Three sets of brothers band together to attempt a winter traverse of the mountain range that shaped them — while also skiing some of the steepest couloirs in North America.
By Kitt Doucette
Photographs by Cody Doucette
Deep in the Sawtooth Mountains of central Idaho, skis strapped to my back, an ice ax in one hand and the faint taste of bile in my mouth, I stare down the Horstmann Couloir and try not to throw up. The couloir, a 55-degree strip of snow wedged between two vertical rock walls, looks more like an elevator shaft than anything remotely related to a ski run. Imagine clicking into your bindings on top of the Empire State Building and launching yourself down a rock crevasse only seven feet wide that ends on Park Avenue, two blocks away, but you can’t see where it stops. Now add the fact that you’re eight aerial miles from the nearest road, 60 from the nearest hospital, 9,900 feet above sea level, and surrounded by 216,383 acres of unforgiving wilderness. Swallowing takes a lot of effort. I’m in way over my head.
Six of us stand on the narrow ledge (with a seventh watching from below), including my twin brother Cody, 26, my fellow backcountry big-mountain rookie and lifelong partner in crime. He snaps photos and tries not to look puckered, but I know him too well. The tight line of his lips, furrowed brow, and silence tell me he’s shitting his pants, just as I am. We’ve traveled the world together, from jungle rivers of Ecuador to Tasmanian beaches and remote South Pacific islands, but now we’ve returned to the mountains where we shared our first adventures, cementing a bond that has kept us exploring for 26 years.
Erik Leidecker, 36, co-owner of Sawtooth Mountain Guides, is as calm as a Hindu cow, visor pulled over his curly blond hair and dark sunglasses as he anchors a rope system to a tree. Static crackles over the radio, mingled with the voice of Erik’s younger brother Matt, 33, who’s keeping an eye on us through a 600mm camera lens across the valley. Jamie Holman, 27, an inseparable friend who was practically a third brother to Cody and me growing up, chews on a bagel with his eyes closed, his chiseled face pointed directly at the sun with a serene expression that makes me wonder if his thoughts aren’t really somewhere else — like with his pregnant wife at home.
Then there are my childhood idols — the Crist brothers, Zach, 35, and Reggie, 39 — chatting coolly about snow conditions and possible slab avalanche danger in the couloir below. Olympic athletes, X Games champions, and ski film stars, the larger-than-life Crists were well known to every young skier in Sun Valley. They lived the dream, getting paid to ski the world. I have vivid memories as an impressionable grommet of watching them in the annual Warren Miller film, tearing apart perfect powder on cartoonishly steep lines down big mountains in Alaska, Argentina, France, and Greenland, and kayaking huge, chaotic rivers in places like Nepal and Bhutan. I’d hear their adventure stories at Apple’s, an après-ski bar below the ski team’s locker room, where they sipped beers with far-off looks in their eyes. Decked out in the newest sponsored gear with their tan, smiling faces, the Crists never seemed to age. To a pimply 14-year-old ski racer, they were badass incarnate. I wanted to be just like them.
Twelve years later I’m trying to keep from puking on this knife-edged wall, wondering how the hell I ended up here, screaming Oh shit oh shit ooohshiiit! inside my skull as Cody and I try to hold our own with these guys. Our band of brothers set out five days earlier on a never-before-attempted route: nine days and eight nights in the wilderness, climbing and skiing 22,000 vertical feet with some of the steepest, most technical couloirs in North America while traversing 40 miles through the heart of the Sawtooth Mountains. Since the trip was Zach’s idea, it’s unanimously decided that he should be the guinea pig and go first — and knock loose any possible avalanche locations Erik saw on the climb up.
Zach adjusts his goggles. He takes two deep breaths, gives me a nod to say he’ll see me at the bottom, then hops over the edge and disappears down the elevator shaft.
Now all we can do is wait to hear from him when he’s down safe, or from Matt if something bad happens. I try to focus on keeping my movements controlled as I strap the ice ax to my pack, buckle the pack’s flaps, put it on, extend my poles, click into my bindings. Bending over to clear snow from my boots, I almost tip over the edge. My heart rate skyrockets, and there’s a distinct roaring in my ears from adrenaline. I gaze down the couloir and try to visualize each turn I’ll make.
Suddenly the radio crackles with Zach’s voice, out of breath and stoked as he relays snow conditions: “I had a couple little ones release on me, so it should be pretty clear. The snow is kind of chalky up top, then becomes consistent powder halfway down. Fucking radical!”
