About three hours after I tomahawked halfway down Central Couloir, the steepest and most visible line in Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s sidecountry, the doctor in the emergency room at St. John’s Health asked if I had seen the video.
“He’s joking,” I said to my daughter.
“I’m not joking,” he responded. “I also work for Search and Rescue. Do you want to see it?”
Video Credit: “Shake a Day Jake”
It was surreal to watch my body ride the wave of snow, get swept over the mandatory air at the bottom, and nick a rock. In surgery, doctors salvaged the exposed chip of my fractured elbow and sewed my tricep muscle back to my tendon.
Not surprisingly, it was a series of poor decisions that landed me in that hospital bed. The warning signs not to hike up to Cody Peak on April 3 were everywhere. “It’s a little late,” said a friend as he handed us fresh batteries for our beacons—a comment that, in hindsight, may have been the clearest red flag of all.
As ski instructors in Jackson, my ski partner, Nini, and I know that every decision we make has consequences, especially time and place. But, as longtime colleagues and self-described work wives, it was our tradition to hike up Cody Bowl and ski Four Shadows after hitting the 400-hour mark on teaching. (Over two decades ago, legendary mountain host Doug Coombs was fired for skiing Central Couloir—the death-defying descent next to Four Shadows—in uniform after helping pioneer Jackson’s sidecountry access. We made sure to leave ours behind.)
At 3 p.m., Nini and I mistakenly missed our intended entrance, hiking higher than we meant to while talking about the upcoming summer. I remember feeling bold: “We don’t have to think small.”
But when I shimmied down the wind-scoured entrance, I ate my words. “This doesn’t look like Four Shadows,” I said. I looked to the left and saw the cliff that’s usually on our right. “Shit!” I said, “We’re in Central.”
No way to go but down, I began my descent on the 50-degree slope toward the narrowing choke point. Nini messaged my daughter about our route error, so someone would know where we were. The rush in my veins urged me forward—make it through this, and you’re golden. But fear whispered otherwise: Stop after this turn, help her navigate the upper section, and prepare for the legendary cliff that waits below.
I made it. Then my eyes faded to white.
Am I in an avalanche? I wondered. I tried to stop myself as I began to plummet, Get your feet below you, I thought. Little did I realize I had already lost my left ski.
Then, BANG, to the back of my head.
Drop.
Onlookers gasped as a human-sized boulder tumbled over the cliff—the Central Couloir’s most infamous feature.
I self-arrested and screamed, “Nini?” No response. One ski and one pole were visible at the bottom of the cliff, but she wasn’t. I started climbing and sank through the sandy snow in the apron below the cliff. Not yet defeated, I moved across the slope toward the rocks where the snow had sintered.
My left elbow turned the snow crimson red. My right forearm braced the one pole I still had and helped me reach the drop point to retrieve my missing ski and pole. Halfway up, I gasped a sigh of relief when I heard Nini.
“I’m okay. I have your ski,” she yelled. I can’t imagine the nerve it took her to grab my ski and continue without knowing what happened to me.
She was too close to launch, so she threw my ski down, took off her own, and jumped off the 20-foot ledge, knowing she would tomahawk, too. Her voice echoed eerily: “I’m jumping.”
Then it was all over.
Jackson Hole Ski Patroller Nate Fuller couldn’t have been gentler as he splinted my elbow, convinced me to take a helicopter, and skied down.
Mike Rheam, avalanche hazard reduction leader for the Jackson Hole Ski Patrol, guided the helicopter down within feet of where I knelt shivering and nauseous. “I always wanted to take a helicopter with you,” I squeaked out. “But in Alaska,” where Rheam runs Tordrillo Mountain Lodge, not here.
“I won’t lecture you now, but you should know better than being out here this late,” Rheam said. “Time and place.”
Once in recovery, the video proved quite instructional. I winced as I watched myself hit the slough beneath the choke point and fail to distribute my weight along the length of my downhill ski, a fundamental skill we teach our students.
The Teton County Search and Rescue’s discretion in not printing my name in the paper gave me the pause that I needed to feel the gravity of my 300- to 500-foot dabble in bad decision-making. It also gave me great respect for mountaineers like Ed Viesturs, who once said: “The art of mountaineering is to know when to go, when to stay, and when to retreat.” Lesson learned.
Julie Fustanio Kling, a writer who has taught skiing at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort for 15 years, is the “54-year-old from Victor, ID, who lost her balance in Central Couloir and was rescued by Jackson Hole Ski Patrol and Teton County Search and Rescue Volunteers” on April 3rd. She can’t count the number of times she has heard the tram announcement, “If you don’t know, don’t go.” Now she will listen.
