Rendezvous Backcountry Tours Kicks Ass

Last week I went on a five day guided hut tour with Rendezvous Backcountry Tours and it was the best vacation I've ever had. Rendezvous operates out of Driggs Idaho and has a network of yurts on National Forest land in the Tetons. They have a variety of programs available, from unguided hut rental to fully guided and catered. We went fully guided and catered and it was such an amazing value I'll definitely return for more. Our group of five (originally six, but we had a last minute cancellation) was accompanied by two uber-professional guides who did everything possible to make sure that each of us could focus all of our energy on skiing powder. I never realized how long and demanding the work day is for a mountain guide. The two of them, Derek and Lynne, were up at 6:00 am and barely had a chance to sit down until 9:00 pm. On top of that, they broke trail for every bit of the nearly 5000 vertical feet of skinning we did every day. I never broke trail once during the five days and neither did any of my companions. They also prepared all of the meals, presided over the never ending task of melting snow for drinking water, kept the woodstove stocked and attended to our medical needs (my sprained ankle and several other's various blisters.) The food itself went way beyond our expectations. Elaborate meals, delicous appetizers, wine for dinner, plenty of hot drinks to keep you comfortable, hearty lunches on the trail, and my favorite, ice cold cans of Budweiser at days end. Oh yeah, and we didn't have to carry any of it, as Rendezvous employs porters to ski the provisions in to each of the huts in advance. I almost felt guilty about my complete lack of domestic responsibility. But, ultimately, a trip like this comes down to a matter of energy. No matter how fit you are, the limiting factor in how much vertical you can ski is how much energy you can expend. And the less energy you burn carrying gear, breaking trail, and cooking, the more you have for schralping Teton powder.

Ahh, the powder. The weather and ski conditions could not have been any better for this trip. One of our guides, Lynne Wolfe, is an eminently qualified avalanche educator. She is also a very accomplished mountain guide, guiding for climbers and mountaineers as well as backcountry skiers. It gave me great peace of mind to have her evaluating snow stability for us. I also learned a great deal just from observing the way both guides conducted their business. Living in New England, I don't have a lot of opportunities to hone my avalanche safety skills. This is one reason to employ a guide, but another, equally important reason from my perspective, is that they can find you the goods. As I said, the weather was really perfect for our trip but I got the impression that these two would have been able to find us excellent skiing even if things had been less perfect. They seemed to know every canyon, gully, cornice and couloir in the entire area as well as which aspects would be good, where the wind affected snow would be, where the deepest and steepest and still safe shots would be. We got the goods, every day. The unfortunate paradox of backcountry skiing is that the locations and conditions that you most want to ski are often those most likely to kill you. It requires a bit of restraint. Of course you want it to dump two feet every night during your tour, but if it were to snow that much at once it would severly limit the steepness of terrain that you could ski, at least in the short term. We were lucky in that a week or so prior to our arrival the area underwent a thaw freeze cycle that solidified the snow pack and cleared up any (or most) lingering stability issues. Thus we only had to worry about issues occuring at or near the surface. We were also fortunate that a few days prior to our arrival it started snowing 3-5 inches every night, a trend that continued for the first few days of our trip. This added up to enough snow for us to consistently ski powder up to or over our knees. Face shots occured regularly. Best of all, we got to ski some steep shots, and if you're from New England, you desperately want to ski steep shots when you head West. The real draw of the backcountry though, is the solitude. There is no competition for those face shots. The only people we saw for five days were people in our group, with the exception of being passed by one of the super-human porters on his way to deliver an enormous pile of food to one of the yurts. There was no jostling in the lift line, no throwing elbows on the high traverse, no rushing to beat someone else to a secret stash. Just a relaxed good time sharing incredible skiing with some friends. Sure you had to work for it, but it was well worth the effort. I should also mention that at the beginning and end of the trip we skied at a couple of ski resorts, resorts that had ostensibly been privy to the same weather patterns as the backcountry we skied, and the conditions were no where near as good. The reason being that at a ski resort 5 inches of powder lasts from approximately 9:00 am until 9:45 am. Not so in the solitude of the backcountry. Had we wanted to, we could have mined one ridge for days in the Game Creek drainage that we were skiing. We didn't though, because there were too many other ridges to explore. I'll try to add some other details about the trip in the next few days. If you want to check out my photo gallery, it's here. I also have some photos and videos from one of the other group members, Paul, including the video below of Geoff shredding the Teton gnar. At some point we are going to make a photo/video presentation with all of the stuff we got, including some helmet cam footage. I'll try to get more stuff up as time allows.