Crust crusin' in the Tetons

(Here's a May Excursions column for the Jackson Hole News&Guide. Record snow falls this year meant we got to crust cruise into May, even after the Grand Teton National Park road opened.)

By Amy Schenck

What: Crust crusin’

Where: Grand Teton National Park

When: Springtime freeze thaw cycle

When: The earlier in the morning the better

Equipment: Skate skis and a sense of adventure

The trick to crust crusin’ is catchin’ it at the right time on the right day. Foil the timing and you’ll find yourself slogging through sun ripened snow. Find the sweet spot and you’ll glide effortlessly over countless hard packed miles.

So far I’m two for two. In other words, I’ve had nothing but good experiences crust crusin’.

Ever since I moved to Jackson I’ve had rumors of this springtime activity in Grand Teton National Park. Wait until temperatures warm up during the day, then freeze at night, friends told me. Grab your skate skis and head for the Taggart Lake parking lot. From there, the world is your oyster, or rather an endless blank canvass, perfectly groomed, for cruising just about wherever.

Until this year, I’d always encountered one small hang up: I didn’t know how to skate ski.

But after procuring used equipment, taking a lesson and skiing several laps in Teton Canyon, I’d managed to pick up my V2 alternate on both sides. (My V1 stride is still a work in progress).

Armed with my new found skills, I headed out to the park with two of my favorite companions in crime, err adventure.

Day 1 got off to a rough start. I wore too many layers on my legs, and in the process of trying to get off a pair of pants, I managed to get snow on the bottoms on not just one, but two socks.

Lucky for me, my companions in crime are extremely patient, forbearing individuals. I soon got into a groove, and my mood took a decided turn for the better.

We followed the bluff overlooking the Snake River, in area called Baseline Flat. We then cut “inland” and circled around Timbered Island.

A dusting of snow created a picturesque sheen on top the frozen crust, making it easy to sink in an edge to push off for a glide.

By the time we swooped in for a landing back at the parking lot I had become unabashedly addicted to this offbeat sport.

A week or so later I headed back out to go crust crusin’ with one of my afore mentioned companions in crime. We decided to mix it up, and straight lined it for Jenny Lake. This route involved hopping some half-buried fences, crossing plowed roads and navigating a tunnel-like clearing to accommodate a power line.

The conditions turned out to be even more “cruise-y” then before. It felt like turbo powered skate skiing, especially on Jenny Lake.

We skied across to the far end of Jenny Lake where we found cat-like tracks and bird feathers from an apparent scuffle.

Energy bars and a tight timeframe gave us extra juice on the way back. We arrived to our car in less than an hour. I was even more hooked then before.

With the right conditions, the possibilities for crust crusin’ are endless. Just ask Wilson resident Charlie Thomas.

Several years ago he set out with a friend to ski the entire length of the Grand Teton National Park. He just about made it. He started at the south entrance and got within a stone’s throw of the northern border – he got cut off by a river.

“It was just a matter of everything coming together and having these smooth conditions,” he said. “It was like ball bearings.”

Columnist Amy Schenck reaped a life lesson from this week’s excursion: when all else fails, just keep crusin’. Her columns can be found here every other week.  

Skiing the slide

(Editor's note: this Excursions column appeared in the Jackson Hole News&Guide in March)

By Amy Schenck

What: Skiing the Gros Ventre Slide

Where: Off the Gros Ventre Road past Kelly

When: Late winter and early spring when there is a deep snowpack

What to take: Food, water, warm clothes, avalanche gear and a spirit of adventure

Elevation gain: About 2,000 feet

My alarm sounded obnoxious at 5:15 a.m. Didn’t it know I deserved at least a couple more hours of sleep?

Nonetheless, by 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, Karen Colclough and I were driving toward the Gros Ventre slide on a mission for some R&R (recreational reconnaissance).

Telemark skis and two overly amped dogs filled the backseat of Karen’s car. Pink hues reflected off overcast skies and the few inches of freshies that fell during the night.

On a scrap piece of yellow lined paper, I had written down directions obtained from a friend of a friend.

As we got our first good views of the slide from the car, I pulled out those directions, and Karen and I poured over them, trying to figure out the best route up – and down – the well-known landmark.

The directions, and our own logic, told us to hug the west side of the slide, following “fingers” or small gullies, and avoiding fields of car-sized boulders.

We had been warned: while the boulders themselves can be problematic, the hollows around the boulders are a big danger too.

The feature we were scheming up ways to ski is a geologic freak.

Information found on www.ultimatewyoming.com and attributed to the Forrest Service gives the following facts on the Gros Ventre slide:

On June 23, 1925, a slope on the north side of Sheep Mountain unraveled, sending 50 million cubic yards of rock and debris hurling down toward the Gros Ventre River. The slide rolled 300 feet up the opposite side of the valley, blocked the river and formed what today is known as Lower Slide Lake.

