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Thursday, 21 Dec 06
Lauren (left) and me atop the Grand Teton last summer
Lauren announced that she wanted to ski down Corbet’s Couloir at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort by the end of the season. Corbet’s is probably the most classic line in the nation, a steep double black diamond couloir with a mandatory-air entrance. Though there are easier ways to get in, Doug Coombs use to hurl himself off a 50-foot section to “drop in.”
I was nervous about the whole idea, but Lauren reminded me about her tough-love teaching technique during a climb at the City of Rocks in Idaho last summer. I was only climbing a 5.8, but there was a particular move that I couldn’t get and kept falling 100 feet above the ground time and time again. I was scared and I couldn’t see Lauren. But she kept screaming, “Keep climbing, you can do it!” After try three and a Sylvester Stallone-esque “Cliffhanger” maneuver – leaping from one hold to the next – I finally made it up to her. And truthfully, I’m glad she didn’t listen to my whining and let me down. It was empowering to get to the top of a 200-some-foot pitch exhausted but beaming from ear to ear.
So when Lauren and I were peering into Corbet’s Couloir atop JHMR this weekend, I knew I would get her in there by the end of the season – it just might take some tough love.
Now it may seem idiotic to try to get a beginner skier into the chute in about three months. For the record, this was not my idea. Lauren and filmer/photographer David Gonzales (thesnaz.com) came up with the idea to re-create a documentary that would show a beginner skier going from the baby slopes at JHMR to the most extreme inbounds line in the country. JHMR is in, being that the management wants to prove that beginners can indeed learn how to ski on the “extreme” mountain. I admit that it’s a great project, and Lauren will surely succeed. For a girl who has been skiing only six times this season and about 10 days total (she tore her ACL last season trying to learn on Snow King), she is one awesome and determined beginner.
Our first lesson was Sunday. Our mission: Take Lauren more than 4,000 vertical feet up to the top of the mountain to film her expression when she looked into Corbet’s. Ski-mountaineering guide and JHMR ski instructor Jessica Baker also came to help out. As a PSIA Level 3 ski instructor/trainer, she hopes to teach Lauren a progression so she can drop into Corbet’s with confidence. We started by pointing it down a mini drop off (a mogul, basically). She was scared. To get into Corbet’s, it takes at least a six-foot huck. Lauren said she is psyched to get other SheJumpers involved. "Sticking to the shejumps mission," Lauren said, I hope to learn from several rad women skiers who are already proverbially 'jumping' all over the ski realm."
No doubt this will be an interesting 90 days. Sunday was interesting enough, especially the part where we had to lead Lauren down the mountain after looking into Corbet’s. It was a frigid adventure through the off-piste terrain in Rendezvous Bowl and down another 3,000-plus vertical feet to the Village Café at the base of the mountain. We celebrated the epic ski afterwards with hot chocolate and pizza.
Did I say she was a beginner? Stay tuned …
SheJumper jumps into Corbet's
Comment on this Post I’m not sure what I just got myself into. Last summer I made a deal with my friend Lauren Whaley. If she taught me how to climb, then I would teach her how to ski. She guided me up the Grand Teton as the culmination to my tutelage, but unbeknownst to me, she had something just as grand in mind to end her education.Lauren (left) and me atop the Grand Teton last summer
Lauren announced that she wanted to ski down Corbet’s Couloir at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort by the end of the season. Corbet’s is probably the most classic line in the nation, a steep double black diamond couloir with a mandatory-air entrance. Though there are easier ways to get in, Doug Coombs use to hurl himself off a 50-foot section to “drop in.”
I was nervous about the whole idea, but Lauren reminded me about her tough-love teaching technique during a climb at the City of Rocks in Idaho last summer. I was only climbing a 5.8, but there was a particular move that I couldn’t get and kept falling 100 feet above the ground time and time again. I was scared and I couldn’t see Lauren. But she kept screaming, “Keep climbing, you can do it!” After try three and a Sylvester Stallone-esque “Cliffhanger” maneuver – leaping from one hold to the next – I finally made it up to her. And truthfully, I’m glad she didn’t listen to my whining and let me down. It was empowering to get to the top of a 200-some-foot pitch exhausted but beaming from ear to ear.
So when Lauren and I were peering into Corbet’s Couloir atop JHMR this weekend, I knew I would get her in there by the end of the season – it just might take some tough love.
Now it may seem idiotic to try to get a beginner skier into the chute in about three months. For the record, this was not my idea. Lauren and filmer/photographer David Gonzales (thesnaz.com) came up with the idea to re-create a documentary that would show a beginner skier going from the baby slopes at JHMR to the most extreme inbounds line in the country. JHMR is in, being that the management wants to prove that beginners can indeed learn how to ski on the “extreme” mountain. I admit that it’s a great project, and Lauren will surely succeed. For a girl who has been skiing only six times this season and about 10 days total (she tore her ACL last season trying to learn on Snow King), she is one awesome and determined beginner.
Our first lesson was Sunday. Our mission: Take Lauren more than 4,000 vertical feet up to the top of the mountain to film her expression when she looked into Corbet’s. Ski-mountaineering guide and JHMR ski instructor Jessica Baker also came to help out. As a PSIA Level 3 ski instructor/trainer, she hopes to teach Lauren a progression so she can drop into Corbet’s with confidence. We started by pointing it down a mini drop off (a mogul, basically). She was scared. To get into Corbet’s, it takes at least a six-foot huck. Lauren said she is psyched to get other SheJumpers involved. "Sticking to the shejumps mission," Lauren said, I hope to learn from several rad women skiers who are already proverbially 'jumping' all over the ski realm."
No doubt this will be an interesting 90 days. Sunday was interesting enough, especially the part where we had to lead Lauren down the mountain after looking into Corbet’s. It was a frigid adventure through the off-piste terrain in Rendezvous Bowl and down another 3,000-plus vertical feet to the Village Café at the base of the mountain. We celebrated the epic ski afterwards with hot chocolate and pizza.
Did I say she was a beginner? Stay tuned …
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