First Ski Descent Completed Of Jackson Hole’s Corah’s Couloir
Outside Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Wyoming's top backcountry gate, on Cardiac Ridge, sits a line only descended by one skier. This line is called Corah's Couloir. It's so gnarly, steep, and committing that it makes Jackson's other notable couloir look like a warm-up run.
Jackson local legend and snowboarder Darrell Miller pioneered the line years ago. However, no skiers stepped to the line immediately afterward, leaving Corah's out of the limelight for many winters until, last season, professional Tristan Brown decided to give it a go. Check out Brown's run below.
Brown notched a rare Jackson area first with this descent, becoming the only skier to have descended Corah's Couloir. The area is so saturated with high-caliber athletes that skiing anything before anyone else—be it a peak or a technical chute—isn't particularly easy.
Thus, I reached out to Brown for an inside scoop on Corah's, figuring something about the line must've made it different from Jackson's other test pieces. The line is obviously terrifying, but terrifying doesn't tend to slow down the Jackson crowd. So, why hadn't anyone else skied it?
What follows is an answer to that question, among others, from Brown.
Where is Corah's Couloir in relation to Jackson Hole Mountain Resort's piste?
Corah's is on Cardiac Ridge, just south of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. If you go out the top gate and head towards Cody Peak, it's the prominent, rocky face to your right as you take your first steps on the bootpack up Cody. On most years it just looks like a ridge with vertical rocks below, but on big snow years it starts to fill in just enough to spy a barely skiable line, named Corah's Couloir by the pioneer Darrell Miller.
Where does this line land compared to all the other gnarly descents you've tackled? Is it one of the scariest things you've skied?
It's top 5 for sure, because the line has essentially zero room for error. Any fall above the air-out is potentially deadly. Prior to dropping in I was confident because I had done what I considered to be all the necessary preparation. In hindsight though, it looks more frightening, mostly because the crux move didn't go exactly how I planned it. I wanted to hop over the mini-gully and land on the pillow and keep skiing in one smooth motion. When I approached it though, my slough got in the way, I couldn't see it perfectly, and I decided it was too risky to jump onto it without being able to view all potential hazards.
So I skied directly into the pillow, digging one ski into the snow, and throwing one ski over it, while simultaneously grabbing the rock with my hand. It was like a self-arrest that you would do in steep terrain. In this case though, I was essentially mixing climbing with skiing to help myself over the crux move in a safer fashion. What scares me is that I didn't anticipate that being something that required more prior consideration. In the moment it was intense, but manageable. Looking back, it was a good lesson to analyze crux moves further for all their complexities.
I imagine stepping up to Corah's took more preparation than your video implies. What kind of planning goes into skiing a line like this?
It did, and you're right, I should show more of the preparation in these videos. I'll likely do that on the next one. From the moment the idea is first conceived on a line like this, it starts to live in your brain either until you've skied it or deemed it too risky. That can take days, or years. In this case, it took a couple weeks. I looked at it a ton, and took photos from the side (Cody bootpack) and straight on (just out of the resort boundary). I also flew my drone up and took photos from plenty more angles. I then spent hours analyzing those photos at home. After analyzing it, and choosing the line, I like to visualize it over and over again. That way, once you ski it, you kinda feel like you've already done it plenty of times before.
Why were you the first person to ever ski this line? Is it that gnarly? Was everyone else too scared to take it on?
It's gnarly for sure, but that hasn't stopped Jackson locals from skiing plenty of other gnarly lines in the area. A large part of the reason no one skied it before me, is because it probably only fills in every 5 years on average. So you've gotta want it, and be ready to strike when the conditions finally line up.
This line is definitely more high-consequence than most though. There is also very little room to make turns. So someone could billy-goat thier way down it fairly safely, but I had no interest in that. Every move has to be precise and thought out beforehand. It's almost not even skiing haha. You could describe it as falling down a premeditated path. Gravity has the wheel, and you're just telling it where to turn. I think I was the first to ski it, largely because other people just didn't even consider it. It really doesn't look doable at first glance. Now that this video has been put into the ether though, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone else give it a go down the line.
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