Middle Teton Mission
Caroline Gleich and photographer Adam OKeefe ski the Southwest Couloir of Wyoming’s Middle Teton.
View the slide show at ESPN X Games
Lone Peak POV
Come along for the ride with Caroline Gleich.
Best of Freeride World Tour - Outtakes Part 1
Classic stuff from last season. Liz Daley asks a handful of competitors from the Freeride World Tour some of the most unlikely questions.
via EpicTV.com
Best Day Ever: Lone Peak’s NE Couloir
By Caroline Gleich as told to told to Heather Hansman
I had thought about skiing Lone Peak for months because I’d had a failed attempt at it earlier in the season. It became the line of my dreams. It’s so beautiful; it’s like an Alaska style face in Utah. I’ve always wanted to go heli-skiing in Alaska, but that hasn’t happened for me yet, so I thought, “this is my chance to rip an AK-style line.” Visible from downtown, it’s one of the most obvious peaks in the Salt Lake valley and one of the three-star lines in Andrew McLean’s book The Chuting Gallery…
Read Caroline’s full report at POWDER Magazine
Photo: Adam O’Keefe
Caroline’s Couloir Project
By Caroline Gleich
This spring, I made a goal to ski all the 3-star lines in The Chuting Gallery. I’ve had a trusty copy of this book since I was 16 and ever since I can remember, I’ve always craned my neck out the window on the drive up Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons to gawk at all the big chutes and mountaintops around.
The project officially started near the end of March when I realized I’d already skied a few of the 3-star lines. The thing with this type of skiing is that it’s addictive. The combination of adrenaline plus endorphin rush is intoxicating. After my first few missions, I’d get nervous when I didn’t have another one lined up. I started friending random people on Facebook that looked like strong touring partners (they have now become good real-life friends). I obsessed over weather forecasts, strategically assembled teams and planned my objectives. Starting so late in the season was stressful, especially with so many south facing lines, but April came through for me in a big way. Little storms coated the Wasatch with fresh coats of paint, but not enough to create unstable avalanche conditions. A cold storm near the end of the month was the icing on the cake. I ended up skiing many of the lines in excellent conditions.
Here’s how it all went down…
Read the full story on Caroline’s blog
Corny Spring Rainier!
By Liz Daley
The past couple weeks have been absolutely amazing in the PNW! I got home from Chamonix just in time for some perfect Rainier conditions. The week I got home I headed up to Paradise with a girlfriend, Juya. Gotta love being back in the PNW, with a butt-crack rendezvous of 4am from Seattle.
We had no intention of summiting, we just wanted to check out the Rainier scene and shred a cool line. What else would we ski but the Fuhrer Finger – seems like the go-to line on Rainier these days. It’s south facing and it’s definitely one of the first lines to go out of condition, so it seemed like a good choice to hit it, first trip up there.
We left the parking lot by 7:30am with only a couple other cars in the lot. Turns out, Juya is a flippin’ speed demon, track breaking, boot packing maniac so we had a pretty brisk pace. Sportin’ sports bras, we passed two dudes trying for the summit but those were the only people we saw up there the whole day.
Enjoy the rest of Liz’s report, including a second tour up Rainier, at Teton Gravity Research
