[Bill Briggs in 1975 was the guide with the Exum Mountain Guides who took me to the top of the Grand Teton]
By 1970s standards The Grand Teton looked absurd to ski, and
still appears more suited to ropes and crampons than skis. The rocky spire is
mostly cliffs, with choppy couloirs and a few measly patches of snow. Indeed,
while skiing the grand has evolved (as sports do) from "impossible"
to possible, the descent is still considered a major accomplishment, though
modern gear and technique have made it much more reasonable.
Not only was Briggs' s ski of the "Grand" an
athletic feat, but it was a triumph of spirit. For not only did the man ski the
impossible; he did it with a severe disability.
Indeed, if skiing can be so much more than turns -- if
skiing can be life -- Bill Briggs proves it…
William Morse Briggs was born December 21, 1931, in Augusta,
Maine. Briggs entered the world without a hip joint, and at two-years-old
surgeons chiseled out a socket in his pelvic bone…
Briggs had a hard time in high school. He was kept from
sports because of his hip, while battling bouts of depression and never fitting
in…
Prep school at Philips Exeter Academy was an entirely
different experience. Straight away, the school decided to ignore Briggs'
disability and he was required to participate in sports (as were all Exeter
students). He chose cross country running and to his surprise, received a
Junior Varsity letter.
At Exeter Briggs met famed teacher Bob Bates, the man who
became his most influential mentor. Bates was a devoted mountaineer -- a member
of the American Alpine Club and a K2 survivor. Moreover, Bates was an inspiring
leader with a resoundingly positive attitude and deep knowledge of human
nature. Briggs decided that if alpinism had something to do with the character
of Bob Bates, then he'd take up the sport himself.
"This guy was real, and his positive attitude made life
go better for everyone around him," Bill remembers, "If he climbed,
then so would I."…
At first the Exeter staff was not supportive of Briggs'
skiing; they talked him out of joining the ski team, and recommended squash.
The idea was that skiing would not be a lifelong sport; a theory that still
elicits a hearty chuckle from Briggs. The teenager begged the Exeter dean for
permission to skip church on Sunday and go to the ski hill. The dean agreed.
Thereafter, Bill spent every Sunday schussing at North
Conway, traveling there and back on the ski train. "Riding this train with
all these skiers -- singing to finish off a perfect day on skis -- it was one
of the best things I'd ever done." To this day, aside from skiing, music
is the great love of Briggs' life…
The young man realized that he didn't fit in when, in a
philosophy class, the professor asked the students who believed in free will to
raise their hands. "I raised my hand immediately," says Briggs,
"and no one else did!" He and Dartmouth soon parted ways.
The parting was not easy, however, and Briggs fell into
suicidal depression. "I found I couldn't kill myself -- I didn't have the
courage." he says. "Since I had to live, I decided to make the most
of life; to simply go with what I found most pleasurable: climbing, skiing, and
music." Briggs received his ski instructor certification in 1955, and
immediately went to work teaching at Franconia in New Hampshire and for a
period in Aspen, Colorado…
In the spring of 1959 Briggs was feeling his now familiar
desire for the Bugaboo Mountains. In a resulting mountain epiphany, he conjured
an expedition that would combine skiing, climbing and exploration in one grand
100 mile traverse from the Bugaboo Mountains to Glacier Station (near Rogers
Pass in British Columbia). At the time you couldn't get maps of the area, and
only one hut provided shelter along the way. To top that, no expeditions of
this sort, using skis on technical glaciers and passes, had been attempted in
North America…
During the last day of the trip, Briggs made his crowning
achievement as a navigator by bringing the group across the Illecillewaet
Glacier in a fog, using only map and compass (a map was available for that
section.) His heading dropped them into a narrow couloir, where the visibility
improved and they made glorious turns to within yards of their goal: a foot
trail leading down to the Glacier train station.