In 1927, part of the dam created by the slide collapsed, flooding Kelly and killing six people, along with hundreds of domestic animals. That disaster caused Kelly to lose the county seat; it went to Jackson instead.

Karen and I parked the car at a lookout point on Gros Ventre Road. The directions on the crumpled up yellow paper bid us to turn onto Taylor Ranch Road and park in a scrapped out area just before the bridge across the Gros Ventre River. But a plow hadn’t yet uncovered Taylor Ranch Road, and we decided we’d rather skin for an extra 15 minutes, rather than risk getting stuck.

We set out, totally unsure of how the day would unfold.

After a season of following established skin trails on Teton Pass and in Grand Teton National Park, it felt downright invigorating to find our own route.

We picked our way up a narrow gully at the mouth of the slide. The few inches of new snow made the going easy: enough to give us good grip, but not so much as to bog as down.

Dogs Zippy and Oscar had it a bit more “ruff.” Their paws sank until they were literally up to their ears in sugary snow. They swam through it, totally unfazed.

After about a half mile, the gully began to level out and split into threads.

We cut west. Then up. Then west.

For a couple of hours we continued this way, snaking through dense forests, avoiding boulders, and generally drifting west.

The slide rose up before us, like an amphitheater reverberating with a symphony of rocks, boulders, cliffs and young trees.

We paused, often, to take it in.

The slide had always felt impressive from a distance. But to be there, standing in it, struck us with a sort of giddy awe.

Eventually, we gained a ridge that leads to the top of the slide.

We would have liked to have followed that flank to the 1925 starting zone, but we were pressed for time. We pulled off our skins 30 minutes shy of the very top.

Throughout the day Karen and I had observed that ominous “whomphing” sound synonymous with avalanche danger. So we had no intention of putting our nose into the slide’s steepest sections. Instead we chose a relatively safe line that flirted between tight trees and open glades.

Unexpected light springy powder made our descent nothing short of a delight. We leapfrogged each other, pure elation in our smiles.

Toward the bottom, we did a good bit of ski shwacking (short for bushwacking). More than once, during the schwacking, I audibly thanked my helmet.

Ski schwacking may not sound like a lot of fun, but for some odd reason it was.

Before we knew it, the slide spit us out back at the Gros Ventre River … two happy people and two panting dogs, unscathed from a day in the giant.

A lesson in winter

Here's the next installment of my Excursions column ...

When Karen Colcough and I go out for a day in the mountains, we don’t go skiing, biking or hiking – we go adventuring.
Perhaps it’s a sign that friends no longer send us off with wishes for a fun day.
Instead, as we set off for Sleeping Indian Thursday, we got: “Good luck,” from one friend, and “when do I call the cavalry?” from yet another.
I’ve never been up the iconic mountain before, but decided I wanted to go sometime during fall – when the days were long, the skies were blue and the ground still sprouted green.
As each weekend came and then went, filled by activities other than ascending Sleeping Indian, the days shortened, the skies greyed and snow drifted over the ground.
But since Karen and I were adventuring, and not hiking, the change in weather hardly seemed relevant as we rumbled down the Elk Refuge road toward what we hoped would be a trailhead.
Karen maneuvered her Subaru over a road built for high-clearance trucks until we reached a steep, unmanageable hill and were forced on to our feet.
Only a few minutes after we began walking, we came to a fork in the road. The map seemed to indicate one way, but Karen – who had been up the mountain once before – seemed to remember going the other way.
“I’m OK with going this way, even if the mountain is over there,” she said, pointing the opposite direction toward the peak.
I laughed at the absurdity of the statement, and then willingly followed her lead – after all, that’s what adventuring is all about.
We wound over paths stomped down by hunters that eventually turned into elk trails.
After about an hour, it was evident we had altogether missed the real trail leading up the south side of Sleeping Indian. But studying the map revealed that if we continued to climb up, we would eventually crest the mountain’s broad shoulder.
We linked our way through the woods and around rocky precipices, climbing toward the peak we periodically glimpsed through gray and grimacing clouds.
A few hours later, post holing in knee-deep snow, breathing damp air, we broke free from tree line.
“I hope we get some more wind,” Karen commented.
I had a kite strapped to the side of my backpack that we wanted to fly in the mountain’s gently sloping, wide-open flanks.
Little did we know…
As we pressed on, late-fall conditions turned to a mid-January type of blizzard. Whipping wind and thick snow battered my nose and cheeks. My fingers went numb as I pulled on all five layers I had brought with me.
Karen and I convened on an exposed ridge and I adamantly voiced my opinion: time to turn around.
Karen was suffering from mild hypothermia herself, and I didn’t have to do much convincing.
We retreated swiftly and carefully. The cloud ceiling had lowered, leaving us in a void of soft white, and the wind had nearly covered the tracks we made just a few minutes prior. Using a rock outcropping to keep our bearings, we found our way back to tree line.
Crouching on a foam pad in a thicket of trees, I shoveled cold spaghetti into my mouth while, while Karen put on extra layers and got out her expeditions mittens for me to wear.
A few minutes without moving and were chilled to the core. My hands were rendered useless, so much so that I couldn’t buckle my backpack.
We gathered up, got hiking, and armed with the expedition mittens, my fingers began to tingle the satisfying and painful way fingers tingle were they unthaw from a deep freeze.
Soon I had enough movement in my hands to unwrap a chocolate bar.
“How many people can say they literally need chocolate?” I said to Karen jokingly, as we savagely devoured the hazelnut milk chocolate.
We retraced our footsteps over hills.
Fortunately, Karen was hiking with poles, and in the fading evening light, we used her pole plants to distinguish our trail from elk trails. We had also, wisely, drawn arrows in the snow at indecipherable forks to point our way.
Soon the last light of day disappeared and our vision narrowed into the beam from our headlamps. Stars sprinkled overhead and an orange crescent moon drifted in and out of clouds.
Spurred on by gravity and cold, we found our way down, arriving to the car and an ice-cold beer at 7:30 p.m.
After successfully four-wheeling our way back to the graded and flat elk refuge road, we called our skeptics, er, friends, to let them know that another Karen and Amy adventure had drawn to a safe and happy conclusion.

