Way off to the south there was Montague Island and the Prince William Sound:

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This is my crew.  We were tasked with compiling a database of stream characteristics along a 1,000 mile corridor right through the heart of Alaska.  We spent 3 weeks walking streams in our waders.  Most days I carried my tripod so I could survey in high water evidence.  Off to the left is our boat, the venerable Achilles with a 20hp Yamaha motor.  We had to set up and break down that boat anytime the stream was too deep or too fast to wade across.  It worked great even without a jet prop attachment.  Generally work went smooth and I had opportunities to take photos and get a few mountain bike rides in.

We traveled the northern part of Alaska Dalton Highway which for many people is a bucket list item.  This view is when the highway gets really nice.  North of here is flat, boring, and cold.  Note the lack of trees.  Above Atigun Pass there are no trees, just shrubs and grass.

While we used the Achilles, the other survey team used this tiny little red R44 helicopter.  It really is a fun little bird.

We spent a few days around Atigun Pass.  Aside from the constant rain it really was a beautiful place.  I saw zero Dall Sheep, a disappointment.

Once you get over Atigun Pass the Dalton Highway gets really pretty.  The dirt road goes on and on for hundreds of miles.

I called this mountain Mt. Greyskull.

My crew had these three vehicles for the duration of the trip.  I drove one of the 25 foot RVs.  By the end of the trip I wanted to live in it for the rest of the summer.  The GMC 2500 was horrible to drive on the Dalton.  The suspension was too stiff and the back end walked.

No trip to Alaska is complete without a moose sighting.  I saw a lot more in one day in Anchorage than I did in 3 weeks on the road.

Once we got around Denali National Park the scenery got really amazing.

Unfortunately my suggestion that I take the day and ride my mountain bike into Denali was denied.  Tension got a little high but the next morning we were treated to a visual of Denali and its mountain neighbors.  The stoke factor was high.

After Denali we put our noses to the grindstone and got the next 500 miles or so cranked out.  The king salmon were running and inner Alaska is pretty much thick forest and prime moose territory.  Back in Anchorage I was able to really ride the mountain bike (Kincaid is awesome) and plan a weekend trip down to Seward in the RV that I “borrowed”.  Seward and the rest of the Kenai Peninsula is a beautiful place that I could spend weeks in and not get bored.  Maybe I’ll become a fish biologist..

Cheers to all and thanks to Brittany and Frank!

Colin

@onegearonelove on Instagram if you would like to see the low resolution iPhone photos I took on the trip.

The post Guest Post: My summer road trip in Alaska appeared first on 14erskiers.com.

Back in late March, Malcolm and I decided to check it out. Due to my usual early morning grogginess, the day started out as a bit of a shit show. I forgot the appropriate allen key to adjust my crampons for my new boots, and my camera was definitely missing its SD card. But, after a refueling stop for power rings (donuts), we were on our way across Portage Lake. Due to its proximity to the coast, the lake is often a nightmare – a wind tunnel of ice fog and ground blizzards. We got lucky, finding calm wind and fast, firm snow.

Three miles later, our faces covered in a fresh layer of rime, we were across the lake and at the base of the Portage Glacier:

Following the advice of a friend, we continued past the toe of the glacier, then climbed one of the lateral moraines which brought us past the terminal ice fall. As we moved up the Portage more glaciers came spilling down towards us.

After a few more miles we roped up, threading our way through the crevasses and holes. Malcolm running up through a gap in one of the ice falls:

After negotiating another ice fall the summit pyramid came into view. The exit couloir from the hanging snow field is not visible in this picture. It exits through the rocks just lookers right of the large hanging serac.

Feeling the pull of the mountain, Malcolm surged ahead; he is so fast, something I was quickly reminded of by the rope/tow strap between us.

We passed under the huge north face of Carpathian following a narrow pass towards the northeast ridge. At the pass, the ice field and Blackstone Glacier unfolded beneath us.

From there, we followed the northeast ridge towards the summit. Covered in firm rime and snow, the exposed ridge was fast and fun.

100 vertical feet below the summit we moved back onto the north face, belaying each other across one last sagging crevasse before the final climb. Of course, the last 65 degree push to the summit was shiny and hard alpine ice complete with a frustratingly rotten layer below it. Hoping we’d find soft snow somewhere, we brought our skis to the top.

