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PAGE:
097
WORDS:
Tess Weaver
PHOTO:
Schreckengost
SKIER:
CALEB MORRISON, SETH MORRISON
CAPTION: Seth Morrison, skiing, and Caleb
Martin, in a safe zone, in Hairy Banana.
San Juan Staycation
Jacob Wester and Seth Morrison Tackle Telluride’s Iconic Steeps
Located in the sparsely populated
southwest corner of Colorado, Telluride
is only a couple of hours from the
desert, yet the area boasts the highest
concentration of 14,000-foot peaks
in the country. It’s rugged territory.
The town itself occupies a dead-end
box canyon, and the mountains shoot
straight up from its quaint Victorianhouse-lined streets.
The peaks are as close to the Alps
as you’ll find in the US, as is the
lift-accessed backcountry. Dozens of
world-class couloirs and aesthetic lines
make up the most challenging and
interesting steep skiing in the lower 48.
And the sun is usually shining. Every
once in a while an article comes out on
Telluride, revealing some of its secrets,
but then it’s quickly forgotten before
even so much as a lift line has built up.
Maybe that’s why the locals are a little
nicer here, a little less territorial and
happy to show worthy newcomers their
hidden gems. Openness permeates the
TELLURIDE_V2.indd 97
culture. The locals have established a
well-mapped set of routes, and they
maintain a daily exchange of information
and experiences. Backcountry skiing in
Telluride isn’t a members-only club; it’s
an open society.
After a couple of trips exploring the
Telluride backcountry with knowledgeable locals, Oakley ski sports
marketing manager, Greg Strokes,
wanted to show some of his athletes
the impressive terrain and document
it like never before.
“Jacob Wester sent me an email that
he had nothing going on for the next
month,” says Strokes. “I told him
about this Telluride idea and said he
was welcome to come, but that we
were going to be skinning and hiking
thousands of vertical feet every day. I
said, ‘If you’re up for it, you’re invited.’”
“I had been letting everyone know I
wanted to get into the backcountry
more,” says Wester. “It’s been mainly
mini lines and jump trips, but there was
no way I was turning this opportunity
down, even if it meant getting into
some gnarly terrain that I didn’t have
much experience with. I saw it as a
great chance to learn from the best,
figure out my mountaineering skills and
evolve as a skier.”
Most people, including professional
skiers, aren’t aware of the high caliber
lift-accessed backcountry terrain in
Telluride. Even Seth Morrison, who lives
only a few hours away, hadn’t been to
Telluride since his ski racing days in
high school. He too was on board.
Strokes hired cinematographer
Constantine Papanicolaou to
film, and local photographer Brett
Schreckengost to shoot stills. Greg
Hope, a local 20-year-old skier, joined
the crew as a camera assistant.
When the team showed Schreckengost
what they wanted to accomplish in
seven days, he was skeptical. It was
a list of a dozen or so of the most
challenging classic lines in the area
during a season with less than optimal
backcountry snow conditions.
“I thought, ‘There’s no way we’re going
to do all of this,’” says Schreckengost,
who has lived in the area for close to 20
years. “I wasn’t doubting their physical
abilities, just the weather and all the
factors that go into pulling off these lines.
You have to have the right conditions.
Some of these lines never fill in or the
avy conditions are too sketchy. It would
typically take an entire season to check
all these lines off.”
Schreckengost doubted they’d
accomplish the hit list, but agreed to try
his best to make it happen.
The first day, Wester was jet lagged.
He had spent the previous two weeks
in Stockholm at sea level, and now he
needed to climb for four hours up to
13,700 feet.
10/17/13 8:43 AM
PAGE:
098
WORDS:
Tess Weaver
PHOTO:
Schreckengost
SKIER:
JACOB WESTER
CAPTION: Jacob in the Birthday Chutes near
Alta Lakes.
Day 1
March 14
2013
Just got back to the house
here in Telluride after a long
day. We started skinning by
8 a.m. and made it to the top
of the Illusion Couloir, 4,000
vertical feet later, at noon.
Then we skied some steep
but fun couloirs through a big
rock wall above an open bowl
with surprisingly good snow.
First thing I realized today was
that I was definitely not in the
shape I thought I was. About
two-thirds of the way up, at
11,000 feet, I was feeling like
an 80-year-old. Doing a fourhour skin right off the bat was
seriously heavy. I was messed
up from sunburn, dehydration
and altitude sickness, but I
made it up and still had some
energy to ski back to the truck.
