TR: Alaska 4/11-15

[dizzy 0]

Originally, I’d meant to go to Anchorage and my brother who lives in Dutch (that’s Dutch Harbor, a town on the Aleutian Island of Unalaska) was going to join me for four days of snowboarding. But his wife was 8 1/2 months pregnant with their third kid, so I ended up going solo.

 

This was my second trip, the first being to Dutch in 2004. Fractured wrist at the time, no skiing.

Alaska is BIG:

 

I had a “weekend Heli package” reserved at Chugach Powder Guides and they came to Ted Steven’s Airport in Anchorage to pick me up. It’s a 40-minute drive into the town of Girdwood with scenery like this:

 

And super couloirs like this across the Turnagain Arm:

 

CPG’s weekend package is two days lift tickets at Alyeska Ski Resort and two days reserved in the bird, flying weather permitting, with accommodations at the plush Alyeska Hotel. I wanted an extra day in the chopper, so I ditched the second resort day and reserved a seat. With three chopper days reserved, I hoped I’d be lucky to get one day of good weather.

 

Whenever you go to Alaska, it’s hit and miss. It’s like playing the lottery for the chance to ski dream lines that are two-three times as long as lines the Hakuba crew has been ripping. I can’t comment on Alaska powder, it was April! Powder season’s over mid-March in AK.

 

The driver was a cool dude and gave me pointers on where to go in Girdwood.

 

Day one was the resort day:

 

The tram takes you up the north face of Mt. Alyeska from 2,500 feet from 250 above sea level and then you get views like this all day:

 

I was only at the resort one day, so I prolly don’t have a well-rounded opinion of it, but I didn’t like it. At this time of year, it’s bright until 11:00 p.m and it takes that much longer for the snow to soften up. The resort is kind of like A-basin in Colorado—a handful of groomed “trails” but you can go anywhere you want. The snow didn’t soften up and after a few hours on crunchy chunky edge-destroying chop, I called it a day.

 

The next day was much better and I’m glad I reserved the extra day.

The best way to go to CPG for big mountain skiing is with a crew of three of your buddies. That way, you don’t get a group of varied ability. I was lucky enough to be with a skier and a telemarker who could hold their own. There was another skier, too. Four clients per bird.

 

The guides build you up run by run. On the first run, they took us close to a Bergschund to show us what one was and how fricking big they actually are.

 

“No turns over this!” the guide shouted. I pointed my board over 10 meter long, two meter wide hole that was partially covered, partially exposed. And this was a small one. We tried different slopes. South and east were crap, and west-facing slopes let off enough slough to knock you on your ass. After trying a north and north-west facing slopes, we found gold: stable and smooth powder. We hit north-facing slopes the rest of the day.

 

We were all too busy skiing for a lot of pics, but here’s one of the bird taking another group of clients up for another run. The big mountain in the background is the west face of Alyeska Resort. Turnagain behind it.

 

CPG guarantees you 11,000-20,000 vertical feet skied. The Winter Creek Glacier

of the Chugach Mountains are their backyard, so they have pre-determined terrain and know how much vertical in on each. And runs have all got names.

 

We skied slopes where you can’t see your first two or three turns, runs with names like Grasshopper, Gold Pan, and Check it Out. The runs were more intense than anything I’ve ever ridden or skied before, my best is prolly Mott Canyon at Heavenly in Tahoe or some chutes FT has taken me to in Hakuba.

 

The weather was great; it was warm, 5 C, and a slight breeze. We rebated Grasshopper twice and the third time, the pilot landed on a tiny spine of a ridge about as wide as your desk with the end of the blades three feet from a band of rocks. “Real slow,” he ordered us as we got out. The snow was soft, knee-to-mid-hip deep, smooth. Heaven is another word that describes it.

 

We took lunch under blue skies. CPG brings lunch up. Chicken wraps, soup, and at 4,000 feet is pretty good. Two other guides came up to skin one couloir of about a billion up there and check the snowpack.

 

We kept hitting runs until 6:30 (it was still bright as early afternoon for us mid-latitude dwellers). Eight hours, nine runs and 25,900 vertical feet, we’d just come down a north-facing run, called Hendrix. It was now cloudy and the guide was ready to call it a day. We were waiting for our helicopter and the clouds broke. I said to the guide, “Hey, Jon, can we go to that couloir the other guides re-conned?”

He said sure.

 

It was highlight of the day and the trip. Hendrix Couloir. 900 vertical meters, 40-45 degrees, beautiful. This was my first real couloir. I think I’m in love:

Guide, client about 30 meters below; tracks of the guides who re-conned it and the bird in the plain below:

 

The tail guide on the top third, the tiny speck there:

 

But there’s no perspective for scale:

 

 

There’s tons of terrain there and people do much more gnarly slopes than this. But, from what the guides and staff were saying, that was their run of the season, so consider myself pretty damn lucky. I’m definitely going back to Alaska.

 

Will add snowcat pictures up of the last two days of powder later. It snowed the next 5 days. Thanks samurai and fubuki for the advice on AK.

 

Last week, my brother’s wife gave birth to a daughter, their first. If he doesn’t have another kid next time I go to AK, he’ll hopefully be joining me.

[Yuki's Passion 1]

sweet TR dizzy. Damn so jealous man. Put up more pics when you have the time in your busy schedule

[Fattwins 0]

Cool dizzy so now we have to take you into some of the bigger coolies in hakuba then!

[samurai 0]

Dizzy, good on ya! Glad you got to fly. girdwood's a cool little town, eh? did you drive down the Seward Highway towards the tip of Kenai penninsula? (towards Homer?) That has got to be the best road-side skiing in the world. Car-to-peak-to-car can be done in like 2-3 hours.

 

anyway, those shots bring back a lot of memories. Turnagain Arm, and the shot from Alyeska even remind me of the magical coffee shop/bakery for some reason. (I camped in the field next to the airstrip one summer for about 10 days and the bakery in girdwood has some pretty sick cinnamon rolls.) alyeska can be lame, as you said, but the spring hiking can get sick. fwiw.

 

I can't be for certain, but grasshopper and check it out sound really familiar. Good to hear it, more photos please...

[Kumapix 0]

Nice TR. iina!

[bushpig 0]

Nice mate!

[spook 0]

nice TR. those are some pretty hefty looking lines

[veronica 2]

Excellent dizzy, thanks for sharing. Looks great.

[SirJibAlot 0]

Sweet. I've been to Alaksa a few times for business (Fairbanks/Ankorage), beautiful countryside - but never did get a chance to rip it up.....

[snowbender 3]

Looks great. On the list of places to visit.

[Mantas 3]

Thanks Dizzy....You just pushed Alaska to the top of the list of Places I'd like to visit.