Skirafting the Winds

 

    As much as any other multisport, skirafting critically relies on an alignment of several conditions: snowpack stability and coverage, temperature ranges, weather and stream flows. On the heels of perfect conditions in alignment on the Idaho skiraft and the San Juan skiraft I felt overdue for a reckoning with the weather gods, and the Winds delivered in spades.

    I was asked by trip partners to lock in a rigid start date for a northern winds ski traverse-to-packraft weeks in advance, which felt like a mistake but it's all we could manage as a group.  Despite punchy snowpack in the trees the morning we began late May, we were able to crush through a dozen miles from the trailhead through blowdown riddled forest and across mush-capped lakes to the base of the climb to Indian Pass. 

ascending towards the divide at Indian Pass

final water collection for a few days

storm sets in on Bull Lake Glacier

    A committing traverse across five passes and seven glaciers in a remote setting wasn't going to marry well with a well-advertised prolonged storm. It started in phases though, and a great evening weather window at our first glacier camp along with some fresh laps kept route-alteration thoughts at bay.

A brief clearing

He's smiling because he won't see the sun for another 4 days

        Given that this route was 80% skiing and 20% paddling, the other four members elected to pre-stash most of their paddling gear near our put-in in the Bridger Wilderness. I carried my full paddling set-up, which wasn't entirely pointless since my 15 oz. pfd was a useful camp seat, paddle can be used to set up pyramids, and I was considering using my boat as a sled on flats and to ferry the group across the Green above our eventual put-in. Allen and Michael both carried their drysuits, which turned out to be distressingly necessary survival gear during the storm.

        Due to the extreme weight consciousness required of skirafters, we elected to use three pyramid tents for a group of five. With the best snow camp construction techniques floorless tents can still be problematic with blowing and accumulating snow. There is a fine, or even vanishing line between shoveling out from tent wall burial and allowing too much spindrift.

Approaching the most worrying bergschrund and onto Sacagawea Glacier

Crossing towards Helen Glacier

    A bit of spindrift accompanying 4" of fresh at our first glacier camp dampened our bags slightly, but a welcome lunch hour dose of sunshine on Sacagawea glacier the next day allowed us to nearly recover our bag loft.

    As we approached the next crux pass a gale set in, creating visibility and windload concerns for our descent towards our second glacier camp. We regrouped at the pass and enjoyed the first half of the 1900' descent in fresh snow, but the warm temps of late May in the beginning phase of a storm yielded punchy snowpack towards the bottom. 

Blaurock Pass

    We spent half an hour in the barren valley bottom below searching for boulders to provide the best wind shelter but every new giant boulder we spotted at the edge of fog visibility turned out to be disappointingly small on approach. We settled and dug in, agreeing to compare notes on our tent platform/wall/trench construction ideas the following morning.

Looking for camp below the Sentinels

    Those notes would have been embarrassing. The heart of the storm arrived overnight, providing a further foot of dry snow in windless conditions and luring us into digging out too thoroughly around midnight. Sporadic stiff gusts followed, and all five of us failed to prevent serious spindrift and sleeping bag accumulation in the absence of bivvy sack armor.

    The following morning we were faced with a serious set of decisions as a group. Visibility and wind were pressing concerns, progress would be tough in any direction with all the new snow, and the ratcheting danger of windload instability was serious given the new accumulation and transport. And at least two of us had developed unrecoverably wet sleeping bags overnight, so we were on a deteriorating comfort vs. survivability trajectory if further unforeseen problems with travel or equipment were to develop. There were several options - wait out the weather, return to the start point via one of two routes, exit the range on the side we were on through forest, or press on over the divide and down to the Green River, the intended route. We quickly narrowed the options to the latter two, and given that the first three miles for both of those overlapped, we broke camp and downskinned while individually weighing our arguments and concerns.

    From my perspective, the greatest difficulty would likely be approaching the divide up high, navigating across glacier in whiteout, which might necessitate an overly exposed emergency camp. I have some experience with this, and it isn't easy. The untested descent route off the divide into Tourist Creek was the most serious concern for others, but given that the slopes were windward we considered it an option still despite growing avalanche danger. 

