Girdwood Glacier Skiing

In early May 2010 guided the Marshall family for a week of Girdwood Heli Drop skiing. The Marshall family comes from Laramie, Wyoming. Kent has been backcountry skiing forever, from Canada to France, and is all about visiting his daughter Cassady who is project manager for the cleanup at the former Chevron refinery in Kenai. Kent's son Brooks also joined us from Logan, Utah. Brooks is about to start a Ph.D program in chemistry at Bozeman. Good luck Brooks! No distractions in Bozeman. Ha!

Laramie people are a hardy bunch. Their local hill is Snowy Range Ski Area and chickens fall over when the wind stops blowing. To welcome the Marshalls to the Chugach I mustered a windstorm on the first night of our four-day trip. Then we had endless skiing in blistering sunshine.

Kent saying later to Alpine Air who lifted us from Girdwood to the Sparrow Glacier in 15 minutes. The weather clagged in soon after allowing us to focus on avalanche rescue, crevasse rescue, then building massive snow block walls for the windstorm.

Cassady cutting dry snow on our first run of the trip. To check snow stability before the run, Brooks gave me a counter balance belay over the ridge. I found a weak layer from seven days earlier that failed on CT24 Q2 at 25 cm. Since we saw no other red flags or positive results from slope tests, we skied this slope one at a time, traversing skiers left above the 'schrund.

 

Day two. We hit seven passes with piles of turns in between. Here we're skinning above the Pipet Glacier with pass four below us and pass three on the sun/shadow line on the ridge behind. 

Kent reeeeely likes to ski. If Kent's this stoked at 60, how stoked was he at 30?

Our basecamp high above the Girdwood Valley.

Kent, Cassady and Brooks above the Swallow Glacier minutes before skiing down to catch our flight back to Girdwood for lunch at Chair Five. Thanks for an incredible trip Kent, Cassady and Brooks! I can't wait for Little Switzerland with you in 2011!

Valdez w/ Dan & Nik

The only thing better than Thompson Pass in April would be Thompson Pass in April with a carbon dioxide ban. Dan Oberlatz (owner of Alaska Alpine Adventures), Nik Koblov a long-time friend of Dan's from Brooklyn and I roadied to Valdez for a few days of touring. Our timing was perfect--splitter weather, stable conditions, Tailgate Alaska had just finished and the Mountain Man Hill Climb hadn't started.

Dan Oberlatz and Nik Koblov have been on many crazy Alaska adventures together. In 2008 Nik, Dan and I skied in the Neacola Mountains.

Skinning Crud Busters to log 5,500 vertical on our first day.  

Day 2. Here's a video from Dan of Nik and I skiing from the top of the Worthington down into the Hoodoo Glacier. Earlier that morning the icefall ripped loose and from a 4.8 earthquake and obliterated our run with ice.

My photography slacks when guiding, but Dan was pounding his SLR trigger. See Dan's photos and my photos of Dan taken on his camera here.

Dan flossing up with his Camp XLH 95 ski touring harness. Dan is lucky he didn't fall in a crevasse since he forgot his tweezers.

Nik and his new, super-fatty DPS Lotus 120 carbon fiber skis.

After sampling the finer-dining establishements in Valdez - Fu Kung, Ernesto-less Ernestos, The Bistro - we voted the Best Western our favorite.

Proper-style Valdez rig. Mullet required.

Nik dropping into upper Key-to-Lisa, our last run of the trip as we headed out of town. 

Midwinter Valdez

Valdez Alaska in the middle of winter is cold, dark and lonely. But if you climb high onto south-facing summits you may find sunlight, if it's clear. We got three hours of sun and it felt like Baja. The best part of midwinter, though, is no heli-skiers. Over four days of touring we saw two helicopters - one was DOT dropping bombs on avalanche slopes above the power poles, the other was Alyeska Pipeline Service Company flying the Pipeline looking for terrorists, or maybe just looking for Alaskans shooting holes in the pipe.

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?

Eklutna Traverse Day Tour

The Eklutna Traverse is best done as a five-day trip while staying in the dramatic MCA huts and skiing peaks along the way. Another option is blasting the traverse as a day-tour with almost no gear. While this may seem rash, if you look at the stats (38 miles and 7,000 vertical feet) you'll see the Eklutna is less tiring than  the Suisitna 100, Wilderness Classic or the Tour of Anchorage, AND more fun because no one is watching!

After guiding the Eklutna several times, I talked Andrew Wexler into day touring the route with me. Wex is vertically-inclined so he took some convincing. We started from the Eklutna Reservoir trailhead at 6am on May 2005 and emerged on the Crow Creek Road in Girdwood 14 hours and 17 minutes later. We'd lugged heavy AT gear and walked 15 miles to reach snow. What would it be like with more snow?

On April 17, 2007 Andrew McCarthy and I skated across the Eklutna reservoir with scaled, metal-edge skis. With perfect low elevation conditions we calculated 12 hours to Girdwood, max.

Drew skating across Eklutna Reservoir. A major shortcut, unless you fall in. Be careful around the inlet. 

On the Eklutna Glacier near Pitchler's Perch and Peril Peak. We took skinny skins to climb the steeper sections. Skinny skins are old-school skins sliced lengthwise to make skins 1-inch wide for flattish tours.

Bombing into the Eagle Glacier. We were breaking trail six inches deep across everything above 3,000 feet. Not so fast.

Breaking trail for eight hours when you don't expect it made Drew hungrier than normal.

We practiced LNT along the way and kicked over a few cairns.

Down climbing Goat Ridge. The final 2,000 feet to Crow Creek was lean-back-and-surf on isothermal slop. At the road my stopwatch read 14 hours and 17 minutes. Arghh! The same as two years earlier with Wex. Rob Whitney and Holly Brooks skated and ran it in 12 hours in late May 2010.