The group had accomplished the first "high ski
traverse" in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and such ski traverses would
gain popularity to the present. Briggs had expressed "what needed to be
said."…
Briggs' hip continued to deteriorate, and in 1961 he decided
to have the joint fused. The medicos said at best he'd need to change to a
sedentary life -- at worst he'd be in a wheel chair. In what can only be called
hubris, before the operation, Briggs built a cardboard splint that locked his
hip, then tried to ski. Much to his delight and amazement he could make turns
with the immobilized joint! Even so, he knew he probably couldn't lead the
outdoor life he had in the past, and after the operation he sank into
depression. Glen Exum assumed he'd be unable to do physical work, so Briggs
lost his job as a guide…
With his new found athletic prowess Briggs knew he could
continue mountaineering and skiing, so he moved back to Jackson Hole, began
guiding again, and in 1966 became director of the ski school at Snow King
Mountain (Jackson's "town mountain"). Once back in Jackson, he
pursued the outer limits of ski mountaineering, especially skiing the steeps…
During those formative years Briggs skied numerous peaks in
the Tetons. In the spring of 1968, along with several other mountaineers, he
made the first ski descent of the Teton's most striking classic: Mount Moran
via the Skillet Glacier. Rising 6,500 vertical feet from the glistening waters
of Jackson Lake, the Skillet begs to be skied, and is counted as one of the
five most classic ski descents in the Tetons. That was only a warm-up…
After trying the Grand Teton solo and getting turned back by
weather and bad conditions, Briggs enlisted the help of John Bolton, George
Colon and Robbie Garrett. On June 15, 1971, Briggs clipped his ski bindings at
the top of the "Grand" and started down the 1,000 vertical foot
east-face snowfield.
"I'd planned very carefully," he remembers,
"but you can't predict everything. I didn't know just how steep that
skiing would be -- it was really steep -- and I didn't know how much the snow
was going to sluff off when I traversed across."
Later, Briggs wrote: "Gusts of wind made balance
uncertain, so I used great caution to get off the summit block. The snow above
Ford's Couloir was good for a few turns. Then I broke through, the skis sank
about a foot into the snow unexpectedly, and caused my first fall. I fell
downhill, quickly rolled over, and stood up on the skis again. From there on
the snow was deep corn but quite skiable. Shortage of breath and strength
forced me to make rather large turns down what can be called the upper Petzoldt
Ridge. This got a little narrow between the cornice of Ford's Couloir and the
rocks. I actually skied into the rock at the narrowest place."
Truly a man ahead (or in this case above) of his time,
Briggs cut turns above fall-and-you-die cliffs, gingerly funneled himself into
the narrows of the Stettner Couloir, rappelled over a big chock-stone and
ice-fall to another skiable section, then finished in the bonus bowls of the
Tepee Glacier which he remembers were "all frost feathers -- the most
interesting skiing I've ever done."
The "Grand" was an impressive ski descent; in 1971
in North America the only equivalent skiing was a descent by Fritz Stammberger
on Colorado's North Maroon Peak, and a route Sylvain Saudan skied on Mount
Hood. Prior to 1971, very little euro-style steep skiing had been done on the
continent, and North Americans didn't understand extreme skiing.
Thus, the Jackson locals were nonchalant, if not skeptical,
about Briggs' feat. "I came back and said 'I skied the Grand
yesterday'," he remembers, "and people said 'uh huh'." Briggs
needed proof, so he drove to the airport where there's a good view of the upper
snow face. To his delight he could see his tracks with binoculars, so he called
a photographer at the Jackson Hole News. The resulting aerial photograph (see
beginning of this article), clearly showing his tracks, is still a popular
poster…
After his Grand Teton descent, Briggs continued guiding and
climbing, but took a break from hard-core ski mountaineering. "It was hard
to top the Grand," he says. Then in 1974 the steep skiing bug bit him
again, and he and a friend climbed Mount Owen with a ski descent in mind.
"I didn't do as good a job as I'd done on the other
peaks -- I took a fall skiing for the camera," remembers Briggs.
"Luckily I arrested before I got in too much trouble. That shook me up,
and that was before the hard part which was a super steep traverse going to the
right; the wrong side with my fused hip. I had no choice but to do it strictly
on my uphill ski, so I took a belay. Even with the rope, if I'd fallen on that
side I wouldn't have been able to get back up! I was past my prime."
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