    In the crux moment of our discussion, a hole in the clouds opened up and a red mylar balloon appeared, drifting just over our heads in the direction of the forest exit. I'm not one to trust in omens. But I'd bet all five of us though were weighing the look of disregarding that omen or the temptation of following it blindly. In the end, we decided to press over the divide with the idea that there was enough time to retreat back to trees before nightfall in the face of impassible obstacle or condition.

Grasshopper glacier, scour-exposed blue ice, approaching the divide and a face melting whiteout

        It was a relief to finally have a decision made, even if we didn't yet know if it was the correct one. Months later, maybe we still don't. We took turns breaking trail and could now settle in to making step by step decisions and evaluations with that overarching route indecision shelved for the moment. Fast progress up and onto the final glacier, nearing the divide, was very welcome. Finally on the divide, we inched forwards with Liz leading blindly in thick fog while I followed with a compass and map, shouting direction instructions with the goal of finding our descent through a narrow gap between large cliffs leading to tourist creek basin. Fortunately, we found the steepest slope to be scoured rather than loaded, and mostly free from exposure to avalanche terrain. Switching to crampons, we booted and scraped down through a boulder field, returned to skis, started losing elevation and were quickly below cloud level.

 

Off the divide

approaching the Tourist Creek wall

    We made fast progress down the upper half of Tourist Creek, but snowpack coverage became problematic as we wandered through the giant talus pile underneath the massive north facing wall at the mouth of the canyon. The character of our route was transitioning from obvious, clear pathway into frustrating unskiable talus maze.

    We reached a point where we'd have to switch to boots and risked running short on flat campable terrain, so after brief debate decided on camp at a bench near some tall spruce along the creek. This turned out to be a good decision, since the remaining 2/3 mile into the Green River valley bottom would nearly take a further full day. However, camping again on snowpack with only three dry sleeping bags for five people was a grim prospect. After dinner, Allen and Michael put on all their remaining clothing, pulled on their drysuits save the neck gasket, and slithered into their drowned down cocoons for the night. They barely but successfully staved off hypothermia. I still shiver at the thought of that experience second hand, so I can't imagine how they feel about revisiting it. Maybe it's one of those things that's uglier to think about than to actually experience, but I'm probably wrong.

The boulder maze we spent most of a day navigating

    We felt like we had nearly accomplished our descent to the safety of the valley, and we had in terms of mileage. Boulder hopping with full packs and a fresh coat of powder proved to be the most significantly underestimated challenge of the trip though, and we reached the Green River late the following afternoon despite it being one good frisbee throw from our tourist creek camp.

Green River headwaters

    We used a single boat and a throw bag to ferry people and gear across the Green (too deep to wade) so we could access the CDT in order to bypass the log filled gorge below the meadow.

On to the CDT

the better part of a bridge on the CDT

Allen looks for a good spot for his bag to continue not drying out

        Finally camped on dry ground next to the Green River with the storm seemingly breaking, a great sense of success and relaxation set in. We were in safe and familiar territory, but a great deal of work remained.

The Forager Skimorager gets ready to swallow five pairs of skis and boots, axes, shovels, poles and a few packs

Good thing we have a packraft that requires four people to carry for the 20 upcoming wood portages

Squaretop with a fresh coating as the storm clears

        The better part of the day was spent paddling downriver and across the Green River Lakes. My memory of my previous descent of this river stretch, though, had failed to include the abundant log population. A hundred pound packraft was painful to shepherd through those reaches.

Dano pilots the crux rapid

Green River Lakes

        As a team we were left wondering if it was worth the effort to paddle out of the range rather than walk, but I think on the balance it was the best option. On long trips with loads of gear I hate the prospect finishing with a slog and sore back and tired feet, and the river and lakes had better views than the forested trail. I've had discussions this year with two other seasoned adventurers about trip retrospective - one claims that the measure of a great route is that it's appealing to complete a second time, while the other claims that a great route is identified by having no drive to repeat. I'm still deciding on this one...

Idahodarod ski-packraft traverse

     Whenever I propose a new route, I am immediately suspicious of this type of response:

 'That looks like a good idea, I think I'm in!'

    However, even I couldn't shake the notion that a 300+ mile traverse of Idaho wilderness using skis and packrafts, in early springtime, might be a good idea. 

