Idaho's Finest Four

Devil’s Bedstead in the Salmon-Challis National Forest.

BY MICAH DREW PHOTOS BY @BJARNESALEN

In his quest to ski the 50 classic descents of North America, pro skier Cody Townsend knocked out four iconic, remote lines in Idaho’s backcountry.

In April of 2021, Cody Townsend, a former professional alpine ski racer turned Hollywood blockbuster stunt skier, woke up outside of Glacier National Park in Montana. He emerged from his Mercedes sprinter van, with its ostentatious “The FIFTY” mountain logo on the door and sidled up to another van where Bjarne Salen was sleeping.

Cody and Bjarne were just one night removed from a three-day sufferfest that involved climbing and skiing the northwest face of Mt. Stimson, a remote peak in the middle of Glacier Park with a sheer 5,000-foot inviting ski line that took the duo, and a third companion, to their breaking point to complete.

“I’m not feeling too bad,” Cody told photographer and cinematographer Bjarne after asking how his body was holding up. “Which, I know it’s the day after we just had a mega-0mission, but… it’s a full green light on avy conditions in Idaho right now.”

Cody Townsend on the descent of Devils Bedstead

So the two packed up their vans and headed south.

Cody and Bjarne were heading to Castle Peak, the last of four lines in Idaho that Cody needed to ski.

“It’s kind of the nature of this project, where I’m working on a few main lines but always keeping my eyes on conditions even outside the mountains I’m actually heading up,” Cody says about the quick turnaround. “I’d seen before we headed out on Stimson that there might be a weather window in Idaho, and you’ve got to just take advantage of those. But one thing I’ve learned is that you cannot count driving as a rest day. You just don’t recover, so that makes things more challenging.”

The drive from Glacier Park down through Stanley towards Castle Peak is more than eight hours of winding river roads. Along the way, Cody stopped on Galena Pass, where 16 years ago he hit a 90-foot road gap with a front flip 360.

“That was back when I used to do dumb stuff,” Cody says in a video. “Granted everyone would probably think what I do now is pretty dumb too.”

What Cody does these days is called “The FIFTY” project, a multi-year project to ski 50 iconic backcountry ski lines as laid out in the book Fifty Classic Ski Descents of North America, which Cody has been documenting in an ongoing YouTube series. Out of the iconic lines featured, four of them lie in the heart of Idaho: the north face of Devil’s Bedstead in the Pioneer mountains, two lines in the Sawtooths — the north couloir of McGowan Peak, the Sickle on Horstmann Peak — and the south face of Castle Peak in the White Clouds.

Each of Cody’s project mountains has its own set of challenges and conditions to work through, as can be expected of epic ski-ventures, and the four Idaho lines, the videos of which have all been released, showcase some of the best and worst of ski mountaineering.

Viewing each of the films side-byside showcases not only the range of the lines themselves, but also the different challenges that arise in each trip.

“One of the things is just to let the mountain tell the story,” Cody says from his home in Lake Tahoe. “I always try to identify what’s going to be most prominent about a mountain or line, but if it doesn’t necessarily have one, that’s where I get creative and tell a different part of the story.”

It’s that extra angle that elevates Cody’s FIFTY project from a series of badass ski films to a series of badass ski films with emotional depth, personal perspective, and central characters who know how to share expertise with ease.

Take McGowan Peak, for example, a mountain that by FIFTY project standards was pretty straightforward.

McGowan Peak in the Sawtooth Mountains.

“It’s beautiful and it’s a cool line, but I thought, ‘Here’s an opportunity to tell people a little bit of what we’re doing behind the scenes,” Cody says. “For me that’s the stuff I found really interesting when I started getting into backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. It’s not just skiing a line, it’s the process, and I like to share that.”

“When I first had the idea for the project in my head, when it came to individual episodes, I told people it would be 80% not skiing, it’s going to be mostly everything else,” he continues.

In his McGowan video, Cody details how he meticulously plans each trip — tracking weather near the lines he’s targeting, looking at avalanche condition trends across North America, and getting in touch with friends, avalanche forecasters, or anyone else with on-the-ground information about snowpack in a region. And those nitty-gritty details of planning a ski adventure prove as fascinating to watch as a few insane minutes of Cody’s skiing.

Cody Townsend and Tucker Patton skin up to McGowan Peak.

Cody’s time in Idaho has not been extensive, but another of his intentions for the project includes exploring unfamiliar ski regions.

“There are two things that stand out about Idaho. One, the amount of mountains in this state is, I don’t know, like one of the best-kept secrets, for literally how many backcountry lines there are,” Cody says. “The second thing is just the Sawtooths are so rad. It’s like the little brother of the Tetons — it’s a little smaller, but there’s also way less people.”

Cody says that of the four lines he skied in Idaho, the Sickle on Horstmann was by far the coolest one. Unfortunately, he ended up skiing it in some of the worst conditions.

Horstmann Peak lights up in an early sunrise.

Horstmann towers above the north side of Redfish Lake, and the Sickle, a 1,000-foot curved couloir off the eastern shoulder of the mountain is clearly visible from Highway 75. Getting to the peak however, especially in mid-winter, is daunting. Imagine, traveling first two miles by snowmobile, four miles of ski touring, then climbing 3,760 vertical feet to the top of the line. Add that to the fact Cody was joined by his wife Elyse, a world champion freeride skier, on her first ski mountaineering trip. On camera.

After setting out in the -5 degree, predawn darkness, and completing the final face of the climb with crampons and ice axes out, the group faced the reality of skiing down a narrow chute in bad snow conditions.

“I literally thought going up would be the worst part, but [going down] is going to be the worst part,” Elyse says to the camera. “It’s just so steep and the snow is such crap and it’s so tight, it’s not going to look pretty for the cameras. It’s going to be survival skiing.”

The Sickle showcases exactly what Cody said earlier: these films are 80% not skiing. And that last 20%? Side-slipping down the Sickle Couloir.

“I just dragged my wife up there and totally sandbagged her because I didn’t think it would be as big of a day as it ended up being or as bad of conditions as it was,” Cody said. “It’s a long approach, but then, …It’s like five miles of flat at the end which is more walking than you want at the end of a ski mission. But regardless, the Sickle is just as legit, beautiful, amazing as a couloir anywhere.”

In stark contrast, Castle Peak, the last of the Idaho lines, is one of the most relaxed of Cody’s projects. While the skiers received some faulty beta regarding the approach distance, it turned out to be the good kind of wrong beta: it was shorter and easier than expected.

Rather than needing to spend a night out, Bjarne and Cody spotted their objective by noon. The next day they set out and within a few hours, sat on the summit.

“When you get up high on a peak in Idaho, it’s just mountains as far as you can see,” Cody said, his tone wistful. “Looking around, just all of it has potential and I know none of it.”