Background
Early in the year, my friends Nick, Lane and Nate had tossed around the idea of doing a traverse in Canada in the second half of March. We talked about it as a concept, kept chatting as the season went on, but as the time approached it was clear it didn’t make a ton of sense in the time window we had. While it was raining up into the higher elevations down in the lower 48, with a crazy heat wave that sent temps into the 80s in Salt Lake and upper 60s in Jackson, it was high pressure and cold up in Alaska. Do we go up to ALASKA?
I originally didn’t think I’d make the trip work, but when some life events popped up I changed course and rallied to make it happen. Nick, Lane, Nate and I were stoked on heading up to the Chugach for what looked to be a great period of high pressure weather. A storm was rolling in just as we would be able to get up there, bringing 8-10 inches of snow and then going sunny for a week plus.
The snowpack was questionable, but it’s always hard to tell from afar. I texted a local friend, Emily, to try and get some local insight. It sounded like conditions were pretty stable, with some weak layers in the snowpack, and it wasn’t clear how things would set up. We all chatted about it and agreed to make it happen; there’d be many different ways to ski if we didn’t get favorable avalanche or surface conditions. It’s Alaska after all! I’d been up to the Chugach in 2022, in what was a great spring for the Chugach; I was psyched to go back and learn more of the area.
Trip Report
In a broad brushstroke, the trip was incredible. We really had to put on our terrain management hats and think differently about how to approach terrain. It was difficult to always gain consensus as a group of 4 motivated skiers; there was a lot of waffling on what to do, how to approach certain terrain, both at home and in the field. But I feel we talked through it all well, even if there were some moments of frustration.
We skied 9 days straight, keeping pace moderate and eating well throughout. We never started too early, waking up at 730AM each day and starting around 10A. The Alaskan start, we dubbed it. We checked out many different zones, enhancing our mental map of the range and plotting plenty of lines on our Caltopo maps for years to come back for.
We did grow a bit tired of the drive out from Anchorage each day; if we did the trip again, we talked about maybe staying in Girdwood (if we could find cheaper accommodations) or Cooper Landing. That said, in a different snowpack, it’d be really nice to be in Anchorage, central to Hatcher Pass and Turnagain Arm. We did most of our skiing fairly south of Anchorage (Summit Lake, Turnagain Pass, Portage Lake), so it was 1hr+ drive each day.
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Rather than list out every single day, I figured I’d pick out some memorable moments that stood out from the trip.
Moment 1: Skinning through the streets of Whittier, AK
Whittier, AK is a wild place: only accessible by car through a tunnel, sitting on the ocean. It’s a harsh place, dark and cold, and every single resident lives in the same apartment building. Everyone.
After landing in Alaska to some tricky and unpredictable avalanche conditions, we chose to head out for an adventure-walk kind of day out of Whittier. Our rough plan was to head towards Cummings Peak on the Whittier Glacier and maybe do some skiing on the Shakespeare Glacier.
Heading through the tunnel felt like something out of Lord of the Rings: a giant rising door opens, giving passage to a one-lane tunnel through a giant mountain. Enter Mordor… Mordor it was not; we were greeted by a friendly Alaskan at the trailhead who was grooming his own nordic ski trail. Imagine that!
Travel onto the Whittier Glacier was roundabout but not too bad, we were most surprised at finding a thick ice layer beneath varying amounts of new storm snow, from 3 to 8 inches in spots. Huh, much different snowpack here than around Turnagain or Girdwood. We had found a thin faceted crust beneath 8 inches of storm snow at Turnagain, but not this stout melt-freeze layer.
We made it to the shoulder of Cummings, ultimately stopping short of the summit. We skied down and headed up to the Bard-Shakespeare Shoulder col, where a cloud approached from the ocean and swallowed up the good visibility we had. Darn! We waited a little to see if the light would improve, but the shadows of the north facing terrain high above pushed us to just move on in flat light. We skied some sloppy turns down the Shakespeare, finding good turns and transitioning at the toe of the glacier in the sun.