Popping out on the summit, it was much smaller than I expected. Its just a few feet wide and 50 feet long, falling thousands of feet to the ice field on one side and Skookum Glacier on the other. Knowing we still had miles ahead of us we briefly took in the incredible views of Marcus Baker, the Prince William Sound, and Isthmus peak, to name a few.

Skiing rock hard 65 degree ice above open crevasses, seracs, and thousand foot cliffs was out of the question. So, we began the tedious process of climbing down the final 100 feet. This process was mentally exhausting for me. At least I had an ice axe, Malcolm had forgone his ice axe for a whippet. But, Malcolm is Malcolm, and was unphased. After the downclimb we put on our skis and approached the first bergschrund crossing. I jumped it first, with Malcolm bringing up the rear.

The next 1,000 vertical feet was intense: equal parts chalk and gnarly ice. Navigating the ice through open and bridged crevasses was…rough.

Stoke or relief? Both?

We rolled into the next steep section with the constant concern of more ice as we skied towards the huge cliffs below.

As we approached the exit couloir, it got firm again. Really firm. I watched Malcolm slide sideways on his edges past the entrance. Finally he was able to get his edges into the ice, stop, and begin the painstaking process of sidestepping uphill on the bulletproof ice. Getting into the protected couloir was a huge relief. Fly on the wall:

Into the good snow, time to relax a bit:

Approaching the lower bergshcrund:

The exit couloir already hidden from view, we enjoyed soft relaxing turns below the summit block.

Then retraced our steps back down the Portage.

Back at the lake we refueled on wined and smoked gouda, offered to us by a wonderful transplant from Georgia. All we had left was the three mile skate out across the lake. Looking back at Bard, still on the hit list.

10 hours and 25 miles later we were back at the truck, sharing our adventures with a stoked group who had just ridden Bard.

Combining all the elements of big mountain skiing in Alaska, the day was physically and mentally exhausting. I can’t wait to string together Bard, Carpathian, and Byron next year. And, yes Malcolm, I have scars from the blisters I got on our race back across the lake.

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It is my hope that these posts will at the very least offer something to the reader, as we approach another winter season.

I have no pictures of this avalanche, words will have to do. 14erskiers is a very visual website, however, so here is a photo of the slide that will be the subject of part 3:

In 2005, I traveled to Valdez, Alaska, to go heli skiing near Thompson Pass. Those misadventures can be found here, but I didn’t say much about the slide in that post.

In my view, most slides are fairly obvious before they ever happen. That’s why the “Monday morning quarterbacking” is so easy to do- after the fact, it’s easy to see all the signs that were missed or discounted prior to a slide. I don’t want to discount all the R2D2’s and C3PO’s that can be discovered in a full scale pit, but more often than not, the monster is known- whether it’s the first big snowfall after a prolonged dry spell, or stiff windslabs after a wind event, or rapid warming with a poor freeze the night before. These things are obvious to experienced backcountry skiers, and yet we so often ignore them. Why?

Because excuses and justifications are easy to make, and so much more fun than turning around. And we get away with it all the time- until we don’t. “East faces are windloaded?”- “Oh, this is Northeast, we’ll be fine.” “Rotten, faceted snowpack on the ground?”- “Oh, it’s bridged over.” I still do this even today, though I try not to. Back to AK, where the signs were obvious and plentiful, but explained away.

We were set up in our RV on Thompson Pass, the first group of the season. Unfortunately, the weather was bad every day, and even our helicopter had not been able to make the journey from Glenallen. Finally, we had a half-decent visibility day, so our group headed up for some roadside objectives. We did one smart thing- we were a huge group, around 12, so we split up into two different groups. My group headed up, with one particularly strong skier in the lead. Now, this skier is/was a pro, if you saw a ski movie in the late 80’s or early 90’s, chances are you’ve seen this skier before.

We skinned our way up onto a ridge, and then the lead skier veered down into a large gully. At this point, to our credit, 3 of us voiced concerns about the route choice. “Shouldn’t we stay on this ridge?” we said. “The wind is really howling, I want to get out of the wind”, comes the answer. So rather than staying on a safe ridge, we found ourselves heading right up the gut while the wind loaded the slopes above. The justification? Meh, maritime snowpacks don’t slide. That was actually stated, but the real kicker, which no one mentioned, was that we were following a pro- surely he knows what he’s doing, after years of skiing on just about every continent with film crews in tow.