Erik smiles at me. “Whenever you’re ready, Kitt.”
I’ve never been one to wait very long on top of something like a cliff or a bridge. If I’m going to go, I go within seconds. On my first turn I pop airborne for way longer than I expected, traveling a good 10 feet before my edges catch; my hip bounces off the snow, and I watch a pile of slough roll down beneath me. Each turn takes every ounce of my focus and ability; each breath comes out in ragged gasps as I go two or three turns without remembering to breathe. Halfway down, the couloir widens to a luxurious 14 feet, and I let loose a little bit, reveling in the weightlessness between steep turns through soft, deep powder. Rocketing onto the apron below the couloir, I scream at the top of my lungs while carving huge arcs through the perfect snow.
—-
The first time I saw the Sawtooth Mountains, I was 10 years old. My family had just moved from Wisconsin, and we were on our first camping trip in our new state. I wasn’t a happy camper. Pissed off about being uprooted from my friends and the familiarity of my life, I hated Idaho. I literally dragged my feet up the trail in protest — until we reached the lake my dad had chosen for our campsite. As I stood next to Cody and our dad on the edge of that crystal mountain water, looking up at miles of jagged peaks, a serrated blade cutting into the bluest sky I had ever seen, my soul was awakened.
My body tingled with déjà vu as we stood there in silent wonder, connected to the place on a primal level, as if I’d somehow been there before. The Sawtooths were the first place that made me feel small and insignificant, a tiny speck within something far greater than myself. It was a heavy realization for a self-centered 10-year-old — that ancient mixture of fear and awe that comes from understanding just how small we really are in relation to the natural world.
Over the next 16 years the Sawtooth Mountains watched me grow up. I fumbled through some of my first sexual encounters under their stars and howled at a mountain moon made blurry by drink and drugs. I celebrated birthdays, graduations, and random Friday nights in their canyons and fell in love next to a mountain stream. I found out what I was made of on their peaks, rivers, and trails, and I lost a couple of friends to their avalanches, rapids, and storms. I grew up in the Sawtooths, but the traverse with the Crists and the Leideckers would be my first time skiing in them out-of-bounds. It was a whole new world in the winter. I would never be able to look at their familiar skyline the same way again.
—-
A topographical map can be a very deceiving thing. In a warm house in Ketchum, Idaho, during our team meetings in the months leading up to this trip — tracing the route we’d drawn with my fingernail and mind-skiing steep couloirs with contour lines so tight they looked solid black — it all looked so easy. “Well, you just walk up here, traverse over here, climb up this, ski down, then up again, and voilà! We’re at camp.”
Standing at the bottom of a very real, very steep couloir, mere seconds after looking back across the five days since we’d entered the wilderness and ahead to at least three more days of untracked peaks, I can say with authority that there’s nothing easy about it.
Erik outlined everything for us during those early meetings. Trips like this trek, a virgin traverse through unknown terrain over a long distance, need to be planned meticulously and scheduled down to the minute, or they fall apart. We drew our route on topo maps, separating it into legs divided by waypoints in easily recognizable locations: a clearing, a peak, next to a creek. Then Erik showed how to analyze each leg for distance and ease of travel (elevation gained or lost, type of terrain, slope angle, aspect or direction of the slope, potential hazards) using a system called Munter units. Basically, 100 vertical meters (328 feet) of climbing equals one unit; so does a kilometer (0.62 miles) of flat travel. If we gained 1,000 meters over six kilometers, we traveled 16 units. These units were then converted into time. If we gained elevation, we divided the number of units by four, and that’s how many hours it should take under normal conditions. Through thick timber or up steep terrain, we doubled the time. Descending, we divided the units by 10. These estimates were conservative, but they, along with waypoints, provided known quantities. In the backcountry, with so many variables and severe consequences for miscalculation, those few solid numbers are critical.
“I can only think in units now, give it to me in units,” Zach, the group’s natural comedian, would joke whenever we used miles, feet, or any such non-Munter measurement in the mountains.