I was happy to make it up,
the run was so worth it. Okay,
time to rehydrate, eat a ton
of calories, sleep for a solid
ten hours and get ready for
something similar tomorrow!
-JACOB
The son of a successful golfer
and famous alpine racer,
25-year-old Jacob Wester
started competing in big air
contests in Sweden when
he was 10 years old. During
holidays and school breaks,
Wester would head 300
miles north of Stockholm to
Tandadalen where he would
attempt 360s and frontflips on
his carving skis. Eventually he
started winning. After he placed
fourth at the US Open in 2005,
he joined the rosters of Armada
and Oakley. He appeared in his
first ski movie at the age of 15
with bleached dreadlocks. Since
then, he’s appeared in ten ski
flicks, mostly with Matchstick
Productions, and he’s competed
in top slopestyle and big air
events for more than a decade.
TELLURIDE_V2.indd 98
Wester wears his hair long,
accumulates tattoos and plays
the guitar. While still living in his
native Stockholm, he is an avid
surfer, and spends months at a
time in Indonesia.
In the backcountry, Wester
has always focused on
mini-golf lines. Wherever he’s
filmed, he’s searched for fun
features—pillow lines, jump
zones, cliffs to throw tricks.
“I’ve never been into skiing
really exposed, steep lines on
big faces, simply because I
didn’t think I was experienced
enough to take those risks,”
says Wester.
He skinned for the first time
last season in Austria. “It was
an instant eye opener,” says
Wester. “Whether it was for
spotting a cool line or going up
something just to check it out
or hiking a long inrun, skinning
made so much more sense
than taking off your gear and
hiking. I was blown away by
how much vertical you could
cover in a day.”
Wester didn’t know much
about Telluride beyond the
high elevation and steep
terrain. But he knew going
with Morrison meant mini-golf
wasn’t part of the plan.
Seth Morrison and Jacob Wester approaching the Illusion Couloir on Day 1.
10/16/13 1:29 PM
PAGE:
099
WORDS:
Tess Weaver
PHOTO:
Schreckengost
SKIERS:
JACOB WESTER [L], GREG HOPE [R]
CAPTION: Greg Hope in the Birthday Chutes
near Alta Lakes.
the Colorado spring really
started to set in and the
forecast called for temperatures
in the 50-degree range with
sunny skies.
just above 13,000 feet. I saw
some of the sickest terrain
I’ve seen in the US, only 45
minutes from the lift. Telluride
is pretty radical.
facing slopes with some
serious wetslides. Good thing
the north faces seemed to
be almost unaffected. That’s
where we’ll be looking over the
next few days.
The team headed to the
top of the ski resort for a
45-minute hike up Palmyra
Peak. Definitely felt the altitude
towards the top as the peak is
After skiing some fun little lines
off the back and a 40-minute
sweatfest skin up the next
ridge, we were looking out over
the town of Ophir, which sits in
the valley right below a southfacing, snow-filled bowl that
funnels out above the town. I
found some fun features on the
way down and even got upside
down. A couple thousand
vertical feet of slurpee skiing
later, we were relieved to get
out of there before avalanche
danger increased later in the
day. We saw several south-
Most of Telluride’s liftaccessed backcountry lies
within Bear Creek drainage,
a 3,000-plus-acre canyon
to the east of the resort. A
30-acre strip of private land
that separates Bear Creek
from the town of Telluride has
caused years of controversy.
Beyond the lands rights
issues, the gates had been
closed for almost a decade
due to several avalanche
deaths. Beyond the lands
rights issues, the gates had
been closed from the 80s
until 2001 due to several
avalanche deaths. When the
United States Forest Service
re-opened the backcountry
gates from Gold Hill Ridge
into Upper Bear Creek in
2001, ski patrollers and search
and rescue workers worried
about accidents in a relatively
unknown area. “Places had
names, but not everyone
knew or agreed on where
those places were,” says
Schreckengost.
of photos from tours and aerial
missions he had undertaken
with his ski partners.
Day 2
March 15
2013
After getting hit with some
serious elevation and sunburn
yesterday, I went to bed at 8
p.m. but couldn’t sleep much
due to a headache. I was a bit
of a wreck this morning. Lucky
for me, we took the chairlift,
which doesn’t open until 9 a.m.
After more than a few glasses
of water and cups of coffee, I
was alive again. Unfortunately,
COMMUNITY
Jacob in the “O” chute.
