Baker!

As a backcountry skier I’m in the middle of the spectrum among my friends. To me, summiting a volcano isn’t a huge deal or a bucket list item I have to spend months preparing for, but I’m definitely not bagging peaks all the time. And aside from that one failed attempt on Hood, I actually haven't done any volcanoes, so I was excited to head up Baker on Tuesday. 

When we moved here, we were quickly adopted by Jon, a guy who’s fresh out of college and probably the most rabidly enthusiastic skier I know. In the Tetons it’s easy to live and breathe skiing — not like there’s much else to do, and you’re only twenty or thirty minutes from any given parking lot. But here the riding is distractingly good (and much closer) and the snow is consistently inconsistent and so dang far away. That doesn’t adulterate Jon’s glee though, so he’s always the one trying to reverse our slump into non-skierdom each winter. 

As spring arrived, he had a mission to get us to ski Baker. Cy had various ailments and prior commitments that kept him from doing it but when Jon told me there was a choice weather window coming in 48 hours, I decided to shirk my duties that day. 

We had a call on Monday to talk gear and timing. I reminded him I wouldn’t be an equal partner on the hill. I have zero glacier travel experience and only a nebulous understanding of what all the ropes and dangly bits are for — don’t fall in a crevasse is the number one rule, I guess? And I know tackling an objective while operating with a guide or mentor mentality is more fatiguing than being with a peer. He said he was understood and was looking forward to that aspect. Fortunately I was confident that, unlike in the usual guide-client partnership, I could hold my own on fitness. 

We left the trailhead at 4:30 a.m. We were both wearing running shoes for the three-mile dry walk on trail, but Jon changed his mind at the last minute and instead we committed to some semi-heinous PNW-style forest 'shwacking in exchange for a lot more on-snow time on the descent. 

We started skinning up the first col as the sun rose. The snow surface, pebbled like a lizard skin with ice crystals, was firm and slick. I churned forward, feeling good until the track got steeper, the snow got icier, and we climbed into a wind tunnel at the toe of the glacier. I longed for ski crampons. During a snack break I had a small crisis of confidence. Wind plus icy skinning always makes me feel vulnerable and irrationally scared. Cy has dealt with me in this deer-in-the-headlights mode several times. 

But the wind let up and we strapped on boot crampons and my mood immediately improved. The crampons made me feel beyond safe, like a superhero she-panther stalking up the steep pitch, the snow the perfect firmness for fast side-pointing progress.

We summited with little ado. We needed to wait for the snow to soften up on the main descent and Jon had his eyes on the Park Headwall, a slope that had already received the right amount of sun. The extra ski meant we had to climb back out of a hole, but I was game.

Jon dropped onto the perfectly slushy pitch with fluid, powerful arcs. When it was my turn I realized the slope was much steeper than it looked — 50 degrees, we later confirmed — and I shakily made clumsy hop turns, my eyes glued to the row of bergschrunds below. Is this bad glacier travel behavior? An intermediate skier hopping for her life in a no-fall zone? Maybe. 

Something I’ve realized about Jon is that he’s such a good skier and spends so much time with other good skiers that he sometimes forgets that the downhill, not the uphill, can be where someone falters and finds their limits. As a result, I have accidentally followed him into some scary places where I'm in over my head. I learned to ski as an adult and only started feeling proficient a few years ago, and skiing has taken a backseat in Washington. But I have survival fundamentals, and I did indeed survive the Park Headwall. 

We were still on a steep, hot slope when we switched back to uphill mode and I tackled another of my fears — transitioning in steeps. Cy has coached me through this several times to help me overcome the irrational terror of falling backward and the more rational terror of a vital piece of equipment sliding away, never to be retrieved. I am generally a meticulous person and being meticulous is essential when you’re managing gear in the steeps. 

With crampons back on and my skis safely strapped to my pack, I was back in control, happily punching steps into the snow. I felt remarkably strong even as we exceeded the vertical gain of my biggest ski day ever. Then we skied delicious bonus turns on the Roman Wall, skinned up again, and enjoyed 6,000 feet of the best, most consistent corn skiing I’ve ever experienced. 

After we picked our way down the snowy banks of Grouse Creek, I bumped up against bonk-flavored frustration for the first time. Jon called a reset and we doffed sweaty clothes and helmets, drank water, ate snacks, and prepared for the thankless final ‘shwack. 

The day went as well as I could possibly have hoped. We did the volcano quickly, in good style, in perfect conditions, and as a smooth team. 

Even though I’m relatively inexperienced with big objectives, I’ve done so much backcountry skiing (and have benefited from Cy’s gear and knowledge largesse). I have a very light setup that I'm comfortable with, I have a tried and true layering system, I know how my body and brain work (and yes, as usual, I didn’t eat enough, but I never actually bonked), and best of all, I have so many years of endurance stored up in my legs that climbing feels almost effortless. 

The next day I was riding home from work and saw the snowy behemoth on the skyline. I didn’t expect it to have an effect on me, but I got goosebumps. I skied that!

Bougie Ski Vacation

We flew back to Bellingham from the Tetons on a sunny clear morning and as usual I spent the entire flight with my nose pressed against the window, devouring the landscape. 

It’s a landscape I obsessed over for a decade. I’d trace lines on the map, piecing together routes to travel on foot and ski and bike and car, and then bushwhack up drainages, chase dead end trails, tiptoe over airy ridges, and get turned around but always refuse to turn around. 

I peered down at Teton Pass and tried to pick out the treed slopes we pillaged during our two days of skiing. I watched the march of mountain ranges east to west from the Wyoming state line through central Idaho, the geographic names bubbling up from my random access memory: Pyramid Peak, Mosquito Creek, Garns Mountain, St. Anthony Sand Dunes, the Lemhis, Pahsimeroi Valley, Salmon-Challis National Forest.

We planned for a quote-unquote Ski Vacation, something I’d never done before: flying with skis, booking a car and a short-term rental with a hot tub. Bougie-like. But our secret vacation hack was renting a house within blocks of several friends and coming equipped with a decade of knowledge on where to ski, what to expect from the weather, timing, and aspects, where to eat, and how to avoid ever turning left in traffic. 

We arrived in the middle of a little storm that blessed us with supremely excellent backcountry skiing. And we spent plenty of time with friends, slipping back into the exact same conversations all over again, relishing sharing so much history and so many stupid jokes, the sense of being known by the people you are enjoying unstructured time with. 

We sought out only a few of our many Teton Valley acquaintances and they were kind enough to give us a lot of their time on the skin track and at The Wolf and on the tailgate and on the chairlift and in their homes and in our hot tub. 

After they left, Cy and I talked and agreed that, honestly, we don’t miss the place at all. We drank so deeply of the Tetons and upon return found the cup empty. We are so happy with the life we’ve found in Washington. It's even better than we could have hoped when we severed the line of comfortable familiarity holding us to Driggs. 

But my god I love my friends. I can remember the first time I met each of them, at trail days or on the chairlift or at parties or trying to find new roommates. 

I have made some really good friends in Bellingham and I’m so excited to build a shared history with them too, but I’m so grateful for my time in Teton Valley.