But it doesn’t matter how often you look at the neatly folded topo maps, calculate Munter units, or analyze route plans: Nothing can prepare you for the day when that squiggly little red line turns into sweating, grunting, gasping, wallowing climbs and ass-puckering, leg-burning, teeth-chattering descents. Or when the little bar-napkin lists of ice axes, sleeping bags, insulated mattress pads, helmets, tents, avalanche probes, boot crampons, ski crampons, shovels, stoves, freeze-dried food, energy bars, granola, oatmeal, harnesses, and climbing skins become 40 pounds of weight on your back during those climbs and descents. Even sunscreen weighs something, and every pound feels as if it weighs five times as much when you’re climbing at higher altitudes through deep snow.
I always made fun of the people who count ounces on a backpacking trip, obsessed with the lightest gear money can buy. By 3 pm on the first day, as I swim through waist-deep snow up the McGown Couloir, groveling in every aspect of the word, I wish I’d fussed over every goddamn ounce in my pack. The hike is tough, through thick timber and deep snow, up the couloir with the extra weight of skis strapped to my back, finally clawing up a cornice 4,000 feet above where we’d started. By the time I get there I curse everything from my headlamp to my extra layers. Then I see the Sawtooth skyline spread out all around me, sparkling like gold in the late-afternoon sun, and everything makes sense again.
—-
Neither of us had ever skied a backcountry couloir until this moment on top of McGown — shit, we’d never even climbed one until five minutes ago — but that doesn’t seem to bother my best friend Jamie at all. He quickly puts on his gear, gets the “all clear” from Erik, and drops in, making eight turns and ripping the slope to shreds as he nukes down the 1,000-foot, 50-degree pitch in less than a minute. Erik lets out a whistle and says, “Holy shit, look at Holman go.”
“If he hadn’t fucked up his knee, he’d be blowing minds as a pro,” Zach says. He was a teammate of Jamie’s during the 1999–2000 season and saw him crash in a skiercross race, tearing every major ligament and shredding the meniscus and cartilage in his left knee. His surgeon, who has worked on every type of athlete in Vail, said it was one of the worst injuries he’d ever seen. The first time I saw Jamie after his crash, he was in a bed with his leg strapped into a “perpetual motion” machine, grimacing in pain. He was 215 pounds of solid muscle before the crash; when he could finally walk again he weighed less than 180. It took him two full years of slow, excruciating rehab to get back on skis, but I didn’t hear him complain once.
Jamie has a different type of relationship with fear than most everybody else: He just doesn’t really seem to feel it. The more intense a situation is, the more relaxed he becomes. I remember hanging out with him when we were younger and always feeling like a pussy because I got scared on top of a 50-foot bridge that we were about to jump off, or above a Class V rapid in my kayak. Then I started hanging out with other kids, and I realized I wasn’t a pussy; Holman was just never afraid.
At the bottom, Jamie radios up out of breath: “It was just so good…so good…I couldn’t stop.” After that performance, skiing McGown for the rest of us is somewhat anticlimactic. When I drop in, the butter-smooth snow catches perfectly, and even though I make twice as many turns and it takes me four times as long to reach the bottom, they’re some of my best turns of the year, a great way to start the trip. By the time we reach our first camp, a small frozen lake in a basin surrounded by perfect skiing, the sun has dropped behind the mountains. The only one with energy left is Matt Leidecker. Climbing and skiing an extra 1,000 vertical feet that evening like some sort of enduro-crazed superhuman, Matt caps off day one with a moonlit ski from a nearby peak, finishing with a 15-foot cliff drop. The rest of us just shake our heads and can’t crawl into our sleeping bags fast enough.
—-
Erik is serious about smooth, efficient transitions. Traveling through the mountains in winter, you are in hostile territory, and every minute counts. Every extra second spent fucking about with your pack, your climbing skins, your clothes, is just plain dangerous.
“We. Need. To. Go.” Erik says impatiently as Cody, Jamie, Zach, and I sluggishly load our packs the morning after our first night in the snow. My boots and body are stiff, I’m completely disorganized, and nothing is happening quickly. Matt and Erik have been waiting patiently while the rest of us screw around packing up our gear, but we need to cover roughly 18 units through variable and exposed terrain, including a 9,700-foot summit, before lunchtime. And today is going to be a relative scorcher, increasing the avalanche hazard exponentially as the day wears on. We’d set a departure time of 8 am as the absolute latest, so when the hour comes and goes, Matt just shrugs his shoulders and starts moving. We get the point: Get your shit together and get going…now.