  In the end, we were largely successful from start to finish with our core group of 5 skirafters, though our success may have relied in large part on a miraculous two week long near-perfect weather window. A ski traverse along the spine of the Sawtooth mountains delivered us to Marsh Creek into the Middle and Main Salmon. Following a 6000' climb out of the Main canyon with packrafts in our packs, we skied nearly to the banks of the Selway River, our final leg of the journey. The Sawtooth, Frank Church River of No Return, and Selway-Bitterroot Wildernesses lay underneath our boots, boats, and pillows nearly the entire route length over 14 days.

blue = paddle, red = ski, green = wilderness areas

Sawtooth Range

Marsh Creek

Middle Fork

Climbing out of the Main

Selway River

  My original motivation for this trip, on the heels of a handful of successful skirafting trips the previous year [Grand Canyon, San Juan Mountains, Absaroka Mountains, Henry Mountains], was to tackle a true packrafting expedition with Mike in his new backyard in central Idaho. We settled on the 2nd week of April as our starting point for several reasons: 1. minimizing the dryland mileage (ultimately <10 miles!), 2. springtime snowpack stability featuring high likelihood of overnight refreezing, 3. Marsh Creek flows just high enough, but Selway flows that weren't yet absolutely raging. 

    And so we arrived from Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Montana and Colorado at a point just south of Stanley and saddled up for a slog-to-climb into the Sawtooth range.

  Allen and Brian B would leave the group after this first leg, while Mike, Jesse, Tom, Brian G and I would push on for another 9 days into another climate zone ending in Lowell, ID just above where the Selway joins the Lochsa river. Will later joined us for the Selway, skiing in solo from Montana.

First of thirteen passes on our Sawtooth traverse

Snowgeese heading north

    There are very few places where you can travel for 300 miles in the lower 48 and only cross 3 roads (one highway, two dirt roads). The highway separating the Sawtooth Range from Marsh Creek (Middle Fork Salmon headwaters) was our only resupply for the trip - and here we had stashed our paddling gear in advance. Skis loaded into boats, donuts and fried chicken down the hatch, and a direct launch from snowpack into the creek.

And onto the Middle Fork Salmon, leaving winter behind for the moment. Sort of.

    It was sunny, but it sure wasn't very warm. Spray was still flash freezing to our faces and pfds even after lunch most days.

    Green grass along the Main Salmon felt very out of place, having come straight from the Sawtooth Range and a freezing river leg. And for that matter, maybe some of us felt a bit out of place, packing up boats and skis into giant packs on a backcountry lawn.

    Carrying everything on our backs, even just halfway up the 6000' climb from the main before reaching snowpack, it was hard to not feel like a caravan of clown cars.

nearing the transition to skis, climbing away from the Main

What an exemplary, tight pack Mike!

two full days of ski traverse along Waugh Ridge

Perched camp overlooking the Bitterroot Mtns

    The morning after our final snow camp we descended to the Selway, and we could finally start to relax. Or, at least those of us not fully intimidated by a healthy flow and a juicy set of rapids that lay between us and civilization. For the second time we would be sitting in our boats rather than carrying our packs, now to the finish line. Mercifully, the skittery snowpack covering the road had a fresh few inches of powder padding to make our lives easier with heavy loads.

    At one point on the ski descent, while in the lead, wolf prints appeared on the track in the snow during a brief flurry. I bent down to inspect, and immediately said, 'These are less than 10 minutes old'. I took another look... 'No, probably less than 2 minutes old!'. I skated ahead around the bend, and after 100 feet they veered into the woods.

    Whereas Marsh Creek and the Middle Fork Salmon are barely above base flow mid-April, the Selway is already cranking.

It felt great to end a trip on a river leg - sunny, green, and wet... but still cold. Spring has barely begun.

Leaving camp before shoes thaw, last morning

Straight up out of gas

       It certainly didn't feel like our trip ended too soon, but the sense of accomplishment of pulling off a trip of this magnitude was downright awesome. A fluid link of wilderness snowpack and the waterways it feeds is such a satisfying concept - and thankfully parts of the west contain enough intact wilderness to make that possible.