Nez Perce Sustrugi

I’m off on a long slog and overnight mission today, so I’ll be back next week. Here’s a little edit from skiing the West Hourglass Couloir on Nez Perce the other day. We were behind another party headed into Garnet Canyon and when they told us there were headed to the Hourglass as well, we figured we could either reel them in and try to beat them to the couloir, or just go our own pace and ski something else. As we reached the upper section of The Meadows, we saw the other party head towards the South Fork of Garnet Canyon, which is not your typical approach to the Hourglass. Since it looked like their plans had changed, we continued up towards the Hourglass and our original objective.

It was much to our surprise when, as we began to make our descent, we saw the party making their way towards the top of the couloir. We let them move aside before we continued. Lucky for them, it didn’t really matter who got first tracks in the couloir (at least in most of the couloir) that day, because it was wind hammered and filled with sustrugi. Some things to note:

– 4:30 car-to-top-of-couloir. Decent time, there is a great skin track into Garnet Canyon right now.
– This is my first edit using Adobe Premier Elements so it’s a pretty simple video.
– 0:05 as always a little walk on rocks from the top of the couloir.
– 0:30 you can see the other party nearing the top of the couloir.
– 1:12 a small pocket of powder for a few soft turns.
– 1:30…so crusty it makes your teeth rattle.
– 1:42 if you look hard, you can see an old wind scoured “negative bootpack going up the couloir on the right.
– 2:00 it’s pretty wild how the wind can shape the snow around a single rock.
– 2:13 some better snow on the exit apron with leftward trending turns to avoid the slough.
– Yup, Dynafit TLT5 Performances and 175cm Black Diamond Carbon Justice. Loving the combo for winter Teton assaults.