Building Character: The Teton Traverse

Last weekend after a couple lackluster pre-season Shoshone laps, Dapper Dan made a surprising suggestion: a November Teton traverse. 

In the summer people often run the Teton Canyon to Death Canyon traverse, which is a pretty mellow way to get from one side of the range to the other. In mid-winter some people exit from the back of the Village, thus starting high and finding some interesting lines along the way, but the Teton to Death traverse doesn't have much appeal to skiers. 

It's still low tide in the Tetons, but Dan's proposal started to make sense; route-finding would be straightforward because the summer trails are still visible under the sparse snow, avy danger has yet to really rear its head, daylight savings is looming, and the Teton Canyon road is still open, cutting off four miles of travel. 

I did my last big ski tour on Cinco de Mayo with Cy and BriAndrew. It was a long walk to a big line, the aesthetic (and amusingly named) Fallopian Tube on Mt Woodring. Hot, footsore, recovering from some moments of intense fear, and feeling exceedingly accomplished, I packed up my winter gear, took the batteries out of my beacon, and filed away the Grand Teton National Park skiing mentality, to be retrieved no earlier than 2020 (or maybe December if the early season was really deep). 

Yep, skied that!

So imagine my surprise to find myself once again at a trailhead before dawn in single digit weather on November 2, turning on my headlamp and shouldering a pack that was stupid heavy. 

Our expectations were completely realistic. The purpose of this undertaking was conditioning, covering ground, trying out weird new set-ups (Cy had awesome AT snowblades and Dan was using XC skis and mountaineering boots, very appropriate for what was basically an XC mission), and coming home with that full body fatigue that only comes with really really big days--a fatigue that I find hard to achieve in mud season when everything is kind of meh. 

I really didn't expect to be doing long approaches before dawn in November

Skinning along the Teton Shelf at sunrise

We wore running shoes and were glad about it, because the first three miles and the last five miles of the traverse were on dry dirt or thin snow. We emerged from the Devil's Staircase and finally started skinning on the Teton Shelf just as the sun rose, illuminating beautiful couloirs above us all along the shelf. After a snack break at Mount Meek Pass we started along the Death Canyon Shelf, wondering if we'd have to follow the circuitous summer trail all the way to the head of Death Canyon. Although the south-facing cliff band below us was alarmingly scoured, we managed to find one still sketchy but not completely bare path down to the canyon. I had the dubious fortune of bringing the only normal ski set-up, although Cy skied the choke and rocky apron with flair and Dan down-climbed with the agility of a goat. 

The only "skiing" of the traverse

Looking down the chute, I knew I couldn't ski as if it were my second day of the season, melting into the backseat as I tried to remember where to point my torso. Nope, I had to draw on memories from last season when we skied several lines outside of my comfort zone and I finally became a proficient enough skier that being locked into skis felt way safer than being on foot. 

So I made tight turns and a few long side slips down the chute. It wasn't pretty but it was safe and I didn't even scratch a base beneath the chute while bopping through the boulder field blanketed in a few inches of snow. 

Those few turns were the only ones of the trip. We put skins on and learned something about Death Canyon: it's flat as fuck. Down skinning for miles and miles is fairly offensive, especially when interspersed with short techy descents that rattled Dan with his strange but sort of perfect skis. 

So...much...skinning

After another much needed snack and beer at the Patrol Cabin we set off again but soon realized that the well-traveled boulder-strewn trail did not merit skis. Back into running shoes. We each settled in to bang out those last miles, numbing our thoughts with music or Star Wars audiobooks, one foot in front of the other. Dan had left his truck at the winter trailhead, not realizing the summer trailhead was still open, so, further demoralized, we trudged down the road. Eventually some nice Jackson bros stopped and drove us the final mile to the truck, much to my relief. 

So...much...walking...with...skis

It was a hard day. Eighteen miles in ten hours. It was a little irksome that my skis only served as glorified snowshoes, greatly improving travel over flat, untouched snow but never eating up the downhill miles the way skis usually do. However, I wouldn't have chosen different conditions in which to do that traverse. In deep skiable snow the route still wouldn't be much fun, and if I tried to run it in the summer I would hate how flat it is. Why set an elaborate shuttle and go through the mountains when you can just climb to the top of them instead? 

We joked that we were prematurely preparing our bodies for ski tours that wouldn't be happening for another two months. But it felt really good to do something a little silly but very demanding, to remember my limits but to also know that I'm a stronger backcountry traveler than I ever have been. And to see the Tetons at first light from the heart of the range. 

But seriously, very beautiful