By 10 the sun is brutal, and things are starting to get interesting. When the sun hits soft, powdery snow, the top layers get heavy with moisture and pull apart from the colder, lighter layers below. This is when avalanches start to rumble. The first spots to slide are usually steep rock walls covered in snow and the large cornices above them. The Sawtooths just happen to be full of steep rock walls, and our route takes us under some of the biggest. There’s no other way.
After climbing an unnamed peak, scrambling across exposed rocks and shale, and crossing giant wolf tracks and a burnt-out section of forest with some of the worst snow of the trip, we crest the southeastern ridge above Sawtooth Lake halfway through the day — well behind schedule. A steady rumble of avalanches cascades down the rock faces surrounding the lake. It’s called shedding. It sounds like rolling thunder, looks like waterfalls, and turns the mountains into a living, constantly shifting organism, as beautiful as they are deadly.
As I’m struggling clumsily with my climbing skins, water bottle, and sun hat, I hear a loud roar, then Zach yells, “Holy shit!” A cornice has broken off a south-facing wall 300 yards away, and we all watch in stunned silence as large blocks of snow and ice pour down the rock face onto an apron below. “I’m not worried about those. What concerns me is that one right there,” Erik says, pointing at a 30-foot cornice, dripping wet with malice above the steep slope we’re about to ski down. We have to move, and we have to do it quickly. As I descend, the snow congealing into large snowballs beneath my skis and the rolling thunder of avalanches all around me, I hear Matt give a warning yell behind me, and I look up just in time to see a wet, loose slide rip off below him. I crank a quick turn the other way and watch as the slide gurgles past me, burying a group of small trees.
On the lake below, Erik is visibly stressed as he reemphasizes the importance of transitions. Slow, inefficient transitions had put us all in danger. During the next climb, as I sweat under a 2 pm sun that cooks the mountains like a broiler, I realize that smooth, efficient transitions are definitely something I need to work on.
The campsite that night is an absolute gem, nestled high in a hanging valley. We pitch our tents at the base of a flawless 40-degree ramp of snow with a view that stretches from one end of the Sawtooth Valley to the other. Even though I’m exhausted from the long day, I can’t pass up the chance to ski that ramp and glide right to my tent.
The turns are effortless, the snow sparkles purple in the fading light, and any trace of weariness disappears. These 16 turns are everything good about skiing: the wind in my face, nature surrounding me, weightlessness coming in gasps between each turn, the glide down the slope as my skis punch the snow, sending crystalline clouds to tickle my cheeks, turning a simple sport into a spiritual experience.
“Tomorrow is our biggest day, with the most exposure, the crux of this entire traverse,” Erik reminds us as we gather around our Jetboil stoves, melting snow for water and recounting our perfect turns. “No flap-dicking around. Get some sleep.” I can tell by the urgency in his voice that tomorrow makes him nervous, and if Erik Leidecker is nervous — shit, I don’t even want to think about it.
—-
On our skis by 6:45, we gain the first saddle just as the misty dawn allows us to turn off our headlamps. We stand 800 feet above a frozen lake, the slope solid, bulletproof ice covered with avalanche debris.
“This isn’t skiing, boys,” Erik says with a grin. “This is pure survival.” Then he takes off, scraping along the snow with a noise like squeaky chalk on a blackboard. Side-slipping and chattering my way down the icy slope, I feel like a total beginner, hunched over my skis like Quasimodo, praying to God my edges will hold.
When we reach the lake at the bottom, Erik looks up the slope we have to climb, every bit as icy as the one we’ve just come down, and says sternly, “Put your ski crampons on and let’s go — the east and southern slopes have already been baking for an hour.” The fact that we have to put on ski crampons means that any slip or fall will send us all the way to the bottom.
The next three hours are hell. The snow keeps changing, so every step is a struggle; we have to take our skis off and boot-pack, then put our skis and crampons back on, then take them off again as we crawl across large boulders of avalanche chunder and finally up a steep slope on which the snow is so sugary we post-hole up to our waists. It takes us twice as long as we’d planned to reach the ridge. Now we’re once again behind schedule, looking down a sloppy south-facing slope with recent evidence of large cornices breaking off the cliffs above and crashing into the basin below. There will be no time for a leisurely lunch today. It’s go time.
We ski the slope one at a time, regrouping at a safe zone and then squeaking our way through the steep chutes down into the basin. No fancy stuff, just one turn at a time until we’re out of harm’s way. Then it’s up again to a saddle between two of the highest peaks in the Sawtooths, Williams and Thompson. From there it’s a gentle cruise down to a yurt to resupply and dry out.
