Introduction | Part 1: Yosemite | Part 2: Yellowstone | Part 3: Olympic | Part 4: Glacier | Part 5: Grand Teton
I watched Electric Peak for years.
The broad 10,969-foot swell of land is visible from many high points in the surrounding region, its north ridge curling into Yellowstone National Park like the arm of a dancer.
But now it was bothering me.
As we wound across Yellowstone most Sunday evenings on the way home from Cooke City to Bozeman, I’d watch the sun set behind Electric’s craggy summit, shooting rays skyward. From the park’s north entrance in Gardiner, where the peak rises 5,700 feet above the stones of Roosevelt Arch, the pull was powerful.
Native American sheep hunters were likely the first people to climb Electric Peak, but Hayden Survey members Henry Gannett, Albert Peale, and Alexander Brown made the first recorded ascent on July 26, 1872. Gannett reached the summit in a lightning storm, left his instruments, and retreated, hair standing on end from the electrical charge. When Brown tried, he was shocked, so they waited until the storm passed to complete the job. Their work, together with the rest of the survey team, was instrumental in the creation of the park.
Photographer William Henry Jackson and artist Thomas Moran, also part of the Hayden Survey, documented the area’s otherworldly hot springs and geysers, as well as its magnificent landscape that same summer. Their photographs and sketches inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone as the first national park, signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872.
A split rail fence marks the Yellowstone boundary at the Beattie Gulch trailhead — Montana to the north, 2.2 million acres of park to the south. Ski boots clicked into skis and strapped to our packs, Jason Thompson, Anne Gilbert Chase, Pat Wolfe, and I follow the trail as it weaves through sagebrush along the fence line. An elk herd grazes to our left. Above them, 10 miles distant, is the summit of Electric.
We step into our boots after a couple miles. My blood runs warm as we slide across frozen sugar and graupel. When I try to skin over elk droppings, my skis slip.
While Electric is somewhat popular as a summer hike, it sees only a handful of ski descents a year. No one else is out here today.
Giant clouds sail past as we reach the north ridge in a burned forest. Created by the 1988 wildfire that torched nearly 800,000 acres and 36 percent of the park, many of these areas host open, aesthetic ski lines through stands of black and gray ghost trees.
There’s an inch of fresh, and Thompson’s skins start glopping at the five-mile marker, so we pass around the wax. Higher on the ridge, I stop to tape a hot spot. A cold wind cuts through my jacket, drying the skin of my bare foot. My friends flow between tufts of grass and snow, the bright colors of their gear offsetting the grayscape.
Coming to a slope we must cross, we poke our poles at the slab of snow. Slightly unsettling, but not too scary. One at a time, we gain the next ridge crest, this one sharper and rockier than the last.
The wind is gone now, and midday sun warms my cheeks and shoulders. I soak it in, then stash details in my pockets to remember later: the familiar bend of my skis over snow, the joy of recognizing peaks in surrounding ranges, and the bluest sky.
We stop atop the Dogleg, a couloir cutting through the cliffs on the east face, and peer down 2,000-plus feet to the moraine. A tossed rock lands without a sound.
Leaving our skis, we scramble 200 feet to the summit. From here, the Gallatin Range’s southern tail splays into the park, slopes milky with snow. Surrounding them, hidden river gorges fold into the seemingly flat expanse of the Yellowstone Caldera. Beyond that, the core ranges of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem encircle us: the mighty Absaroka-Beartooth massif to the northeast, the Teton skyscrapers on the southern horizon, and the Gallatin and Madison to the north and west.
Skiing in Yellowstone runs the gamut from Nordic trails around Old Faithful Geyser Basin to the test pieces on the gothic peaks above U.S. Route 212. Ski guide Beau Fredlund, who owns Yellowstone Ski Tours, has pioneered ski mountaineering lines on Barronette Peak, and together with Kt Miller and Noah Howell, toured 20-plus miles to ski into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Ultimately though, he’s captured by the same things that draw 4 million tourists here each summer.
“Nowhere else in the states can you ski among bison and wolves and bears,” says Fredlund. “Almost nowhere else in the world would you find geysers you can ski around.”
And in winter, with most of the roads closed, Yellowstone is a much lonelier place. The real treasure trove, perhaps, lies in Yellowstone’s southeast corner: the Thorofare, studded with unskied 10,000-foot peaks, is one of the most remote areas in the entire Lower 48.
Wolfe rolls into the gentle upper starting zone of Dogleg first. Light snow whirls around his boot tops, lifting in the breeze made by his passing. And then he’s gone, presumably finding his way between the rock fingers jutting up below.
So much is held in those initial turns.
With the ocean of mountains still in my periphery, I point my skis downhill and cut through alpine butter cream. One, two, three turns and I pick up speed. Four, five, six, I’m through a narrower spot. Seven, eight, I stop counting and drop into a rhythm. When I round the crook of the dogleg, the aspect changes. Now it’s shady, and there’s a firm crust. I dump speed. Towers of orange-brown rock jut up on either side of the gully.
I pull in next to Wolfe, tucked away on the right side. Several minutes later, Gilbert Chase appears beside us. Then, silhouetted more by falling snow than light, Thompson swoops by, fast and stable, driving hard with his knees. We meet him and pick our way through death cookies and avalanche debris, skiing family style through the apron and onto the rolling moraine.
We emerge from the forest in a sunny green meadow. Skis slung over shoulders, we pass a small group of bison in the creek bottom. I’m a little anxious about startling one of the 1,500-pound horned, hooved beasts, but mostly just happy about finishing our day among these majestic creatures, part of the largest wild herd left on earth.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Be sure to check out the film Monumental: Skiing Our National Parks, premiering October 20 in Denver, CO, followed by a nationwide tour. The film will be available to purchase online, as well. Additionally, POWDER produced a 150-page coffee-style hardcover book of the Monumental project. Go here for film, book, tour, and ticket information.
Read the Introduction and Parts 1–5 of Monumental: Skiing Our National Parks:
