Cathy and Jeff Conaway described energy to me in terms of potential energy that accumulates in a column of snow before the snow settles or the weak layer disipates. Kinetic energy is released when the weak layer is triggered into an avalanche or it consolidates. Sounds like you need a Ph.D in geomagitianism to know if the slope will avalanche or not.

Okay, what really is energy? I need a non-physics answer. 

I consulted Tremper's Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain. He writes "Researchers believe that shear quality does a good job of determining energy in the snowpack...High quality shears break on a clean, planar surface and pop out with 'energy' like they're spring-loaded. Canadians describe them as 'pops and drops,' meaning they pop out with energy or they collapse." Oh, that makes sense. That's why we emphasize shear quality in stability tests.

Energy is also used to describe avalanche release as one of the three slices of the snowpack stability pie: 1) Strength from stability test results, such as the rutshblock or compression test, 2) Energy measured as the shear quality of the failure plane, and 3) Structure of the snow layering measured by yellow flags or lemons. While stability tests and shear quality show us how likely the weak layer is to fail at that spot (the pit location), yellow flags help determine if the failure will spread and cause an avalanche.

My question becomes: must we conduct a compression test and measure shear quality to determine snowpack energy? Not necessarily, I think. Some snowpack has energy that is obvious through red flags: whoomphing, shooting cracks and hollow sounds. You can also feel energy in the snowpack through your skiis, such as punchy conditions from new snow over depth hoar for or a skittery, buried crust.

Problematic energy is the type you can't observe through a keen backcountry snow sense. This is the energy you can't see, feel or hear. An example is that lingering depth hoar layer that shows up as a CT25 Q1 at 45 cm in the compression test. As Henry Munter from Chugach Powder Guides put it, "I guess I just don't see how anyone could, see, feel, intuit, or otherwise sense the energy stored in deep slab instabilities without getting some gloves and eyeballs into a pit..."

I'm now thinking there is 'observed energy' and 'measured energy.' What do you think? If you've read this far then you better send me an email!

Anchorage alpinist Ryan Hokanson and I left Tincan parking lot at 9 am and first skied the 2,000-foot south face of Tincan Proper (Why not Tincan Improper?) to Tincan Creek. We toured up to Kickstep, booted to the summit and skied the standard chute on the west face. The snow was like skiing a massive duvet until we entered the slough-scoured chute.

Ryan on the northwest ridge of Kickstep above Tincan Creek. The chute we skied drops down and skiers left of Ryan.

Ryan snuck through the rocks and skied this 50-degree shot that dropped straight into the hidden chute. He stopped below a cliff to spot me. I yelled down, "Hey Ryan! You see the chute?" "Oh yeah! It's like a hose, right below me." I took my 45-degree powder line straight into the hose.

Ryan skiing avalanche-scour far below the hose's eight-foot wide venturi. 

Our eight-hour tour was 6,000 feet and 11 miles.

Erica burrowing toward the divide between Lyons and Center Creek.

Erica dropping into the headwaters of Center Creek with Tincan Peak in the background and the Spencer Glacier in the distant right. We booted to the ridge below Tincan Peak and skied to Tincan Creek.       

To test this slope, Erica belayed me from a rock horn on the ridge until I reached this protected cliff. Then Erica skied to the valley floor on stable old powder. Fun!

    Midwinter loopy-tour: 5,000 vertical feet over 15 miles. We finished with a lap from the pocket glacier below Kickstep Mountain. 

Following ravings from Brad Cosgrove, Henry Munter and Ryan Hokanson, I recruted fellow guide and avalanche instructor Leighan Falley for a look. The Chugach avalanche advisory was boasting LOW avalanche danger after rain and two weeks of no snow, but snow began falling as we crossed Turnagain Pass and our doubts rose. As we booted high in the TT43 gullies, the two inches of new snow was point releasing and running 1,000 vertical feet. At 4,000-feet we entered a broken layer of clouds. We remained on the verge of turning around on the entire climb. In the end, the sloughing and storm abated enough to let us squeek up the 43-degree chute and emerge on the corniced summit of Peak 4940. The 4,300-foot shot took us straight to the valley floor. One of the longer runs at Turnagain Pass, but still a long shot from the 6,300-foot north face of Pioneer Peak.

Leighan booting 43-degree snow through rock islands 300 feet from the summit. Hurry! It's 3PM and getting dark.

Stormy and windy but so fun. We had awesome powder skiing for the top 2,000 feet. The new snow over recycled powder was sloughing. We found stable conditions otherwise.  

Skiing dust on crust and dust on avalanche debris in the throat of TT43.

We spent New Years eve in this four-bunk Forest Service cabin with three dogs and ten friends. All night the six-inch lake ice hummed and sang and cracked as if December's second full moon was talking to us. During the day we skied leeward, south-facing chutes filled with sun and untouched snow.

