Ferry Peak

Ferry Peak: a just-under-10,000-foot-peak of awesome spines and semi-endless terrain what some would consider too far to drive for, which is odd, considering what is there and only an hour away. If you watch ski films, especially from TGR or Brain Farm you have probably seen this zone shot a couple dozen times. For good reason.

Ferry Peak is considered easy or rather not an objective for any ski mountaineer type but is worth the riding considering it is one of the view places that has Alaska-like spines without making a couple thousand mile trip to the mecca.


If driving from the south, and in Alpine, Wyoming the peak stares at you as you drive. Non-tourers can catch a glimpse of what it is like to stare at lines that mesmerize the same way that Alaskan spines do to experienced skiers and splitboarders. It is a beautiful sight. Something like out of a fairy tale. Maybe not your typical fairy tale but a powder-heaven-fairy-tale.

On this outing it was just Cody and myself as I got a random Thursday off and knew he was not working. We got up early and met in town at 6:00am to get a 7:00am start to the peak to beat the supposed all day sunshine.

I had been sick since we had last hit the Sliver and thought, the night before, that it was over and I'll sleep off what is left of the illness. Not so, unfortunately. This made my day kind of crappy but fortunately it was not a terrible skin/bootpack even though my ascent times will tell differently.


Getting out of the car we saw our muddy entrance into Sheep Gulch. Not being stoked on what we saw, we clicked into our skis and headed up anyway. A few natural slides that looked old and ripped to the ground were in random places on the walls of the gully. The stoke level was nearing zero for myself but I still wanted to see what this area had to show for even if the snow was sub-par.


Working our way up we found a skin track and a reminiscent bootpack on the ridge. Finally getting to one of the high points on the ridge we could see Ferry clearly and only a few 100 feet away. While walking the ridge everytime my left pole planted I got disappointed but my right pole brought hope. The left side was sun baked and wind-laden while the right side was still holding cold faceted snow which could be fun in a safe situation. Walking out on the 2nd ridge reaching the actual peak, the snowpack went from manageable to crappy. There was a 2-3 inch wind, now sun baked crust sitting on top of facets. With every step that I took in the virgin snow I sunk up to my knee and sometimes waist. If this is what the entire North face would be like, our objective, the Northeast Couloir would not be stellar to ski at the moment. But still, we trudged on, pushed for Ferry and finally reached it.

The view from the first peak, unnamed.

As soon as we got there it seemed as our decision had already been made for us. From the peak we could see clouds rolling in quickly from the North making visibility worse than it already was. With the crap snowpack, low viz, and questionable turns we bailed and took our escape route instead of skiing the couloir.

Overall, it was a bit of a bust of a day. We could of and should of stopped early and skied the 1st ridge where the snow was still "soft" instead of the garbage that we hit. But you live and you learn I guess.