17 JAN 2001
Editor's Note: The following video interview was recorded prior to Win's departure on the Greater Yellowstone expedition.
Click for: Clip 1 | Clip 2 | Clip 3
Transcripts:
MountainZone.com: The area you're exploring is really remote, but it's also right in your backyard. What spurred your desire to travel through Greater Yellowstone on skis?
Winston Goodbody: Well, we've done a few trips in the area over the years, and I guess we just started to investigate. A lot of people, if they go to Wyoming, first get interested in the Tetons. You might do some skiing or climbing in the Tetons, and then you start to explore the areas right around the Tetons and you find that, in fact, all of northwest Wyoming is just basically endless peaks.
I did a few trips in some adjacent areas — you just get more interested in exploring the next spot over, and the next peak over. Then the natural thing seems to be doing some kind of long distance trip that links up a bunch of these areas or passes through more than one range—one or two different ranges.
"Well, the cold, it's just sort of a heat management game..."
But I've found that the longer the trip, the more fun and rewarding it is. It's sort of like an immersion thing. You know, if you go to take French or something, and you go for the weekend versus if you go for six months; the deeper you get into it, and the more you get in good shape physically, and you get tuned in to your surroundings, it's really a great chance to look at a different kind of place and to get into it.
MountainZone.com: What were some of the things you experienced on those other trips to Yellowstone that sucked you into wanting to go back?
Winston: I guess the first long trip I went on was about 19 days. I did it with a friend of mine, and it was funny because neither of us had been out for longer than three days before that. But we did a 19-day ski trip in the Wind River Range in Wyoming in spring, and there's something about the fluid, sort of moving every day, you sort of get into it and try to see "Well, how far can I go today?" or "How much ground can I cover?"
Just being completely self-supported, to be able to carry everything you need with you for weeks on end, really, it's just a great feeling of self reliance I guess. Just to know that you can go anywhere you want to on that day, or for the next 15 days.
We've had a lot of interesting times out there. In Yellowstone, I've definitely had some interesting experiences in the cold. You know, it gets really cold weather, which has a whole different series of tricks and camping things that go along with it to just being comfortable out there.
I'd say in the Yellowstone area, probably for me, the most interesting thing is the wildlife. On the last few trips I've done, I've had a chance to see some of the wolf packs in the actual park in Yellowstone. You see a lot of bears in the springtime, and it's fun to be out there. You're not just in this completely unoccupied landscape. It's not just sort of rock and ice, and a barren wilderness, but it's quite busy with all kinds of other life. It's fun to travel through and just see what's going on out there for all the other residents.
"The Absarokas are kind of like this wild, sort of volcanic chaos of really steep and crumbly peaks..."
MountainZone.com: What are some of the tricks you've learned dealing with the cold on your past trips there?
Winston: Well, the cold, it's just sort of a heat management game. You can have all the greatest warm clothing in the world, but it doesn't generate any heat. You have to be warm, and then you just basically have to conserve your heat. You tend to jump pretty quickly out of the sleeping bag and into the warm clothes in the morning, when it's like 30 below. It's just being comfortable and not letting things freeze I guess.
Everything freezes when it's cold, of course — your water, your wet socks turn into pieces of wood — pretty much you have to keep the whole thawing-melting process going — drying stuff out. You can't just leave your shirt out overnight or it becomes a piece of plywood.
But it's really, I mean it's pretty easy and it's sort of intuitive. It's almost like you get out there and you're pretty rusty for the first few weeks, and then you get into it and it's just second nature.
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The trip is basically broken up; there are 11 different legs, which as you can see on the
maps, we're sort of doing a big inverted V across greater Yellowstone, in Wyoming. We've basically broken it up into 11 sections, and where we hit a road, or where there is a likely exit or entrance point, we've sort of decided, "Okay, that's where that leg ends."
The logistics game is figuring out all of the food ahead of time and transporting the food around the region — some gear, but mostly food. Just trying to figure out exactly how much ground you can cover in what amount of time, and then maybe you might leave some food along the way, or maybe we'll have some people come in and meet us to re-supply.
It's really not that tough, you know, the beginning of something like this always consists of going down to the grocery store and buying 500 Clif Bars or something. But then you basically get everything all packed up. We have this room that's just full of food, from floor to ceiling, and you get everything in their boxes or whatnot, and then mail the boxes off around the region. So sometimes we might come through a town, and we've already mailed ourselves a box of food to that town, so we pick it up and keep going.
Or we might come out to a road, and we've driven there ahead of time and left something with a friend, or something like that. It's sort of like all the logistics happen before the trip even starts, and then once it starts, there is really not much to worry about because it's all done.