Motivation returned as we put our skins back on and we plotted two options: either ascend a ways up the shoulder of the glacier and chart a way into town around 2,200’, or ascend back to the col and ski out the Whittier Glacier. We chose the latter and skinned back up to the col and enjoyed turns down the ramp we had climbed. I got into position to take some photos of the boys skiing with the ocean behind them!
Skiing down the toe of the Whittier Glacier was a bit shitty but not too bad. We got our first dose of alder mashing and ice skiing, proper Alaskan flavor. With the ocean behind, Lane sat below me and we looked down at Whittier. Wow. The position, albeit obscured by alders that would smack us around, paused us for a moment. The battle with the alders was not so bad, and before long we were skinning back through town.
I feel like we’re walking through a Call of Duty scene, I joked as Lane and Nick walked past a large abandoned building. The building was once the largest building in Alaska we later learned! Before the boom of Anchorage, Whittier was once a bustling port town.
As we reached our car, the snowmobile grooming man was back! It felt perfectly circular to see him at the end of our day; we shared our travels, which gave him a chuckle and smile. He made us grin more, feeling connected in some tiny way with this small Alaskan town. We stopped into the Anchor Inn Restaurant for burgers, chicken tenders, and fish and chips before heading back through the tunnel.
Moment 2: The ‘Tumblebear Couloir’
Last year, when Lane and Nate had driven out to Kenai for a bush plane flight into the Alaska Range they’d driven through Cooper Landing and spotted a striking north-facing couloir on Cecil Rhode Mountain. The couloir was named the ‘Tumblebear’ couloir by locals, a namesake from a bear that fell down the couloir ahead of a group skiing it. The line drops nearly 4,000’ from just below the summit, into the alders. It was certainly a step up in consequence and commitment from anything we’d skied. The snowpack further south had less snow sitting on a crust than Turnagain or Summit Lake; we talked through our comfort entering such big terrain. We’d skin up the backside of Cecil Rhode, then make an assessment at the top of the line based on the snowpack.
We followed a road up to a clearing on the south side of Cecil Rhode then briefly punched through some alders and began skinning up the broad south slopes. The snowpack was meagerly thin and we eventually just booted. We saw many animal tracks about, from lynx to goats. Nate, a wildlife biologist, was buzzing with appreciation of the natural habitat around us.
Before long we reached the summit of Cecil Rhode, where a mountain goat friend greeted us. Hey there Mr. Goat. We followed him over to the shoulder where the couloir started. You could feel the verticality of the line from the shoulder, staring down at the town of Cooper Landing. We could spot the US Post Office where we had stashed running shoes, prepared to run back to the car.
We walked down off the shoulder a bit into a snow panel before the line rolls to dig a snow pit. We found 2-3 inches of very dry, loose snow sitting atop a stout half inch or so crust, below which was shitty facets. Hrmmm…I don’t love that. None of us liked the structure of the snowpack much but we talked about the surface snow. Is that crust thick enough to bridge our weight? We dug an ECT, with a non-propagating result we felt a little better. Still not a green light. We polled the group. Nobody felt full game-on; I mentioned that if the dry, loose snow atop the crust held I felt comfortable, anticipating mostly just sluffing. If we saw wind stiffening and more formation of a slab on that crust, though, I was a bail. Others felt similarly.
We pulled up to the roll at the top of the line. Lane was stoked to enter first; we kept eyes on, then watched Lane make his first few turns. The surface seemed to be exactly what we needed: loose, dry, sluffy but not slabby. He felt solid about it, so we continued down to him and regrouped. Alrighty Lane, go get it. Lane opened up the line in style, making big continuous turns down thousands of feet as the couloir eventually mellowed. Dang, I wasn’t planning to put the drone up…but that looked awesome. I asked the group if they wanted me to put the drone in the air and after a resounding yes I plunged my poles into the snow to anchor my backpack and prepared to fly. Quite the drone bootcamp.
With the bird above, Nick went next and linked turns all the way down to Lane. The enormity of the line was amplified with the drone. Wow, that’s quite a line. Straight, fall-line down to the alders.
Nate next, then fly back, stow, then my turn.
