So after months of talking about it Megan and I finally set out to hike the Headwall in hopes of some end of season fresh powder. Seeing amazing skiers on a day to day basis can sometimes easily be intimidating and thus one of my main reasons for not hiking the headwall earlier this season. For those that don't know the Headwall is about a 20-40 minute hike depending on where you decide to ski down. It's famed because up until the late 1990's/early 2000's it was closed and considered out of bounds. Now however they do avalanche control there and have opened it up to those who are willing to strap their skis to their back and bootpack straight up in search of the ever sought out untouched powder. Once at the top of the headwall Megan and I had no idea where to ski down. We knew that there were cliffs everywhere and of course we wanted to avoid all cliffs so we just kept traversing across the headwall to the Crags which is on the complete opposite side of the mountain. While we were traversing we passed some guys who called out to Megan and oddly enough Megan had gone to high school with 2 of the guys. They were currently living in Chicago and were just in Jackson for a long weekend vacation. Talk about a small world. It was their first time on the headwall as well so we all ended up skiing the rest of the day together. Once we finally made it to the Crags we put on our skis and took off down the steep slope that was still knee deep powder much of which was untouched. Nothing like just letting loose and pointing your skis straight down knowing that the massive amounts of powder will help keep your speed in control and will provide a soft landing if you crash....which we did numerous times. Hands down it was one of the most fun runs I have done all season....the hike up was well worth it and I completely understand why some many locals are obsessed with backcountry skiing and continually hike up in search of untouched runs. If I had the money I would definitely invest in backcountry gear and opt for more out of bounds skiing then the tourist packed skied-out runs at the village. My only complaint and regret so far from the season is that I let intimidation get the best of me and didn't hike the headwall earlier in the season. We still had knee-deep untouched powder 2 days after the last snowfall so I can only imagine how amazing these runs were on days were we got feets of snow overnight. Next year I'll know better and will be waiting in line for those first tracks.
One of the guys with us took some video skiing down from the Headwall....if I can get a hold of it I'll post it up.
Looking up at one of the descents off the headwall.
Megan and I atop the headwall.....this was after about 20minutes of climbing...we still had another 20 minutes of traversing and slight climbing till we dropped in
Me atop the headwall
View of Corbets from the Headwall....I still can't believe they allow people to ski it
View of the Tetons from atop the Headwall
No comments:
Post a Comment