Oh Alaska!

Eric Parsons, Jeff Conaway and I ditched the cabin scene and went skeet shooting on the lake. This is a 25 second exposure at ISO 200 and F 8.0 using a birch log ball head.

Julie watches the blue moon and big dipper rise over Crescent Lake.

Ben Williams, all jacked on sunshine, hucks his meat euro-dog style.

Ben Williams spots Jeff Conaway.

For the last run of the day Jeff Conaway and I skinned and boot-packed high above the cabin for a steep and skinny chute. As we deliberated about stability at the chute's 50-degree entrance, a bus-sized portion of the cornice snapped off and thundered 1,500 feet down the gullet. "I guess it's stable. Let's ski!"

Beaver-wearing Andy stoked on his Polaris 550 Supersport Fan Cooled Twin.

Jeff Jessen looking for his Austrian wife.

Proper Alaska winter trips finish with frozen engines. Andy checks the Coleman stove that's thawing his engine block.

Our friend Max Kaufman from Fairbanks joined Cathy and I for powder and sun so intense we could almost feel it's warmth. Max and I first met in New Zealand in 1994 at the Plateau Hut on Mount Cook. We indulged ourselves on an alpine ice fiesta on the East Buttress of Mount Cook, the Right Icefields on Mount Hicks and Fyfe's Gut. Fifteen years later we play again.

Cathy and Max touring the flats toward Girls Mountain (6,154'). Our turns off the summit were impeccable, 45-degree powder.

Max riding his granola sticks into the setting sun at 3:30 PM.

Or is it sunrise?

 Gabe and Joe in the Monashees.

 Corey and Gabe at The Burner, a recycled timber pub inside an abandoned sawmill burner.

Corey, Gabe and Joe putting away a few pints of Elsinore in The Burner.   

 Halfway through a Tower of Beer at the Kelowna lanes.

Cathy, Cody Arnold, Dmitry Sidrov and I sieged the Jay Rowe traverse at Pivot Point on Turnagain Arm this weekend. We bled, impailed ourselves on devil's club, grunted, cheered and flailed.

North Slope tower climber Cody Arnold matches hands on one tool so he can keep traversing while using one solid edge. His second tool is hooked on his shoulder.

Cody hooking on tiny edges. When the tool pops he'll fly into the old-growth devil's club forest.

Cathy near the no-hands rest.

Dmitry Sidrov said to me: "I've never been dry tooling before." In the 1980's, Dmitry was on the legendary, state-sponsored Russian climbing teams. A process that produced the world's most hardened alpinists until the end of the USSR. Dmitry didn't call it dry tooling back then.

Dmitry torquing his crampon monopoint into a crack as a foothold.

 Sunday afternoon. Rehydrating at the Tap Root.

Andrew McLean is the foremost ski mountaineer in the United States. He has made first ski descents on all seven continents and wrote The Chuting Gallery, the definitive guide to steep skiing in the Wasatch Mountains. Andrew worked as a designer for Black Diamond and developed many of our favorite toys such as camalots and whippets. His witty and hilarious writing is a regular part of Powder, Backcountry, Skiing and Black Diamond.

Check out his web sites straightchuter.com and pawprince.com.

Winter has been late this year--Andrew didn't bring his sticks. Instead we climbed Alaska's most popular mountain, the almighty Flattop.   

Flattop summit in typical winter wind and no snow. 

Wait! There is snow! Andrew route finding and kicking steps near the summit of Flattop.

I take the Cassiar because its deserted. A winding road through the black spruce and mountains. It's all paved and there's plenty of gas. The Cassiar is just lonely enough to deter the weak

Sometimes, between Bell II and the Alaska Highway, I catch myself having fun. When I don't see a single car for hours and my eyes are watching the roadside for marauding animals. A Radiolab pod cast on the two working speakers is talking about a scientist who is raising a bott fly on his forehead. The Cassiar is dramatic, but please, never again.

Beta:

• Portland to Anchorage via the Cassiar and Alaska Highways
• 2,444 miles
• 46 hours of driving
• 1994 Honda Civic DX
• 46 miles per gallon

11:30 pm in mid-July on Kluane Lake, Yukon Territories, 14 hours from Anchorage.

 The sign says: "Check your fuel. Next Services 65 km Stewart, 93 km Bell II" The gas station sign said "Closed for season."

Two hours from home, I stopped at the Matanuska Glacier for a day of film safety work. The Mat Glacier is one of the most accessible glaciers in Alaska. Here, the talent plunges through an ice-coated glacial lake to self-induce hypothermia. He jumped in three times, then he began mumbling about hamburgers and cocoa.