Background
One year later, I found myself headed back out to the Tetons. Funny timing.
Nick and I made a semi-mad dash out west to escape the warm wetness of Washington this March. We left on Sunday night, making it past La Grande ID before stopping for a break. Our goal was to get out and take advantage of a high pressure weather window we saw starting on Tuesday the 24th, when temperatures started to climb.
The ‘Skillet’, or more properly the Skillet Glacier Couloir, has received a lot of attention over the last 20 years from skiing media and now social media. It’s striking; you can easily see it from the road and it splits the face of Mt Moran. Yes, it’s one of the ‘classic’ ski descents, but for good reason: it’s reasonably approachable for most aspiring skiers, it’s beautiful, and it’s plumb. I’ve wanted to do it for a while but the slog across Jackson Lake, as well as the timing to get this east-facing line before it cooks, just hasn’t lined up.
Trip Report
On our drive, Nick and I hatched a plan to skin out across the lake Monday night and try and get it Tuesday. We’d be skinning most of the lake in the dark, as our drive wouldn’t get us there any earlier, but that’d be fine. We would set up a basecamp and stay for a few days, hopefully getting on some other lines around Moran. We found a nice park in Pocatello, ID where we packed, after shopping at Winco.
We rolled into Jackson just after 5PM on Monday to soggy, drippy, warm conditions. I won’t lie, our stoke and hopes were waning for moments. Looking at the thermostat and seeing 40+F was concerning. Stepping outside at Colter Bay Marina to deeply wet, manky snow didn’t bring any warm and fuzzy feelings. Hold hope, we told ourselves.
And so, at 6:30 PM after 12 hours of driving, we set off across Jackson Lake…in mank. We were not surprised to not see another soul in sight. Nobody is this crazy, we thought to ourselves. We were treated a beautiful sunset over Moran and the nearby peaks. Halfway into the 6 mile skin the sun set and the zombie march began.
At some point we saw headlamps over by where we were headed. There’s OTHER people here?!? We quickly chatted with another group of 2 from Truckee, CA who were also going for the Skillet tomorrow. They were planning to start a little earlier than us, which would be nice so we would have a skinner.
After 2 hours (and change) we had made the march across the lake. A bit dazed and slightly confused, it had been quite the day. Waking up in Idaho, driving, shopping at Winco, and now we’re here, beneath Moran, prepared to wake up in a matter of hours to go and ski. Crazy how time works, sometimes.
3AM and the alarm clocks went off. Oofta. Somehow this one didn’t hurt that badly. I guess when you really don’t have a chance to fall asleep, properly, your body doesn’t give you a big middle finger when you wake it. There had been no refreeze overnight so we were following the mank skinner through the dark forest. Clouds hung on Moran and visibility was low. Skinning up the huge amphitheater on the Skillet Glacier was intimidating in the dark. Giant rock walls above, with hanging snow that will see the first light that crests the horizon.
We came across a huge, fairly recent slide on the Skillet Glacier beneath the Northeast Face of Moran. It seemed to have stepped down 10-12 inches, with a crown line just beneath the cliff face. Seeing this wasn’t comforting in the dark, early morning hours. We had caught up to the group of 2 ahead of us, at this point, and we all chatted about what we thought. We hadn’t seen concerning snow structure, yet, and we kept digging our hands in the snow conducting hasty snow pits and hand shears. We agreed to continue on but this data point, albeit a single data point, was something to keep note of.
We were able to skin all the way to the ‘handle’ of the skillet, to where the couloir begins to choke down. Here the slope angle steepens, slightly, maybe to 35 or 40 degrees at points. It’s still not very steep but steep enough to make skinning annoying. All 4 of us happened to have Auftriib plates, so we transitioned and prepared for battle. The Skillet is notorious for deep booting; it’s most often skied in new powder, as the line is east facing and gets sun first-thing.
Sure enough, deep wallowing is what we found. The line pools all the snow from the walls around it and creates a pool of loose, unconsolidated snow. We had made great time to the skin/boot transition but now we began to move slowly. We were grateful to have a group of 4 to alternate. We had thick clouds, now, keeping the sun at bay. Visibility was quite limited and our concerns of the line cooking in the early morning sun was not panning out.
We topped out to a near white-out, dropped our skis at the col and made the quick side trip to the summit plateau. My softshell pants instantly rimed from all the moisture they had accumulated while wallowing :( I tried to peak over at the entrance to the Southwest Couloir from the summit plateau but couldn’t see much more than a bunch of rocks.
We let the group of 2 from Truckee drop first, as they had started first and set most of the skintrack. They were nice dudes and it was great to share the line with them. None of us had any visibility for the initial couloir…bummer.
The initial couloir is the steepest part of the descent, though not terribly steep, maybe 40-45 degrees. It’s reported as 50 degrees but that is an exaggeration. It quickly backs off to 35-40 degrees once you get out of the couloir, which is only a few hundred feet. Then you get into the ‘skillet handle’, which is wide, plumb, and lovely. At this point we had slightly better visibility, though not the classic bluebird sight down to Jackson Lake that has become such a classic image. Nonetheless, we enjoyed thousands of feet of soft snow in an amazing setting.
Around 8500′ the snow turned to breaker crust and became less enjoyable. Hard to get the entire line good, though. We were quite happy with the conditions we had gotten.
We got back to camp around 10:15 AM. I guess you could call it a ‘dawn patrol’? We were psyched to start our basecamp trip off with the Skillet. The rest of the day we napped, listened to tunes, and found various ways to fend off boredom haha. Call us restless I guess…