—-
Everyone who lives in Ketchum knows every- one else, for better and for worse. Gossip spreads like a late summer wildfire, and getting away with anything as a teenager, especially a teenager with an identical twin brother, was damn near impossible. Like the Crists and the Leideckers, Cody and I were easily recognizable from the minute we showed up in town. Even though we’d never met the Crist brothers, their reputation preceded them, and we started getting compared to them — a huge boost to our fragile, puberty-addled egos. We took it and tried our hardest to live up to the compliment.
On the mountain, the Crist brothers were the nucleus of the hottest skiers in town. The name of their game was high-speed, nonstop runs down every part of the mountain. If you could keep up with those guys, especially during powder days, you were worthy. I tried more than a few times, usually blowing up halfway down, cartwheeling into a snowy heap and losing track of them for the rest of the day. After Cody and I quit ski racing, our one goal was to get strong enough and fast enough to keep up with the Crists.
Eventually we did, and so began the process of earning their respect. Putting in our time with the older crew entailed some hazing, but it definitely had its rewards. (A whole group of older ladies got to know us and considered us “cute” enough to take home once in a while.) We got invited on a heli-ski trip and tested our mettle in the dreamscape of southeastern Alaska. Now we were on a virgin traverse through our home mountains, trying to keep up with them again.
When we arrive at the Williams Peak yurt — a semipermanent cross between a canvas teepee and a snow cave erected every fall and taken down each spring by Sawtooth Mountain Guides — I peel off my sweat-encrusted long underwear and wrench my cramped feet out of my wretched-smelling ski boots, shuddering with pleasure as I slide on a pair of loose camp booties. The yurt feels like a five-star hotel as we bask in the luxury of a wood stove, a basic kitchen, and cold Pabst Blue Ribbon that SMG guides Clark and Hatch had dragged up the six-mile trail on a sled. Sunburnt and exhausted, we crack the beers and compare blisters while our gear dries above the stove.
After holding our collective breath for three days through unknown terrain and some dicey situations, we can finally relax and prepare for the next stage of the trip: setting our sights on some of the biggest and steepest couloirs the Sawtooths have to offer. Reggie Crist, still traveling on a flight back from Alaska, will finally join us tomorrow. The biggest couloir of them all, Horstmann, is clearly visible from the wooden deck of the yurt; just looking at it through binoculars gives me butterflies. It’s so small from here, the thinnest strip of white cutting through an enormous wall of black rock. I grab another Pabst from the snow and whisper a thank-you to the mountains for making it all possible.
The next day is a stationary one, meaning that we’ll come back to the Williams yurt after skiing the Thompson Peak couloirs, a series of four different north-facing “coolies” with names like Resurrection and Jésus that all drop to the same nameless lake — a perfect training ground for the bigger objective of Horstmann. With no distance to cover and light packs, we can focus on skiing.
Skiing steep couloirs deep in the backcountry is all about survival. Every turn has consequences, and staying in control is critical. The go-to technique is called pedal-hopping (commonly known as hop turns or jump turns), in which you initiate a turn by jumping off the snow, keeping your body facing downhill while turning your skis 180 degrees in the air, and landing with your weight on the downhill ski, perpendicular to the slope. Then you regain control (easier said than done) and quickly do it again the other way. At their best, hop turns are an elegant, gravity-taming dance in which the skier maintains control the entire time. In my case, they’re a barely controlled fall.
By the end of the day not a single couloir off Thompson Peak is untracked. Inspired by our light loads and the security of the nearby yurt, we ski more than 5,000 vertical feet with some great turns.
We get a real scare on the last run of the day, when Matt loses a ski on his first turn in Jésus, the narrowest and steepest of the Thompson couloirs. It happens so fast that I don’t have time to catch my breath. One second I’m convinced Matt’s going to tumble down the entire couloir — then he suddenly dives straight for the cliff, somersaults once, and rights himself like a cat. He simply brushes the snow off his jacket before casually climbing back up 25 feet to retrieve his ski.
“That was a bad spot to fall,” Matt chuckles at the bottom.
“No shit!” Erik says, but Matt laughs it off and clinically recaps the fall: “I knew I had to stop really quickly before my momentum built up, so I just committed to the somersault and hoped I could stand up after it. Pretty lucky, I guess.” I nod as if, sure, the most obvious thing to do when you blow a shoe at the top of a couloir is to dive headfirst toward a rock wall, roll, stand up with one ski still on, and brush off the snow. No problem.