North to south .... to north

A sign on the Bright Angel trail of the Grand Canyon warns that trying to hike to the river and back in a day is hazardous and should not be attempted ... good thing we didn't do that.

Instead Karen Williams and I ran from the north rim to the south rim and back to the north rim of the Grand Canyon in a spectacular - and sometimes grueling - 17 hours. The round-trip distance closed in on 50 miles and the elevation gain and loss was too intimidating to even calculate.

On the north rim 16 of us Alaskans, former Alaskans and friends of Alaskans congregated for an epically fun couple of days. Everyone went their own speed: there were rim to rimmers, rimer to river to rimers, and the rim to rim to rimmmers.(Of note, my mom and Karen's husband Kent hiked nearly 30 miles, going from the north rim to the river and back!)

We ran/ hiked on Thursday (10/14) and then all hung out and celebrated together on Friday. I spent the better part of Friday sitting on a veranda perched on the north rim, drinking coffee, reading and generally refusing to move. (I let out more than a few grumbles about the idea of walking 0.6 miles to a lookout for sunset, but in the end was lulled into the idea ... and it turned out to be worth the effort).

The highlights were many: reconnecting with friends and meeting new ones; descending in the dark with headlamps; listening to all the off-the-wall comments people made about our endeavor, especially when going back down the south rim and passing the same people we passed on the way up; gorging on a milkshake, hamburger, fries and coffee on the south rim; jumping into the water with all of our clothes on to cool down; crossing the bridge over the river in the bottom of the canyon; sitting with our backs against a sheer cliff admiring the stars overhead and the moonlit canyon below us; and mildly hallucinating, with the sound of water washing over me, reverberating off the canyon walls and then engulfing in me in a peaceful calm.

Our mantra for the day, and for ultrarunning in general, was in the forefront of our thoughts: there's no place I'd rather be than right here, right now, right at this point on the trail.

Hangin' out in Hangin' Canyon

Karen, Kevin and I had a brilliant plan last week ... go ski Hanging Canyon ...

According to our usual habit, we failed to heed a key piece of conventional wisdom ... this time regarding skiing in Grand Teton National Park in spring and early summer ...

Get going at the crack of dawn ... we're talking 3 a.m. ... so that you're at the top of the mountain and descending by 9 a.m.

We, by contrast, didn't even meet until 10 a.m. ...

By the time we hiked along Jenny Lake, through a forest and up a wide avi gully to the base of a series of waterfalls ... fed by the snowfield we planned to ski ... it was well past the noon hour ...

Clouds puffed and darkened ominously, reminding us that despite the skis strapped to our back, early summer in the Rockies had descended, and with it, afternoon thunderstorms ...

Unwilling to risk being caught above treeline with metal-edged boards strapped to our backs, we ended up playing at the base of the waterfalls for a couple of hours, before lugging skis, boots, poles, helmets, beacons, etc. back to the car ... laughing at the fact that we didn't make one single turn.

Our standing joke: If anyone asks us how the skiing was, our standard response would be: "The skiing is always great."

On our way out I learned an important lesson: when hanging out with Karen and Kevin be careful what you say.

"Anyone want to go swimming?" I said, totally off the cuff. Clouds fully blanketed the sky and the wind was blowing hard enough.

They paused, looked and me, looked at each other, and in that moment I realized they were taking me seriously. Before long we were pinky swearing ...

"I'll jump in first if you pinky swear that you'll get in too."

And so it was, we finished our day by jumping into a creek dancing with recently melted snow.