The Jaw, East Face
- Mike Morelli
- Apr 21
- 3 min read
Date: April 21, 2026
Location: Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, USA
Team: Charlie Pirc
Field Notes: A straightforward climb and ski from Hanging Canyon with the steeper sections when you're on the face. The East Face gets blasted by the sun at first light.
For my first few weeks back in the Tetons, it’s been pretty damn good. I skied 4,000 feet of corn off Mount Saint John, had multiple powder days on Glory, and now found myself on another mission in the park with Charlie.
The forecast called for warm weather, so we left Driggs at 4:00 a.m. We estimated about four hours to the summit of The Jaw, which would put us skiing by around 10:30.
This was actually my second attempt on the peak — almost nine years to the day. Last time, we bailed just a few hundred feet below the summit due to rapidly warming conditions.
After an energizing bike ride to String Lake, Charlie and I followed the summer trail around Jenny Lake, then headed up toward Lake of the Crags until we hit a tongue of snow and transitioned to skins.
As soon as we got onto snow, it got hot. And the higher we climbed, the hotter it got.
By the time we skinned into Hanging Canyon, it felt like we were inside a furnace. I can’t remember sweating this much in the mountains. Beads of sweat were dripping off my head, and Charlie looked like he had just jumped into a pool.
Down low, the snow was still holding up. Crossing a frozen Lake of the Crags, I felt good about our timing. That confidence continued as we skinned up the final benches that led us beneath the East Face.
We started the final 500 feet, skinning as far as we could before transitioning to bootpack.
And then it all went to shit.
Charlie asked what I thought about the snow. It was getting warm, but there hadn’t been any major red flags yet — no rollerballs, no pinwheels, and we weren’t punching through.
Then, right as we were talking, the first pinwheel of the day peeled off a sunbaked rock above us.
We watched as a sizable rollerball cascaded down the face — and then suddenly a whumpf in the snowpack. Welp, time to get the hell outta there. We transitioned quickly and skied down.
Looking back, there were a few key takeaways. First off, starting one to two hours earlier would have changed everything: likely a summit ski, and a safer margin overall. The day was extremely hot, and there was no reason not to build in more buffer.
Secondly, we assumed that the conditions lower down were going to translate onto the face. I could not have been more wrong. The lower sections of the route had gone through a corn cycle, where the actual face on The Jaw had not.
Thankfully, we did notice this snow transition at exactly the right time and decided to bail. Ironically, we turned around at almost the exact same spot as I did nine years ago.
We may have missed the timing, but we walked away with more experience — and still a solid day out.
Happy days...
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