Background
Nick and I had schlepped multiple nights worth of stuff across Jackson Lake to set up a multi-night basecamp to start off our Tetons trip this year. After skiing the Skillet we wanted to venture out further, using our position across the lake as a jumping-off-point.
The forecast was calling for very warm temperatures, the first real ‘spring’ of the season. We wanted to avoid our exposure to solar slopes and stay on high norths. We waffled over whether to go over to the Fallopian Tube, a beautiful couloir on the north side of Woodring. The day before we’d found that snow below 9,000′ had been rained on and wasn’t very pleasant and half of that line was below 9k’. Seemed like maybe not the time for it.
Triple Glaciers lies on the remote north side of Moran. It’s a three-pronged glacial cirque with three distinct lobes. We’d read up on Steve Romeo’s TetonAT about it; seemed like a remote, beautiful position to experience the range. Checked all the boxes we were looking for!
Trip Report
After spending all afternoon the day before in camp hanging out, we were psyched to hear the alarms ring at 5AM and get moving. We didn’t have much hurry today, with a few miles of flat approach before heading up lower-angle, broad, north slopes. Our goal for the day was to check out the lobes of Triple Glaciers, preferably the western lobe which climbs up to an east facing ramp system off Pt. 11,658′. We had also read that there was a ‘sneak’ couloir that climbed up to the backside of the Sickle Couloir, a line we had our eyes on for later in the basecamp trip; maybe we’d see if that went? I thought it’d be cool to ski all 3 lobes of Triple Glaciers, a triple-triple if you would. Nick wasn’t that psyched on that idea…lol.
We’d read that the approach up Moran Creek was quite bushwhack-y. As Washingtonians, we usually raise an eyebrow when reading about bushwhacks in other ranges. With grumbl-y, armchair alpinist-style voices in our heads, we held our tongues until the approach was over. The approach was VERY simple and easy but that’s mostly because we had good snow coverage. We stayed on the south side of the creek and never went out of low riser mode, with easy travel. We were able to find open spots in the creek to fill up water as well. I could see how later in the season, say May, this approach could turn bushwhack-y with lower snow coverage and more logs and alder to pass through.
I had a doh moment when we stopped for a brief break and I realized I had left my water bladder back in camp. While making my morning coffee I had heated up more water and put it in the bladder, but said bladder never made it to my camp. BUMMER! Thankfully it wasn’t too hot and Nick had 2L in his pack I could sip on. If this did end up being a huge day I’d be bummed, but something told me I’d be fine.
We reached the broad slopes beneath the moraine of Triple Glaciers and stared out at the landscape around us. Looking to the south were beautiful couloirs on Bivouac Peak, too many to count! The north face of Moran was looming large above us, with beautiful, albeit chossy-looking rock.
We were finding firm snow past 9,000′, unfortunately, and donned ski crampons for a little too long compared to our hopes. The lower angle slopes seemed to have caught more wind and sun than we had found on the other side of Moran. Maybe this valley gets more westerly-wind than the east-side? We knew that the Tetons get a strong prevailing wind out of the west, but we didn’t really factor it into our trip plan. Our hopes of having a big day playing on soft snow in the Triple Glaciers environ was fading; thankfully, we had beautiful positions to remind us why we came out here!
We continued marching up the western lobe of Triple Glaciers towards the eastern ramp off Pt. 11,658′. It was getting sun but we weren’t seeing any rollerballs or movement of snow, yet. We found around 10,000′ or so that the snow started to soften and lose solar input, but it still had wind effect in many places. Thankfully, the eastern ramp seemed to hold the softest snow. We continued skinning up the steeper pitch of the eastern ramp, with minor glopping.
We reached the top of the ramp and stared out at the vast expanse around. Moran stands tall in the north side of the Tetons, separated from the densely packed canyons of Garnet and the Cathedral Group. Looking out, we had no idea what we were looking at…but it was pretty cool to stand high on the remote side of such a prominent mountain!
I grabbed my camera out of my pack and skied down the ramp a bit to get a good vantage for pictures of Nick skiing. The snow was good, warmed alpine pow that had maybe one more hour before it turned to mank. I snapped a few pics then enjoyed the turns myself.
We skied down to a safe spot on the moraine for a lunch break. Re-evaluating the day, we thought the lower slopes below 9,500′ might actually corn up in an hour or so? But we didn’t think we had much stoke for lapping the lobes with solar and wind crust. We munched on our sandwiches as we heard the mountains come to life; numerous wet sloughs began falling down on solar slopes, a reminder to stay on the low angle, northern slopes with no hangfire.
We agreed to head back up the western lobe a little ways to try and ski one more pitch before exiting. After skinning up another few hundred feet, we found no better snow than we had found and agreed to flip. Stoke wasn’t there, we were just going up to go up.
The slopes beneath 9,500′ had not corned up yet but made for fun, planar, firm skiing. We drank some water before beginning our exit out Moran Creek. Our timing was good, as HUGE natural slides began to rage down the south slopes of Bivouac as we pushed our way out Moran Creek. Well, that’s the mountain saying something…go back to camp.
We were able to ski all the way back to Jackson Lake without transitioning to skins…WOOT! On our walk back to camp we pulled out my camera and tried to take photos of the Sickle Couloir, our target for the next day…
Triple Glaciers had been a great day exploring a remote side of the mountain with expansive views! While the ski quality was mixed, the position and ambiance was top notch.