Ski resorts close to urban
areas tend to be localized. It
seems the closer a resort is
to a big city, the more hostile
the locals. But Telluride is in
the middle of nowhere. Plus,
the skiing is heavy duty. Not
many skiers have the ability to
access the area’s steep skiing
zones, so they need little
protection from locals.
“It seems like there aren’t any
macho attitudes or elitism,”
says Wester about Telluride. “It’s
just an open, easy-going crew
who welcomes newcomers. I’d
say it has a lot to do with the
town being so small and far to
get to. They don’t have to deal
with huge migrations of powder
hounds tracking everything out
after every storm. The terrain
is also just so insanely big that
there really isn’t any competition
for fresh snow.”
“In Chamonix, we got way
less local support,” says
Papanicolaou, referring to the
trips he took to France with
Morrison, Kye Petersen and
JP Auclair while filming The
Ordinary Skier. “Not many
people were willing to put up
with us. In Telluride, the locals
seemed eager to show these
guys around.”
TELLURIDE_V2.indd 99
In the interest of getting
everyone on the same page,
Schreckengost decided to
publish a photo reference,
hoping it would make the
backcountry accessed from
the ski area a little safer to
navigate. He already had plenty
-JACOB
He published Telluride OffPiste, a series of 12 large black
and white photographic maps
of the area’s two main zones
for lift-accessed backcountry,
Bear Creek and Palmyra
Peak. Schreckengost donated
stacks of maps to ski patrols,
the local heli ski company,
search and rescue teams,
and the sheriff’s office, and
the maps have been used on
every rescue that’s happened
in the areas since the gate
re-opened.
The detailed maps of the
prized runs are a symbol of
the area’s philosophy of
sharing information.
“It’s a tight backcountry
community,” says Hope,
who grew up in Telluride. “If
someone skis a line, everyone
finds out. They aren’t going to
hide it. They’ll say how it was
and what the snow was like. In
the mornings, everyone calls
each other. There might be
several different groups going
out, but everyone checks
back at the end of the day and
makes sure everyone is good.”
10/16/13 1:30 PM
PAGE:
100
WORDS:
Tess Weaver
PHOTO:
Schreckengost
SKIER:
JACOB WESTER
CAPTION: Jacob in the San Joaquin Couloir.
especially in my backyard. It
was cool to see them ski it like
I’ve never seen it skied. They
have a lot more style than
most skiers.”
Hope is the youngest person
to ski all the lines on the Little
Wasatch Face, a long ridge
of cliffed out couloirs across
the Bear Creek Valley from the
resort. Its easiest line wasn’t
skied until 1990. Many of the
lines are no-fall zones and
require rock climbs, rappels
and tricky maneuvers to
navigate the exposed terrain.
“A lot of kids don’t have
the appreciation for scaring
themselves yet,” says Hope. “I
feel very lucky to be a part of
it. To have this knowledge and
have my wits about me. It will
be good for my future.”
THE YOUNG GUARD
Day 3
March 16
2013
After 72 hours of sunshine,
the weather started to roll
in today, which means we’ll
probably have a well-deserved
day of rest tomorrow. I could
use some downtime to let the
blisters on my feet heal!
Today we were off early,
skinning out of Trout Lake at
7:30 a.m. with the mission to
ascend 12,700-foot Yellow
Mountain and ski the O Chute,
a tight little couloir on the north
face of the summit. The hike
up was mellow, a one-anda-half-hour skin followed by
a 45-minute bootpack up
a sunbaked couloir on the
south side. We reached the
summit at around 10:30, had
some lunch, and watched the
weather roll in…
Hope, the young local who
was hired to sherpa the film
gear throughout the trip,
turned into a much more
valuable asset. Not only did he
humbly ski all the challenging
lines with a huge load of gear,
he gained the respect of
everyone on the trip.
“He’s such a cool kid,” says
Wester. “I was impressed by
how comfortable he was in
gnarly terrain for someone
his age.”
Hope can’t recall ever seeing a
group of skiers as high profile
as Wester and Morrison in his
hometown. “It was incredible,”
says Hope. “I’ve never gotten
to ski with famous skiers,
Hope raced as a kid, then skied
moguls. When he tired of the
formulaic system, he joined the
resort’s big-mountain team.
That’s when he started exploring
the backcountry with his dad.
“I was always on the mountain,
and I started taking a couple
backcountry laps with a few
people,” says Hope. “They
realized I enjoyed it and had
the knowledge and skills to
start going out with them. Now
I’m on the list.”