—-
Early on in this trip, Erik had looked at Jamie, Cody, Zach, and me and made the motion of packing a snowball with his hands. This became the established symbol for getting your shit together, whether it was your gear or your mental state. The idea of packing your proverbial shit snowball tight morphed into numerous metaphors for our lives in general as we trekked through the mountains — especially that night, as we planned our route for Horstmann Couloir.
The trip plan for climbing and skiing Horstmann is daunting: roughly 20 units through thick timber and ultimately up the steep couloir itself, a 13-hour round-trip on paper. But the weather looks perfect, avalanche conditions have stabilized, we all feel strong, and Reggie has finally arrived at the yurt. Trying to fall asleep that night is a challenge, to say the least. I’m about to climb and ski the crown jewel of the Sawtooths — a place that awoke my soul and has shaped so much of my life — with my twin brother, my best friend, and my childhood heroes, all of us led by Erik and Matt, the best guides on Earth. My emotions oscillate wildly between a six-year-old’s Christmas Eve excitement and paralyzing anxiety, fear, and insecurity that I’m not good enough, that I don’t belong next to these guys and will somehow let them down. After three hours of fitful sleep I hear Erik get up to start coffee. It’s time to go.
Packing my mental and physical snowball is difficult in the cold predawn darkness. I can’t eat, feeling totally overwhelmed by the enormity of the day. Then I remember something my dad told me on a hike 14 years earlier: “Don’t think about how far you have to go. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you’ll get there.”
I hoist my pack and start walking with that in mind, not thinking about anything except the click-clack of my boots against my bindings and the steel guitar of my climbing skins sliding over the snow. As we emerge from a cluster of trees into an open meadow, the sun’s first rays hit the top of Horstmann Peak, bathing its beautifully frightening face in pink alpenglow set against an indigo sky still speckled with stars. I get that familiar tingle of how small and insignificant I am, and I’m reminded of why we all work multiple jobs and barely scrape by just to keep living in the mountains. You do what it takes, because that deep, three-dimensional blue behind the sparkling white of winter is as addictive as crack and God rolled together into one heady doobie.
The route we chose is a good one — firm snow in the trees and sturdy snow bridges over the numerous creeks — and we make it to the bottom of the couloir way ahead of schedule. Climbing steep couloirs takes a certain amount of patience and technique, and sometimes all you can do is put your head down and grovel. In deep snow it’s like climbing a steep set of stairs made of sand, and that’s when you’re not breaking trail. The only guys with any real experience are Erik and Matt; the rest of us, Zach and Reggie included, are complete rookies at this. About halfway up the couloir, the nervous chatter has completely died away, as we all focus on the tough climb, heads down, staring no farther than two steps in front of our feet. Looking up a couloir isn’t usually that bad — they always look wider and less steep from below — but Horstmann is different. I don’t have to look down to realize how steep the thing is; I can tell by how close the slope in front of me is to my eyeballs. The entire couloir exists in the “no-fall” zone, meaning any fall equals injury at the very least — if we get really lucky.
Then Erik shouts from above: “Slough!” A small section of snow releases above us, quickly gaining size and momentum. I stare at it as if it were an optical illusion for a good second, frozen as I try to figure out what to do. When I see Zach jump to one side, giving me a human body to compare it to, the decision becomes easy: Get the hell out of the way. Now! By the time it tumbles past Holman at the end of the line, it’s a full-fledged avalanche capable of carrying someone all the way to the bottom. The silence afterward is thick.
After two and a half hours of wallowing, we finally reach the top, and I look down. And that’s when I almost throw up.
—-
I come to a stop next to Zach at the bottom of Horstmann Couloir with my legs on fire and head absolutely roaring. Grinning wildly, Zach snaps a picture and asks, “How was that?!”
“Fucking scared the shit out of me!” I scream.
“That was as full-on as it gets, and you ripped the shit out of it! I’m proud of you, Kitt.” Zach gives me a high five and a hug.
I’m floating. It’s part adrenaline, part the amazing sense of accomplishment that comes from getting through something beyond what you’ve done before — but mostly it’s praise from my childhood idol, who doesn’t give out compliments easily. That was one of the most meaningful compliments I’ve ever received, and damn if it doesn’t feel good.