We were skinning up the gully when a few random snowballs rolled down the slope. Followed immediately by a noise, and a wall of snow barreling towards us- the wind had overloaded a cornice far above us and now we were in its path. Luckily, 4 of us were in a wide part of the gully, with a bit of a rise above the lowest part of the gully, and the slide went just past us. The 5th skier was a little ways behind us, in the center of the gully, and he was swept down in the slide. This was a fairly large slide, but luckily, he was only buried chest deep and right side up, and was easy to find and dig out, though one ski was never found.

There you have it. Even though the majority of us thought we were picking a poor route, we went anyway. Had the cornice broken off at a different time, it could have been a much worse situation. All because we saw the signs but didn’t heed them.

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…Continued from Part 1

There are eagles everywhere in Cordova – including on the skin track – they are a testament to the strength and biodiversity of the area.

From the start, Rachel and the wonderful people of Cordova were happy to show me around. The access here is incredible. You start skinning 3 minutes from the house.

You hit treeline at 400 meters.

And quick bootpacks bring you to the top of big faces.

Rachel slaying one of said faces:

Of course, the other side of Cordova is the weather. It will dump 50 cm of snow in 12 hours then pour rain for the next week. But, as long as it finishes as snow it doesn’t matter. 

Because when it’s not raining Cordova actually does have great storm riding.

Another incredible part of Cordova is the “ski area”. For $5 you get a ride on Mount Eyak’s one-man chairlift to some of the best sidecountry in the country:

A 45 minute hike brings you to this:

In April I met up with the Crested Butte contingent in Anchorage. I personally think that Anchorage is one of the best ski towns in the country – you have three totally different areas: Hatcher Pass, the Front Range, and Turnagain Pass – PLUS there are jobs there. If it’s cloudy at Turnagain, it’s probably bluebird at Hatcher. If Turnagain is sunny it’s probably stable. If you have 3 hours after work, you can be skinning up the Front Range 20 minutes after you leave your desk. 

We started out with a day at Hatcher Pass:

Hatcher Pass isn’t like a lot of skiing in Alaska: it’s rocky and colder; powder lasts longer, but so do persistent instabilities. 

After Hatcher we headed to Turnagain Pass. Turnagain is filled with classic lines and far less wind than Cordova and Valdez. Valdez is plagued with fierce outflow winds because of its proximity to the interior; Cordova often has bad “gap winds” because it gets sandwiched between high and low pressure systems.

We started our first day on Turnagain with some classic Alaska adventure:

Followed some wolverine tracks:

And finished it off with a big face of spines and flutes on TT43:

Rachel joined us for a long weekend.

We skied more Turnagain…

Turnagain gets hit harder than any backcountry zone in Colorado. On weekends it looks like a ski area, so we headed over the pass to the Twin Peaks zone.

Where we had big walls of powder to ourselves:

We headed down to Whittier to check out some of the lines we’d seen from the ferry. The skiing outside of Whittier is as spectacular as it gets. Unfortunately, Whittier gets crushed by gaps winds. 

But, it sure is beautiful there!

It also has amazing terrain and easy access. 

After Anchorage I brought the Crested Butte boys to Cordova. It started out by dumping 40 cm of snow in 24 hours.

Then, like the truly magical maritime climate that it is, it stabilized!

Danny Spencer racing his slough down a local face:

With long Alaskan daylight in full effect, we snowmobiled 30 km out to the Scott Glacier. The Scott is filled with a lifetime of lines:

A bit more window shopping on the Scott:

High on the Scott Glacier, poaching the Points North Heliskiing terrain:

A week later, on April 25th, with rain in the local mountains we tried to head back up to the Scott Glacier. The parking lot wasn’t promising:

A lot had changed in a week; it took us three hours of bushwhacking and river crossings to make it up to the ski zones. Even at 1,500 meters there was a rain crust.

Since then the temperature has not dropped below freezing around Cordova. Huge glide avalanches and wet slides are coming down everywhere – skiing is done here until a well-drained isothermal snowpack develops.

Cordova has the best of the best and the worst of the worst; when its bluebird, the maritime snowpack, access, and terrain are world class. But, it’s easy to forget about that when it rains for a week straight. Then again, down days in Cordova are pretty special in their own way:

The post Guest TR: North to Alaska Part 2: Cordova, Whittier, Turnagain, and Hatcher Pass appeared first on 14erskiers.com.

