Skiing 'Round Our World

The concept was born in a hot tub while our wives listened with a mixture of yawning and "you're nuts."  Fellow Fitzgerald's teammates Dave and Katie Berglemann were unexpectedly also at Spring Creek Ranch for a romantic evening last fall, and the four of us ended up simmering in the tub during the pre-dinner hour.  As one might expect, the talk turned to cycling, skiing, and ridiculous epic adventures.

I mentioned that Trevor and Andy had linked up Oliver Peak, Mt. Taylor, and Mt. Glory years ago and Dave (always game for a Good Adventure or a Bad Idea) promptly upped the ante to skiing a monster loop that included those three PLUS a bunch of up-and-down on the south side of the highway.  Kind of a "what the fuck" idea that would probably never come together but could be a brilliant epic:

Start at Coal Creek.  Up the West Fork of Mail Cabin and then up Lone Pine.  Down into Burbank, over the divider ridge and down into the West Fork of Burbank.  Up to the top of Oliver Peak, down the Banana Chute and out Stateline Canyon.  Cross the highway, up through the scrappy brush to the top of Talbot's Ridge, up Wall Street and the West Face of Mt. Taylor.  Down the Southeast Ridge to Coal Creek, up to the top of Mt. Glory.  Down Twin Slides to Teton Pass.  Cross the highway again and ski down to the bottom of the Nose on Edelweiss.  Up the Nose, down the back of Edelweiss, up Columbia Bowls, down the back into Mail Cabin.  Out Mail Cabin to finish at Coal Creek and the car.  Lots of human-powered miles circumnavigating the west side of Teton Pass.

Christ.

And then yesterday it all came together.  It's been weeks since our last significant storm, so we thought the trailbreaking would be relatively easy and with us both able to get the day off of work...

Of course, our gorgeously sunny weather totally crapped out and the skiing was more or less awful.  So it goes.

Dave chose his rando-racing Supersuit for this day.  The porn-star mustache is a nice touch.

The day got off to a ripping start when we skinned up Lone Pine in the foggy dark and skied down into what we thought was Burbank. The skin up seemed long but we just knew we were heading the right direction, and then we were standing at the top of the Do-It's.  I still can't figure out how we managed that.  An hour lost, maybe more.

But we recovered.  Down into the Burbank Bermuda Triangle and eventually up Oliver.  Remarkably, we mostly found existing skintracks for the first part of the day.

Ahh, Burbank.Photo: Dave Bergart

Where the hell are we?

Gentle skinning through the fog up Oliver.
Photo: Dave Bergart

Dave drops into the Banana Chute.  This qualified as good visibility.

Even after crossing the highway to the scrappy south-facing slopes across from Stateline there was a skintrack down low.

Could have used a bit more snow down low, but the skintrack carried on.

Eventually it ran out and we were breaking our own trail.  It turns out it's a long way from Stateline to the top of Taylor.  A really long way.  Miles and miles.

Photo: Dave Bergart

Any guesses about the prevailing wind direction up here?  Eventually even the Supersuit couldn't stand up to it.  

The wind finally kicked up as we got higher, and though it wasn't a total nuke-fest at the top we didn't waste time in our transition either.

The upper Southeast Ridge skied pretty well--at least it was reliably unbreakable crust, with a skim of fresh on top.  Once we got low enough for the temps to be a bit warmer, unbreakable became breakable and the skiing went all to hell.

Dave made it ski well.

Photo: Dave Bergart

Skinning up Glory it became clear that we were a couple of hours behind schedule, and would be finishing in the dark.  Probably skiing our last couple of runs in the dark, actually.  Such is adventuring.

The skiing down Twin Slides was relatively good, given everything else we'd seen.  Windblown new snowfall had pretty well filled in the frozen chunder underneath, so while we got bucked around a fair bit there was also some smoother turning.

I called Erica from the Pass to let her know we were okay, and intended to complete the loop in the dark.  She called us crazy.  Apparently Katie agreed.

The best turns of the day were the pitch from the access road down to the bottom of the Nose, and then it was a too-long skin up to the top of Edelweiss with upper-body cramping and night falling.  We both felt better on the skin up Columbia, aided by some food and a break in the clouds that let the near-full moon shine through.

**You might notice a lack of photos at this point in the story.  It was dark.  We were tired.**

While the skiing below the Pass was some of the day's best, the skiing down the back of Columbia Bowls to Mail Cabin was undoubtedly the day's worst.  And we were doing it by headlamp.  Regardless, we both got down it with all limbs attached and double-poled like demons to the car, food and chocolate milk calling our names.

And so we came full-circle, starting in the dark and finishing in the dark 12:45 later.  Due to GPS mishandling neither of us got a precise story of the route, but I'm figuring about 25 miles with 13,000' of climbing/descending.  What an adventure.

Then there was a day of rest.