“All of the Little Wasatch
lines give you an uneasy
feeling when you’re looking
at them from the resort,” says
Morrison. “We never saw
anyone in the lines to give us
a sense of scale, and looking
head-on makes everything
look straight-down steep.”
Hope skis with kids his age
when he’s hucking cliffs or
jumping but joins an older,
more experienced group for
his mountaineering exploits.
Hope says skiing with
Morrison and Wester was
a big learning experience.
“They helped me see a lot of
the lines differently. They are
very different skiers, but the
way they both approach the
mountain is aggressive.”
Skiing the couloir was
awesome as the north facing
snow really held up well in the
spring conditions. I got the
honors of dropping in first, and
halfway down I found myself
skiing cold, soft snow all the
way to the valley. We got a
bunch of sick shots, and the
day was complete!
-JACOB
Day 6
March 19
2013
TELLURIDE_V2.indd 100
Some of the crew took a day
and a half off, while the rest
of us were eager to get on
some good lines. We got up
early to get first tracks down
one of Telluride’s classics,
the San Joaquin Couloir. We
traversed off the back of the
ski resort and skinned up the
San Joaquin Ridge. And a
little more than an hour later,
I found myself peeking over
the edge of the San Joaquin.
Steep and narrow, but this run
has been done by hundreds
or maybe even thousands
of people, so this was more
about capturing a classic
rather than skiing something
new and unexplored.
At the bottom of the run, we
put our skins back on and
headed towards Little Wasatch
Ridge. After another hour of
skinning and a fun bowl run in
some fresh pow, we arrived
at another one of Telluride’s
mythical couloirs, the Why—a
1,500-vertical-foot trench in
the Little Wasatch Face. We
skied some freshly blown-in
snow after last night’s storm.
About two-thirds down the run,
a mandatory but easy to miss
right turn directs you away from
three unskiable cliffs and into
a fun exit couloir. Ten minutes
skiing down a sled track to
town, and we were home after
bagging two big couloirs.
-JACOB
10/16/13 1:30 PM
PAGE:
102
WORDS:
Tess Weaver
THE TERRAIN
03
01
02
04
01
Little Wasatch Face
02
San Joaquin Couloir
03
Alta Lakes
04
Telluride Ski Resort
PHOTO:
Schreckengost
SKIER:
SETH MORRISON
CAPTION: Seth Morrison hops into the
3,200-vertical-foot Illusion Couloir on Day 1.
The most famous line in the
area, the San Joaquin Couloir,
represents the end of Bear
Creek Valley. The Alta Lakes
and Bear Creek drainages
offer an endless lineup of
chutes, bowls, couloirs,
complex routes, neighboring
peaks and scenic alpine
traverses, but the San Joaquin
is aesthetically captivating.
Visible from the eastern edge
of the resort, it’s the most
straightforward couloir in the
area, and it sees the most
traffic, but it’s by no means
completely safe. Ten feet
wide between its rock walls,
it sustains a 50-degree pitch
and chokes to a ski length
wide at the crux.
stable, but the steep couloirs
lacked new snow. Often,
they found firm and windaffected snow. “It wasn’t AK
straightlining or catching air,”
says Hope. “It was definitely
ski mountaineering, and the
goal was to ski it well and
safely. When those couloirs
are powder, they are a lot
easier. In deep snow, you
can fall or screw up. The
conditions they had made for
more difficult skiing and more
of a don’t-fall scenario.”
BC. It’s cold, but there aren’t
any crowds. You put up with
some things in exchange for
having it to yourself. Having
no big city nearby, there’s so
much elbow room here. What
makes it so special, is the
access. It’s straightforward
and pretty easy. Most of the
couloirs take only two to four
hours to get to.”
Shortly after the Oakley team
left Telluride, Caleb Martin, a
friend of the group and the
area’s freestyle coach, was
skiing the couloir in boilerplate
conditions when his partner fell
more than 1,000 vertical feet.
Conditions weren’t ideal for
Wester and Morrison. The
snowpack was relatively
TELLURIDE_V2.indd 102
Erratic snowfall is common
in Telluride. Often it’s
feast or famine, and the
area’s snowpack is usually
completely different from the
rest of Colorado. In February
2013, it snowed 40 inches in
one week and then another
26 the next. One storm cycle
brought the average snowpack
from 49 up to 98 percent of the
30-year average.
Morrison says the only other
times he’s seen walls as
vertical or couloirs as steep
has been in Europe or South
America. “It’s the closest thing
to Chamonix I’ve done. There’s
ski mountaineering like this
around Colorado but not with
the easy access from the lifts.”
