Turning Back

Damn, it feels heavy writing this.  Parker and I spent yesterday up on the Grand Teton, trying to climb and ski the Briggs Route.  We turned back at the base of the Stettner Couloir because of the increasingly reactive windslab we were seeing, and concerns about an avalanche from the Ford Couloir above sweeping down onto us.

Then I woke up this morning to a story about the avalanche death of Jarad Spackman in the Apocalypse Couloir on Prospector's Mountain.  I never met Jarad but certainly knew his name--he was a super accomplished splitboard mountaineer, with tons of experience riding exposed alpine routes in the Tetons.  Having climbed/skied the Apocalypse a few times I can imagine where he and his partner were, with windslab loaded in the face that hangs above the lower couloir, and how horrific an uncontrolled ride down from there would be.  Such a hard place to assess or control the hazard above.

Jarad Spackman on the first descent of The Rapture, Prospector's Mountain.  Photo: Brandon Spackman

Up in Garnet Canyon yesterday Parker and I were feeling really good about stability all the way to the JHMG high camp at 11,200'; the 10-20cm of new snow was glued into place, and skinning from the Meadows to the Teepe Glacier was pretty easy.  Then above high camp things changed dramatically.

The wind picked up, and we started seeing shallow windslab popping off the surface.  Whoever was leading would grab a ski pole mid-shaft and punch into the surface and pull, and the top 3-5cm of slab would clean off and run past us.  Super soft and localized, these platters of fresh slab would flow past and around us and we would have a clean surface into which to kick a few steps before cleaning off the next stretch.  It all felt very small and manageable, despite being incredibly reactive.

As we got into the upper half of the glacier, the slab became more like 10cm thick, but was still soft and localized.  Then I led the traverse from the Teepe Col to the Glencoe Col, and found slab depths increasing to more like 15cm.  Its character changed as well; where we were just cleaning out isolated pockets on the glacier, on the traverse I would punch-and-pull and the fracture would propagate across the whole slope.  Like peeling a banana, I would pull from where I was climbing on the far-right side and it would release all the way across, sending the windslab down into the clouds below.  Nothing ever propagated above, either on the glacier or the traverse, just across--which is what made it continue to feel manageable.

But once we got to the bottom of the Stettner and saw how soft and loaded the sluff cone was, and heard the wind ripping across the upper mountain, we knew that the Ford was only getting more loaded.  Having seen the slab depths increasing in the last 1000', we extrapolated that they would be deeper and more consequential further up.  So far we hadn't seen any natural avalanche activity, but who knew when the load would reach the tipping point?

So we called it there.  We spent 30 minutes sitting in a sheltered nook on the Glencoe Col to see if the weather would improve and then headed down.  Once again, it stung to turn back from another objective but we knew it was the right decision on many levels.

And then this morning the story about Jarad's death.  It feels horrible to have such a personal connection to the fatal accident of another skilled alpinist who I didn't even know, and to contemplate what could have happened had we continued up.  I am eternally thankful to have thoughtful partners like Parker.  My heart goes out to Jarad's partner that day, and the rest of his friends and family.