This January my longtime girlfriend Rachel was surprised with a job offer in Cordova, Alaska. So, she took it and flew up immediately. In March I quit my job in Denver, packed my car, hooked up my snowmobile, and got the hell out of Dodge. I started with a bit of a detour to see the good people of Crested Butte and to get in a day of touring in the incredible backcountry there:

From Crested Butte I headed north towards Jackson Hole. Looking back towards Crested Butte from Delta:

Driving into Jackson always gets me pumped:

I spent four days in Jackson with my good friend Erik Mehus. We skied the resort, the amazing Granite Canyon sidecountry, and the sled skiing terrain of Phillips Canyon. Erik took advantage of one of the few moments of good light over the four days to take this cliff on Teton Pass really really deep:

From Jackson I headed for Idaho and Montana:

After repacking my car outside of Butte, the SubaLodge was born!

The next day I was through the border and into Canada.

Alberta reminded me a lot of Colorado’s Front Range – plains to the east and big mountains to the west.

At Calgary I turned west, headed for Banff and Jasper. After a beautiful night in Jasper National Park, the world’s largest dark sky preserve, I continued on the Icefields Highway. Falling snow obscured some of the views, but what I could see was beautiful.

By Jasper SubaLodge was running on fumes and I was relieved to find a gas station…it was in French…s’il vous plait???

After Jasper I drove west into British Columbia and towards the Stewart-Cassiar highway. The first day in BC was through mountain valleys shaded by tall peaks. The next day I crossed the Skeena River and turned north onto the Stewart-Cassiar highway:

Things immediately got more interesting:

I began to worry that I was going run out of gas when the “town” I had planned to fill up at turned out to be simply an intersection in the road; 100 kilometers later I found gas at Last Frontier Heliskiing.

The S-C highway is a bit wild: there is no shoulder, it’s largely unplowed, and everyone drives down the middle of the road at 50 kph over the speed limit.

This is a bit nerve racking when the visibility is usually like this:

After entering the Yukon I rejoined the ALCAN (Alaska-Canadian) Highway. In retrospect, following the ALCAN from Calgary would have been far less stressful: I wouldn’t have been constantly in fear of running out of gas and being stranded along the cold deserted highway. Also, I missed the Liard Hot Springs, which sound rad. But, the S-C highway sure was an adventure!

I continued north on the Alcan Highway; passing the Kluane Mountains which harbor the highest mountains in Canada:

Soon I was back in the US, this time in Alaska; falling asleep on the side of the highway in the SubaLodge I saw the northern lights for the first time in my life. The next day I made it to Anchorage where I met up with my good friend Lauren at 6 PM for a sunset ski in the Front Range:

From Anchorage I drove to Whittier to catch the Cordova ferry. Whittier is, to say the least, a weird place. It’s accessed via a one lane tunnel and most everyone lives together in a tower. But, the beauty of the mountains shooting straight out of the water is unparalleled.

Looking back at the tower which also houses such things as the grocery store, police department, and clinic:

The ferry ride across the Prince William Sound was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life: huge mountains, glaciers, and whales. Everyone should do it at least once! Montague Island, which separates the Prince William Sound from the Gulf of Alaska:

Cordova greeted me with a week of high pressure and beauty:

Continue on to Part 2

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I found myself in the same vicinity as my first tour up here, this time with new friend Dana and a buddy of his. And once again we found ourselves skinning in the clouds.

Once again, we ended up above it all, and began a short bootpack up a ridge.

The light up here in Alaska seems to always fall into one of two categories- murky milky clouds or spectacular lighting thanks to the latitude. Up above the clouds, the light was once again in the latter category. Scenic and line-scoping overload:

A friend of ours from Colorado was this week’s special guest guide at Chugach Powder Guides, and we were able to watch them cruising around the area…

Keen eyes will see the top of Alyeska’s chair 6 in this shot:

Anyway, on to the skiing. First off, a video. For those of you who haven’t skied in super flat light with no trees/rocks/etc to light the way, be sure to watch the second half as well. It’s a wild feeling skiing in that kind of light.

And a few shots:

Now you see him…

Now you don’t…

It’s a bit of a broken record, but man has it ever been a good 10 days or so. So sad to have to leave soon…

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