Sky Pilot North Face (A trilogy)

Sky Pilot E face

On Thursday March 14 I set out to try and ski the North Face of Sky Pilot in the Bitterroots. My ski partner that day, Kaleb, and I left town at 4am and planned to be walking up the trail at around 5. When we got to the normal trailhead better known as the lower gash trail head, there was not a lot of snow on the road, so I did an extremely dumb thing and decided that we should try and drive a Subaru outback to the upper trailhead to avoid the extra mile walk. This is something that I just never seem to learn from, after two stuck car incidents last season in the Missions that cost a lot of time I, for some reason, still took the chance. Sure enough within the first 10 minutes I realized we would not make it to the upper trailhead, and began reversing back down the snowy dark forest service road. I obviously got the car stuck, which required us to dig and move some snow. After figuring out the car debacle and getting back to the lower trailhead we started walking at around 6:15 am.

An incredibly blurry morning photo of the trail

 

Another blurry iphone pic 

Kaleb and I had discussed taking the direct trail to Gash Point to avoid the tedious traverse from Gash knob to save time. But in the dark we walked past the trail that veers off to Gash proper and instead figured we could cut over later which was not the case. We kept on moving towards Gash knob and once we got there began the traverse to Gash Point. This is something I had done before, on our previous attempt to ski SP north face several weeks earlier. After that attempt, we determined that traverse was most likely a waste of time. The traverse requires one to side hill and navigate around big rock gendarmes for about a mile, and both times I have done it, it took a decent amount of time. On our way to Gash point we were looking for instabilities in the snow, and did not notice anything major. Our plan at that time was to descend into bear lake basin but stay high on the slope, and then to tour towards SP north face, and dig a pit to check out what the snow was doing. When we got to Gash Point, we did just that. We ripped skins and made the long descent into the basin. 

The previous night a few new inches of snow had fallen, and in the sun was beginning to cook everything it touched. I had noticed on our way  down how warm things were starting to get, and started to feel slightly concerned about the tour back out. The entire descent into bear basin is on a south facing slope, and by the time we were leaving it would have been getting direct sunlight for hours. Once at the end of our descent we transitioned and began moving up towards a pinch on the north face. The touring was slow and hard, and I was really getting tired setting a trail up towards the face. After a hot slog, we made it to a spot near some trees right below the choke on the north face. We refueled with water and food and dug a pit to check out what the snow was looking like. We conducted an ECT test and found that there was no propagation in the deeper layers of the snowpack. We did find that the upper snow layers, mostly the new snow, was breaking under pressure, but we decided to work with that, and keep moving up the mountain. While Kaleb navigated, and set a trail up around the choke, I moved to an area that wasn't exposed to the slope he was on and watched him work his way up. When he made it above the choke and to the shoulder on the ridge I followed his track up. Going up I really felt how steep this slope was, and felt quite exposed. My legs were starting to feel pretty tired, but I tried my best to keep blasting towards the top.

Looking down from the shoulder towards Peak 8800 and Gash

I made it to the shoulder that Kaleb was on and we kept moving up the face. However towards the top, most of the upper section looked heavily windloaded, and we began to notice a change in the snow conditions. Kaleb stated that he wanted to bail, and said it was too risky to go into the upper portion of the mountain. This was extremely hard for me, the summit was 400 or so feet away, and we had put in so much work to get there. It is moments like these that reveal my weaknesses in the mountains, especially on bigger objectives like this. In little moments like this I feel anger, and frustration, and find that I overlook obvious hazards and take dumb risks. Triggering a wind slab 1000 feet up a steep blank face is a serious deal, and something that should not be overlooked, especially when you can physically see the problem in front of you. Kaleb saw no issue in turning his skis around and pointing them back towards the car, even when we could see the summit in front of us. I on the other hand stood in my tracks for several minutes looking at the top, and then looking at Kaleb behind me. Eventually I decided that I would not be skiing from the top alone, and so along with my partner I pointed my skis back towards the car. 

Before we transitioned I said “you know this means we’re going to have to come back right?” Kaleb just smiled and said “Yea dude, Monday”

Kaleb and I turning around near the summit 

Looking back at our tracks on sky pilot n face

On our way out we noticed that a wet slide, big enough to bury a person, had slid and taken out a part of our skin trail that we set on the way in. This was, to me, a sign that we needed to leave, and was a good example of what was going to happen over the next couple of days. 

Kalebs tracks over the wet slide that took out our initial skin trail

While I was at work for the next three days, high temps and beautiful weather led to dangerous conditions, and it seemed everything the sun touched was coming down. Observations posted to Missoula Avalanche showed large wet slides happening all over the place, and it seemed that going out again would be a bad idea. When Sunday morning rolled around I sent a text to Kaleb asking how he felt about going out the following day. He said that If we hit it early he figured we could beat the warm temps and make it out of there before the south facing exit route got too hot. He followed that text up with “So we would need to start really really early.” 

