The Alpine Peanut remains motivated to earn her turns well into May. The weekend of May 11th and 12th we skied the East Face of Rockchuck Peak and one of her season projects, the South Face of Taylor Mountain, in perfect corn!
Bobbi’s back! As 10K2Far followers well know, Bobbi sat out the last few months of the 2023 ski season with some ripped up knee ligaments. She only learned to ski in 2022, so that year her skills and stoke weren’t exactly matched with the manic pursuit of late season Teton skiing. I’m proud to say she appears to have caught the bug this year. As I write this article on May 28th she’s still indulging my masochistic plans to pursue every last lick of reasonable snow in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Sadly 2024 hasn’t been a top notch corn season in the Tetons. Many pesky pulses, some rather heavy, of late season snow continue to disrupt the deep melt-freeze consolidation required to create a snowpack conducive to supportive spring skiing that doesn’t instantaneously turn to mush the second the sun peeks over the horizon. The best corn of our year was harvested during a high pressure cycle mid-April, during when Bobbi and I skied the Falling Ice Glacier on Mount Moran (we lost the photos from that day after I dropped my phone off Mount Wister, but an iPhone video trip report might surface at some point). This particular weekend takes second place, where we found generally good transitional snow on the Teton spring classic Rockchuck Peak – breakable crust, to hot powder, to corn, to mush – and 2000 feet of top notch corn on the South Face of Taylor Mountain. This weekend set the gold standard for type 1.25 Teton skiing with my best friend.
Rockchuck Peak – East Face
We casted off from the String Lake parking lot for 11,149 foot Rockchuck Peak at the ripe hour of 4:30AM. The mountains received a light freeze the night before that relied heavily on radiational cooling from crystal clear skies to set-up the snowpack, with alpine lows forecasted right around 30 degrees for 11,600 feet. My Subaru read 36 degrees in the lot while we hustled to get our gear together aside a crew of three heading for the Fallopian Tube. We began from the summer trailhead at the south end of String Lake, following the loop trail to the opposite shore beneath Mount Saint John. We ended up contouring towards Rockchuck a bit early, paying the price of impatience with difficult jungle skinning. We would have been certainly better off sticking to the lakeshore until the GPS confirmed base of the primary East Face drainage, then heading directly up. The ascent route for Rockchuck is about as straightforward as they come, a 4,279 foot line-of-sight slog from lake to summit up an incredible broad drainage reminiscent of the Banana “Couloir” on Prospector’s Mountain. The overwhelming majority of the ascent is no more than 30 degrees and makes for highly efficient skinning in the right conditions. By 8:00AM we had crossed three sets of bear tracks, seen a pair of moose, enjoyed a remarkable golden-pink sunrise, reached 10,200 feet and were now cooking beneath the final amphitheater headwall of the East Face – it was getting warm fast. The direct east face was filled with avalanche debris, so we pointed towards a north facing slope that provides access to the southeast ridge. As soon as we switched from east to north aspects the snow morphed from baby corn to knee deep heavy powder, and kicked back in the realm of 45 degrees. Bobbi decided to reluctantly but valiantly fold her cards here, not wanting to risk tweaking her rehabilitated knee in the heavy spring snow, but encouraged me to forge on for the final 900 feet. Initially I resisted, but she assured me of her pleasant plan to suntan in the flat basin underpinning the headwall, and alas I was gone. I reached the summit at exactly 8:59AM.
At first I was disappointed Bobbi wasn’t with me on the summit, but after skiing the subsequent 900 feet to her snack camp I realized that despite Rockchuck’s moderate reputation, the skiing was actually rather exposed and felt a little more “real” than I expected in difficult conditions. I battled a nasty breakable crust on the Southeast Ridge that barely allowed fluid turns before forking onto the northern headwall which skied far better than I could’ve imagined. I stuck far skier’s right where the snow was drier, and made rollerball conscious work of my probable last carefree powder steeps of the season. After reconvening with the Alpine Peanut we enjoyed an excellent rolling tandem ski to the shore of Leigh Lake – 3,400 feet of unadulterated fun. Rockchuck is an awesome spring objective with a wide variety of terrain for every ski ability, and we’ve already added a proper summit descent to Bobbi’s 2025 list. We were back at the car by 11:00AM for a shirts off parking lot picnic of epic proportions. This day was exactly what spring skiing is all about.
Taylor Mountain – South Face
Teton Pass has never made the Ten Thousand Too Far cut, but I wanted to give a quick shout out to Bobbi for knocking off one her season projects in shining style. The South Face of Taylor is by far the proudest looking road-visible line in the Pass. I’ve probably skied Taylor over 50 times and the South Face at least 10. The peak would be a weekend destination in many of the smaller ranges across the west, offering over 3,000 feet of fall-line skiing directly to the car with interesting terrain on every aspect. Despite it’s daunting appearance the South Face is actually relatively moderate, holding an average slope angle in the realm of 35 degrees until its drainage 2,300 feet below. It is the largest avalanche path in the pass, and that, coupled with roadside access, has made Taylor the home of more avalanche accidents and fatalities than any other singular peak in the Teton Range. Anywho, we battled variable ascent conditions amidst a soft freeze but ultimately reached the summit rather expediently, and enjoyed a leisurely change-over while waiting for the South Face to catch sun. We nailed a perfect harvest with a 10:15 drop in, and once Bobbi got a feel for the terrain she opened up faster turns like I’ve never seen before. It was totally rad to watch, and I had the pleasure of scoring my own perfect turns too. Taylor rarely disappoints, and was a great way to cap off the Teton Pass skiing for the season.
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DISCLAIMER
Ski mountaineering, rock climbing, ice climbing and all other forms of mountain recreation are inherently dangerous. Should you decide to attempt anything you read about in this article, you are doing so at your own risk! This article is written to the best possible level of accuracy and detail, but I am only human – information could be presented wrong. Furthermore, conditions in the mountains are subject to change at any time. Ten Thousand Too Far and Brandon Wanthal are not liable for any actions or repercussions acted upon or suffered from the result of this article’s reading.
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