The couoir skied remarkably. I punched it from top-to-bottom, pulling up at the apron before it turned to icy, chunky avalanche debris. We regrouped, stoked. Lane joked at how he was really glad this one had worked out. That was a really big swing. Yeah, most definitely. It’s awesome when it connects, but we debriefed with humility that it certainly could have not.
The adventure continued through the alders, where we put Nate in front and let his game trail nose lead the way. Nate has the sharpest knack for following wildlife I’ve ever encountered. Yes, he’s a professional, but it’s still impressive. He took us through the woods down to the road, where walked a few hundred yards to the post office. We fist bumped and hugged, stoked on the day. It just got a little bit better when a friendly Alaskan offered to drive me back to our car, saving me the 2 mile road run back. Turns out, a post office is a pretty good spot to try and hitch from. Taking note of that for next time!
Moment 3: South Face of Mystery Mountain
As the trip began to conclude, we wanted to check out the mountains around Girdwood. With the trickiest snowpack in the zones we’d explored, we struggled with what felt reasonable. We agreed to head up towards A1, a popular peak that has a mellow and scenic approach.
We started from the Alyeska nordic trail and connected to a snowcat track out to Sunnyside and the Notch bowl, which was hammered by Chugach Powder Guides. The stoke waned this morning, with a long flat approach and what looked to be a backcountry resort. Atop Sunnyside, we discussed. A1 Bowl had been hit hard by heli skiers. There were deep, widespread surface hoar feathers which didn’t give us a warm and fuzzy feeling about the potential snow beneath the surface. All of us agreed that the day was likely turning into a long walk. We were psyched to push on to Mystery Mountain, following a mellow bench system on the south side of A1 ridge.
Once we pushed past Sunnyside our stoked skyrocketed. The remoteness of the mountains came back and we felt on a tour of our own, not just following heli ski tracks. We were again taken aback by the “Alaska factor”: we were miles into our day and we hadn’t even skied yet. It was going still be a ways until Mystery as well.
For the first time, it was truly warm on the south side of A1 ridge. There was a solar crust that had developed and we were sweating, stripped down to our baselayers. We found a nice patch of tundra to again take a leisurely lunch break, staring out at the expanse of the mountains of 20 Mile Creek.
We punched up to the summit and peered over the south face. A beautiful, broad panel of snow stretched down to bench, where a small exit couloir made for part two of the descent. We were psyched! The snow had been sun softened but not crusted, it looked lovely. We poked over to the summit, swiveling our heads around at the sea of mountains around.
We talked through descent options: we could ski the south face then try to climb back up to A1 but it would involve a steep panel of snow back up to the ridge. Or we could ski all the way out the valley, traverse below Northstar then get back to the cattrack by Notch. We had seen the bottom of the valleys from the ridgeline, a ‘sea of alder’ we had called it. It looked bullshit-y but safe from an avalanche perspective. The climb back up to A1 seemed to maybe be less BS but pushing it slope-wise.
The south face skied just as it had seemed it would, a sun softened flavor of powder. The exit couloir was probably the best skiing of the day, though, just absolutely ripping snow conditions; the harder you pushed into your skis, the more the snow surface supported you, like corn-pow.
The descent all the way to the bottom of Northstar Bowl was simple enough; from there, we debated two ways of getting back to the Sunnyside cat track. We punched steeply up through the forest, for a brief shwack. We ski traversed back to the cat track, then a brief skin to get to the outtrack. A choppy, refrozen luge then skating back along the nordic trails.
Most of the days we had lacked the slight ‘punch in the face’ feeling that this day had; longer than expected skinning, harder than expected travel, but memorable nonetheless! We were all happily tired back at the car, pushing out one ridge further than planned.
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Overall, the trip was exactly what I hoped for and honestly needed. We got to explore numerous different zones, we skied every day, and developed a routine. Life felt simple: wake up, waffle on what to do, get out the door, ski, come back and stuff our faces with calories. I joked in the grocery store once that we were just ‘calorie dumpsters’; someone walking by heard that joke and chirped back ‘you be that calorie dumpster!’
Well, I’m proud to be a calorie dumpster. And thankful I got to spend 10 days with 3 other calorie dumpsters.