THOR PEAK STANDARD ROUTE

 

“Mystery surrounds this beautiful 12,000 ft mountain”. Tom Turiano was right. My friend Kyle from Bozeman has been in Jackson for the last week or so and we have been getting it pretty good. Kyle and I had a pretty good run a few years ago when I cruised up to Montana, and we went to corn fest and skied a bowl high up near Pilot and Index Peaks, then to the Whitetail Couloir in the Beartooths, then to the Crazy Couloir in the Crazy Mountains, then on to the North Face of Gannet Peak. Quite the run of big descents, needless to say I knew Kyle was up for anything.

     Thor peak this time of year requires considerable effort just to get to the base. It starts at Taggart Lake with a 7 mile bike ride with 60 lb backpacks and ski boots.

The bike is pretty flat to String Lake where we then transitioned to skinning for 5 miles or so.

We skinned through the woods for a bit,  then popped out on the south  shore of Leigh Lake.

 

 

We continued up Leigh Canyon for about a mile and found a great meadow to call home for the next 2 nights.

 

 

 

Our plan was to ski the “standard route” which is probably the easiest way to the summit. It involves ascending up Leigh Canyon for another 2 miles or so, then up the 2800 vertical ft SW Couloir, then up the 1200 vertical West Gully to the summit. Sounds easy enough. We got a good nights rest and left for the summit at about 7 a.m. Not the earliest start, but we were skiing West, then South West which holds up a little longer than east facing slopes.

 

We made our way up the couloir and the views just got better and better.

 

 

 

We arrived to the col at the top of the SW Couloir and then started up the big West Gully to the summit.

The snow was powder in the West Gully, although it did have a few rocks to avoid in the middle, probably exposed from a slide.

We arrived at the summit and were greeted with calm conditions and great views.

 

 

Well time to ski, that’s what we came here for. We made turns right off the summit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were now set to ski the SW Couloir down to the canyon bottom. It was butter smooth corn.

 

 

We worked our way down to the part we were dreading the most. There was a huge wet slide that came down the couloir and choked the lower part with a sea of avalanche debris, not the best skiing.

 

 

What a great descent, it is really hard to get these big Teton peaks in good conditions, we skied powder and corn, pretty lucky. We arrived back at camp pretty tired from a 9 hr day, and saw that our kitchen area was now in the middle if Leigh Creek. We had walked on snow to it the day before, and the warm temps had washed away our bridge. Kyle took one for the team.

We sipped on some Wild Turkey and went to bed. The next morning we had to retrace our long approach back to Taggart Lake. We were greeted with a solid headwind the whole way back. Like we hadn’t got enough exercise already.