As I catch my breath, I watch Reggie ski down the couloir. While Zach’s skiing is smooth to the point of effortless, Reggie is a bull in a china shop. He brutalizes the snow with raw strength and power, bending the mountain to his will with a blend of confidence and recklessness that he honed in the big mountains and perfect snow of Alaska. It’s obvious that he’s come straight from there, where he’d been working on a film project for the last three weeks. The Crists might have been rookies climbing the couloir, but they certainly aren’t when it comes to skiing down them.
When we’re all safely down, it’s Erik who has the widest smile. The Horstmann Couloir, the most dangerous and exposed part of the entire trip, is behind us. Now it’s time for a celebration. I barely remember the trek back to the yurt, I’m so buzzed with adrenaline and lost in memories of climbing and skiing the couloir. When we get back we mix up a batch of Yurtaritas — a cocktail made with tequila, lemon-lime Gatorade powder, and beer, mixed in a bucket of fresh snow — and toast one another and the Horstmann Couloir. Then Reggie says goodbye and skis off to meet his wife. Only Reggie can juggle responsibilities with such style: Jet in from Alaska, show up at some random backcountry yurt, ski the gnarliest line of the trip, then ski out to your pregnant wife for a night or two, with plans to come back two days later.
We feel like seasoned veterans as we pack our gear the next morning, the air filled with playful banter. As I sit on a frozen lake a few hours later, gazing back up at the tracks we’ve just made in and around the Heyburn Couloir and basking in the beautiful high-alpine sunshine with my boots off and bare feet kicked up in front of me, I watch Erik ski the last pitch. His form is perfectly elegant, making the same radius turn the whole way down with no wasted movement. Without Erik, this trip would never have happened. He provided the experience, knowledge, and wherewithal to put the whole expedition together. Erik leaves camp that evening, headed out on an Alaskan trip of his own. I think he’s a little embarrassed by how many times I thank him for everything. Then Reggie returns with plenty of contraband and a handle of booze, and the party begins in earnest. It’s been an intense week. We skied five big-league couloirs, traveled 40 miles over unknown and unforgiving terrain, and climbed 22,000 vertical feet — and in the process were the first to lay down a winter route through the northern Sawtooth Mountains. With only one more day of mellow corn-skiing in front of us, it’s time to let loose a little.
The next morning we wake slowly, and after a few runs around camp we make our way down to Redfish Lake to Matt’s waiting van. Over cheeseburgers and fries at the Mountain Village Restaurant in Stanley, I can see in everyone’s eyes how special this adventure has been, one of those trips that separate time into before and after. After our goodbyes, Cody and I throw our gear in the back of our truck and head down highway 75, driving past the Sawtooths on our way back home to Ketchum.
“What a life we lead…,” Cody says, as much to himself as to me. His words drift into a daydream as my eyes settle into a trance, mesmerized by the familiar curves of the Galena Summit road. So many adventures together have begun and ended on this same stretch of road, just the two of us, riding side by side through these mountains. So much of who we are, both as individuals and as brothers, is found here, a place where we left the petty competitions of twin siblings behind and discovered something deeper in the companionship of simply sharing this wilderness.
Everything makes sense in the truck there beside my brother, and I’m as comfortable in my skin as I have ever been. On the other side of the mountains the real world was waiting for all of us: jobs, financial pressures, new babies, wives, and girlfriends, all tightly packed. As any of us will tell you, growing up in these mountains is both a blessing and a curse, a lot like a relationship, full of compromises, sacrifices, headaches, and rewards. The more you fall in love with the mountains, the harder they are to leave, and the longer you stay the more you’re willing to sacrifice to keep on staying.
But as I stare out the window on that familiar road, the mountains for the first time look different. I can see the Horstmann Couloir clearly from the highway, Williams Peak next to Thompson in the far distance, and Mount Heyburn rising up above Redfish Lake, just as they always have. But my eyes have changed. Even after nine days in the Sawtooths, I know we’ve barely scratched the surface. For every couloir we skied, 10 more still lay untracked. I look east across Sawtooth Valley and see the White Cloud Mountains, with a perfect couloir snaking down from a large pyramid.
“It’s just limitless, isn’t it?” I say to Cody, pointing up at the couloir. “Everywhere you look there’s more lines to ski.”
This article originally appeared in the April 2009 issue of Men’s Journal.
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