“I was impressed with the
amount of awesome peaks,
faces and lines you could do
without having to get in a heli or
use sleds,” says Wester. “Just
a lot of water and some cardio
prep will get you a long way.
“The snowpack is thin and
fickle,” says Schreckengost.
“We don’t get 300-inch years,
but it’s like choosing to surf in
10/16/13 1:30 PM
PAGE:
104
We had seen the Hairy Banana
and heard that some people
had skied it. One of them was
a friend of the group, Caleb
Martin, a former US Ski Team
mogul skier, longtime Oakley
athlete and local freestyle
coach. Greg arranged for us
to meet up one morning and
go for a ski. We headed up the
gondola out of town, getting
to know each other. We exited
the resort and left the filmers
to shoot from across the valley.
This was a first—to not have to
wait up for them. We started
up Caleb’s old skin track,
which was firm, icy and difficult
even with ski crampons. At one
point, I just took my skis off
and post holed. Jacob skinned
up near me just as his binding
broke. He had to ski all the way
down the Bear Creek drainage
to town on one ski. Caleb let
me drop in first. It looked like a
wind slab, but it was powder.
I was a bit uneasy as I knew I
was in a drainpipe. We traded
off leading and picked our way
down the couloir to spots of
safety, stopping behind small
rock walls on the sides and
skiing one at a time. We got to
a choke where he had said it
was possible to keep your skis
on and do a little straight line to
a quick stop above exposure,
but we decided to take our
skis off and down climb. It was
narrower than the width of
my skis, so that also made it
tricky. Some probably rappel
through this spot, but there
was just enough snow to do
what we were doing. Putting
my skis back on took time, as a
slip could have been fatal. We
negotiated 100 feet of snaking
terrain to the next pinch. I heard
Caleb take a couple deep
breaths and point it out of sight.
All I saw was a little chimney
of bumpy ice, a rocky wall on
the right, cliffs to the left and
what looked like a clean exit to
the bottom. The snow wasn’t
powder—the move was a tough
one. I thought if I could point
it and throw ’em sideways, I
might lose a ski in the poor
conditions. Eventually, I pointed
it and accelerated over every
bulge of ice. What a rush. Caleb
went for the handshake, but I
gave him a hug instead. The
whole experience was one
where you felt lucky to be alive,
but the whole point of doing it
was to feel alive.
-SETH
TELLURIDE_V2.indd 104
WORDS:
Tess Weaver
PHOTO:
Schreckengost
SKIER:
JACOB WESTER
Day 8
March 21
2013
Backcountry
Base
CAPTION: Jacob hitting the Trestle mining
relic at Alta Lakes.
02
01
01
The Why
02
Grandfather
03
Heaven’s Eleven
04
Hairy Banana
One of only a few privately
owned homes in the country
above 11,000 feet, the Alta
Lakes Observatory (named for
its dramatic views) is a luxurious
chalet in prime backcountry
skiing terrain. Only a ridge
away from the ski resort and
accessible by snowmobile or
skinning, the cabin was built in
the 70s and sits on the banks
of a high-country lake right
below two 13,000-foot peaks.
The nearby ghost town of Alta
Lakes was the first community
in the world (even before Paris)
to use alternating electrical
current for power. With a
stone hot tub, stainless steel
appliances and a flat screen,
the Oakley crew decided it
was the perfect place to spend
the last two nights of the trip.
From the Observatory, a
quick skin accesses a cirque
of couloirs, including the
Wire and Silver chutes. Both
challenging lines were on
Morrison’s hit list, but strong
winds canceled the missions.
Wester and Hope lapped the
Birthday Chutes, a lineup
of short couloirs that lead
right to the cabin. They also
sessioned an old mining relic
known as “The Trestle,” a
30-foot step down. Wester
remembered the feature from
some snowboarding movies
from the 90s and couldn’t wait
to hit it. They made an inrun
and prepped the takeoff. Just
as the sun was about to set,
the clouds parted, and Wester
threw a 100-foot backflip.
03
04
In the end, the crew climbed
close to 20,000 vertical feet
and skied almost 30,000. Of
the 12 iconic lines they set
out to tackle, the group skied
10, some of which have been
photographed but not filmed
at this production level. The
footage will be released later
this month on freeskier.com.
“It was pretty ambitious,”
says Schreckengost. “Most
people would be stoked to
get all those things ticked off
in a few years. In 12 days,
we accomplished more than
locals do in a season or even
a lifetime.”
10/16/13 4:44 PM