 

We talked on the phone Sunday evening, and I was a little apprehensive about it all, yet Kaleb managed to convince me that we should still try to make it happen, and that we should leave town at 2am. 

“Uhhhhhhhhh, maaaaaannnnn,  pffffffshhhhh……..yeah…………yeah I'm down” 

“Sweet.” 

My alarm was going off far too soon that morning, and with probably 3 hours sleep in me, I put my ski socks on at 1:32 am. We loaded our skis in my car, and I offered Kaleb a cup of coffee, something I learned he doesn't drink very often. On the drive there I drank probably half a french press worth of coffee and was still quite tired, Kaleb on the other hand drank a small cup and seemed to be ready to go. We took off from the lower trailhead around 3:15am and began blasting up the trail.

Two seriously epic photos I took of us charging up the trail 

 We took the skin trail that would lead us directly to Gash Point this time, and as the lights from the town below got further away, so did Kalebs light in front of me. He was moving very fast, and I started to feel gassed. As I kept moving I began to feel so gassed to the point that I was planning on telling him I couldn't continue after Gash Point. He must've been waiting there for 10 minutes or more before I arrived, not feeling ideal. I couldn't manage to tell him that I wanted to go back because I was sleepy and my legs were tired. That seemed like a bad reason to leave. “I feel fucked” was all I managed to say. Somehow his positive attitude managed to convince me that all I needed was some water and food. So I had a fig bar and several sour patch kids to boost morale, and we continued on that windy ridge, guided by headlamps towards a mountain that was waiting in the darkness of the early morning.  

The descent down into bear basin was quite the adventure as we were being guided by our headlamp tunnels. All I could see was the trees illuminated by our lights and nothing else, so where we were on that face was a guess at the time. Eventually we intersected with our tracks from four days prior and followed those until we weren't riding gravity down anymore. I transitioned at this point, and braced myself to start going uphill again. At this time, early morning light was allowing us to vaguely see the mountain that lay in front of us. As we toured closer the beauty of the mountain really struck me. It looked bigger and greater than ever, and it felt as if we caught it in its perfect moment. It stood silently like a sleeping beast and I felt a complete sense of solitude in that basin. At that moment in time it was just us and the mountain, and I was very grateful that we had been able to return to this place for a third time to get to experience the elements and challenges it had to throw at us. 

Sky Pilot looming 

Getting closer...

We reached the shoulder of the NE ridge, the place we turned around last time just in time to watch the sun rise over the mountains in the distance, and it was quite a nice change to see the sun. As the sun rose, and shined its light on us, I started to forget about the darkness, and struggles of the early morning. We figured that the snow would be a little better if we waited for it to warm up, so we took in the views and re-fueled while the sun did its work. 

Sun rising over Gash

 

Early Bitterroot light 

Kaleb taking it all in 

Sunlight at last!

Morning light on the upper slope of Sky pilot N face 

Once we felt it was time, we embarked into the unknown upper slope of the North Face, and made it to the summit around 8:50 am. We had done it. Three long, and difficult trips later, we topped out, and were rewarded with skiing the 1200, or so, foot north face. Kaleb waited patiently while I took photos and looked at things in the distance with binoculars, and after I had my fill, we skied. 

    

Kaleb Approaching the top 

The upper slopes were a little packed in, but still made for fun skiing, and since we had already skied the lower main section of the north face, we decided to ski the right chute instead. In this chute we found really good snow, and rode it out to the final bottom slope, where we found nice powder behind a shaded wind lip. It was awesome. 

Kaleb tearing it up on the the N face 

Kaleb skiing down the right chute 

We skied back to the skin trail, very happy about our success, and psyched on the quality of the skiing. At the bottom I tried to mentally prepare for the never ending sidehill out of bear lake basin. Kaleb had mentioned earlier that we should try to ski the south facing stuff that was above the skin trail out, and since it was still early figured it would be decent to ski. We toured a little ways up the trail, and then threw our skis on our packs to boot up the south face of peak 8800.

Bidding farewell to Sky Pilot 

Quickly it was decided that booting up was going to be more work than we were willing to do because of sugary snow, so we ended up taking off our packs and sitting down in front of the dreamy east face of SP. Right as we sat down it seemed like the mountains came alive. Thunder-like sounds produced by wet slides on the east facing slopes across from us started to roar through the basin, and rock fall on the east face of SP began to happen as well. For what felt like 20 minutes we sat in silence, listening and watching the show happening across from us. Once we decided we had seen enough, we strapped our skis on, and began to move. The exit out of Bear lake basin was hard for me, and I felt very happy when we got to ski off of gash point and make the final push out of there. I felt very relieved to get back to the car, and to have officially ended the SP trilogy. (For this season)

I feel very happy with the overall effort we put into skiing this line, we basically skied the mountain twice in 5 days, which accumulated to about 14k vert and almost 30 miles. I also feel happy with the decisions we made. Through this effort I got the privilege of logging hours and miles in, in  an incredible place and on top of all that I got to share memories with some cool people in the mountains!