On February 17th, 1986, myself and 11 of my best skiing buddies drove and flew to Jackson Hole Wyoming. The storm that hit Jackson that week had deposited tremendous amounts of snow on the mountain the previous days, and we were forced to fly into Bozeman, MT and then jump on a bus for 11 hours back south and over Teton Pass to get to Jackson. we could have driven there in 9-10 hours from Summit County which some of our party had done. When we arrived in Jackson at 1am in the morning, we heard the bad news. Ski Patroller Tammy Ramer had been killed earlier in the day on an opening route at Jackson and the mountain was closed to skiing, for two weeks. The summit at the tram exit had received 11 feet of snow OVER NIGHT and the mountain was one huge avalanche hazard. So we drank at the Moose for four days then flew home. Our journey was a pilgrimage to the mountain made infamous by Warren Miller movies and we went to drop Corbet's Couloir and ski the rest of the legendary mountain. We had heard rumors of the Jackson Hole Air force back in those days and wanted to check out their scene. This movie documents the Story of the JH Air Force and should be watched by any and all of you who think you know anything about skiing the wild....it's good shit maynard.
Corbet's....no time to fuck around up here....I went back the following year in 1987 with good friend Tom Crowley, and I've got some old photos buried somewhere from that trip and the day we dropped Corbet's Couloir clean and survived it, narrowly missing the wall on the right after dropping it from the top. Immediately after dropping it and skiing it clean, I swore I'd never do it again. There is nothing more frightening on skis then standing at the top of this couloir, for an eternity, before finally committing to that first turn, it is beyond an adrenaline rush, and a right of passage for any true self proclaimed ski bum in this world....go get it.
No comments:
Post a Comment