miles into the trail we ran into a wild-eyed teleskier I met coming down Sacajawea (popular spot!) who gave us somewhat more specific directions on where to start bushwhacking. Basically, it was dead ahead and marked by a cairn. Of course.

Just over the next rise!

We bushwhacked our way slowly uphill because the miles were starting to add up on everyone’s legs, except for the dogs and Brett. When we were most of the way up a skier and snowboarder made their way down the surprisingly wide and long track. The snow looked like prime spring corn, even if they didn’t return our radness yell. He had a GoPro on, so he was probably concentrating really hard on not screwing up on camera.

But we finally reached the peak around 2 p.m. and geared up for the descent. The snow was a little slushy on top, streaked with dirt and pocked infrequently with the tips of rocks. After all the requisite pictures were taken, we pointed out skis and went for it. I noodled down last and the odd pain that had developed in the side of my left knee disappeared with a few wide, easy turns done in an attempt to savor each slide as much as could be done.

It was tempting to just rip down, but knowing we had at least a seven mile hike out helped keep the inner hardcore ski bro safely hidden away deep inside.

Not so bad for July!

The hike out was a pleasant suffer-fest as the knee pain returned and migrated into the hip. Even the dogs were worn out by the time we reached the car. It took Marley a minute of coaxing to jump into the truck bed for the ride home.

But hey, it was turns in July. Can’t wait to make some more in August down in the Beartooths. We’re planning on hitting up the Whitetail Couloir.

-- Jason Bacaj