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MountainZone.com: What are some of the key things that you'll be bringing with you?
Winston: It's really just a question of what you are willing to carry. On the sections where we'll have sleds, which allow us to carry more weight, but also sometimes you can carry bulky items that aren't necessarily that heavy, but maybe you wouldn't normally bring them along in your pack.
I think we'll be using some down jackets, maybe down pants at night for sitting around. But it's really — you move and you take everything off, and even if it's quite cold, you can ski along with nothing on, even just some long underwear. Then the second you stop, you quickly put everything on. So, it's sort of a layering game. You want to basically never have to take anything off. You put things on and take things off, but you never really want to have to remove a lower layer or something like that. Anything you ever wear, once you get to the next step colder, it's always on. You just put things on top of it.
As far as sleeping, we might experiment with using some not-quite-as-warm bags as you might want, and just keeping some clothes on basically inside of them so you don't have to carry the enormous 10-pound sleeping bag, but you still can be pretty warm in it.
Gloves, maybe some footwear; it just depends on how spoiled you want to get. But it's nice to have the camp booties sitting around at night, just so you can relax, and you don't have to flee into your sleeping bag as soon as it gets cold.
"...after he notices that I've been putting half my stuff in his sled for the first two weeks he'll probably lash out at me in a fury..."
MountainZone.com:What kind of ski gear will you be on?
Winston: I'll be on alpine touring (AT) gear most of the time. AT gear is not necessarily as comfortable as telemark gear, but my boots are really comfortable. You don't have the feel of the ski quite as much, but it's almost easier in some ways because the boot is real warm and there is no flex when you're taking your step, whereas with the tele boot there's some flex. But I might switch off. I'll mostly be on AT gear. My partner is on tele gear, I think, the whole way.
MountainZone.com:A lot of your trip is going to be touring and just covering a lot of ground. How about if you guys see a nice ridge or a nice peak that you might want to ski...what is going to be your approach there?
Winston: We sort of have a lot of ground to cover so I think that what we'll do is figure out what areas are likely to have some good skiing, and then we'll travel pretty quickly through other areas so we can move more slowly when we get somewhere good.
A lot of it depends upon the weather, of course, at least early on in the trip. If the conditions are dangerous, we're not going to be able to do that much skiing, but we'll hope to be on a good enough schedule that we can just stop and ski anything around if we so desire.
Especially as the winter goes on, as the days get longer, and the snow gets more supportable. As we get in better shape, we should be able to do a lot of skiing, but it's hard to say.
Early on, in the first leg of the trip, will be probably the hardest, just because the snow will be — it's January, it's going to be deep snow trailbreaking. We'll both be in, well, I'll be in, bad shape after a holiday season of binge eating, and we won't be able to move quite as fast. We might not be able to linger much and ski as much, especially in the Absarokas and the Wind River Ranges. We're going to be passing by some some great ski stuff, so we'd love to ski as much of it as we can in the time we have.
MountainZone.com: Do you have your eyes on any peaks in particular?
Winston: There's a lot of peaks in Absarokas that look like they'd be real interesting to ski right around the southeast arm of Yellowstone lake— like Colter, Turret, Langford, the Trident. The Absarokas are kind of like this wild, sort of volcanic chaos of really steep and crumbly peaks. They really don't see much of action in the winter, so, it's hard to say. I don't really know many the people who have skied a lot of the stuff back there, but on the map it looks great.
In the Wind River Range, there's more peaks than you could ever hope to ski, but maybe Dragon Head or Fremont. There's a lot of good stuff in the Titcomb Basin area, and Cirque of the Towers has a lot of good things to ski if conditions permit. Basically, the whole trip is good stuff to see, so we'll really hope to hit a lot of it.
MountainZone.com: How do you and Joe know each other?
Winston: Joe and I, we actually just met last year, in April. We went on a trip in the Absarokas in Wyoming with some other people and went into Overlook Peak, Fish Hawk Creek, near Cody, Wyoming. We met through a mutual friend, and we've both shared similar fantasies about extended ski touring in this area. We started talking about this trip, and then it sort of fell into place. And we've since gone on a few other shorter trips together. We've just corresponded a lot by email, a lot of mountain stuff being passed back and forth, but I think it's going to work out pretty well.
MountainZone.com: At what point do you anticipate first wanting to wring his neck because you're so tired of him?
Winston: Right. Well, after he notices that I've been putting half my stuff in his sled for the first two weeks he'll probably lash out at me in a fury. No, it's definitely one of the key parts to the trip, being able to get along. I think in our case, we'll be good, try not to get on each other's nerves too much. I'll have to restrain myself from singing too many Foreigner songs, or whatever else might drive him crazy.
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