Great tours, hammering winds, and broken down cars...

It has been a busy week of skiing and training.  On Wednesday we went up to the 27 mile glacier and toured up to Tomes Temple, across the north side of Tomes, and back onto the Worthington Glacier.  We finished up the day with a ski of Acapulco and back to the road.  Just over an eight hour day.  

The day began with a nice warm tour up to the icefall on the 27 mile glacier.  The snow was firm, and about as steep as we wanted to be skinning, even with out ski crampons on.  Towards the top we switched to booting and finished out the approach to the glacier on foot.  It is amazing how warm you can get up in the alpine, those glaciers just turn into ovens.  

We gained the southern ridge of Tome's Temple and cruised to the summit.  The decent was a bit exposed so we did some belayed skiing off the top and through some old debris.  The day finished as we accessed the Worthington glacier and Acapulco.  It was firm skinning again and short-roping to the summit.  A great tour overall.  None of the skiing was amazing, but still fun.  The tour really had a lot of transitions, from skiing to skinning, to booting and shortroping, which made for great training for the exam.

On Thursday Julia and I tried to ski from behind the Tsaina lodge up to RFS.  It quickly turned into a mission as we slogged through isothermic snow and avoided the countless willow trees.  At least we learned the lesson that we certainly would not be taking that approach this season. 

Friday we broke down.  About a mile or so from the pass Julia's borrowed car started smoking.  We pulled over, luckily facing downhill, and checked under the hood.  A belt was broken wrapped around the fan.  For someone as car illiterate as me, that means take it to the shop.  So we coasted all the way back down from the pass and the car is in the shop now.  That makes having car trouble in AK 100% for me over the last three years! 

Thanks Leki!

I wanted to throw a huge thank you out to Leki for their scholarship.  There are several companies in the outdoor industry that have set up scholarships for guides working towards their AMGA/IFMGA certification.  This season I was fortunate enough to receive the 2009 Leki Scholarship.  These scholarships really help us get through the programs and I really want to thank Leki for their help.  Thanks guys!

Pics from Sarah Jones!

Thanks for the Pics Sarah!  Sarah is one of the in-house photographers at PNH, she was able to get these shots on a few days when she was out shooting my groups.

Taining days

I have settled into my new home for the moment in Valdez.  It is good to get back into Anna's B and B.  She is the sweetest lady who houses and feeds all of us in the AMGA courses and exams in Valdez.  It gets to be a pretty busy house when somewhere around 20 of us are all staying on the same block and she is cooking for all of us.  

We went up to ski at Cracked Ice two days ago.  Found great skiing on the North aspects.  It was good to be out doing a nice tour.  I certainly missed the heli and my heavy alpine ski setup, but there is also something great about touring up and earning your turns.  It is also pretty exciting to be out training with the other candidates for the Ski Mountaineering Exam.  Practicing everything, discussing everything, everybody's nervous energy is great.  It really seems like a good, solid crew in the exam.  

View of Cherry Couloir on Python

From Cracked Ice

After our tour on Cracked Ice we went and practiced our crevasse rescue drills.  It went well for everyone, but I am sure we will all run through it a few more times before Mon.  It is interesting how all of us have all trained a ton for this specific test, and most of us have all pulled people out of crevasses in real-life scenarios, but it is still stressful to do the drill with someone standing over you with a little notebook to grade you. 

Yesterday we toured up to the Berlin Wall.  We picked the North Ridge approach to make it a little trickier and ended up battling our way up through rotten snow and howling winds.  There was no question that we were going to take the simpler approach from the south col for our second lap.  All in all, settling in well.  Looking forward to the rest of the week training and sending this exam!

Valdez...

Had an unreal season in Cordova.  I am missing it already.  I arrived in Valdez yesterday, thanks to Northstar and PNH for hooking me up with the A-Star ride over, beautiful flight.  I am here to prep for and take my AMGA Ski Mountaineering Guides Course, man that is a mouthful.  It is also amazing to be back in the world of quick internet, so I should be able to post more often.  Gotta go, some touring to do....

Flying in the snow!

I just liked this shot of the glacier...

Had a good time hiking in the backyard yesterday.  Ended up doing two laps back there, and getting to fly my speedwing down twice.  It was a full on snow storm, so it was pretty interesting flying in the weather.  I wasn't sure how wet it would be toward the lower elevations, but the winds were down and the visibility was okay, so I made it happen.  

We also had a massive bonfire last night.  Yesterday was down, as is today.  So we were doing out best to burn it blue!  Hopefully we'll get some fly days in soon.  

Want an Idea...

So for all of you climbers, skiers, and adventurers out there; I am sure you get asked on a regular basis what it is you do out in the wild mountain world.  Most of our friends have no real idea what it is we do, the hazards seem unreal and the consequences unacceptable.  People in general consider most of what goes on to be crazy, adrenaline junkie type of things.  I know for me it has always been tough to describe what it is I do, and more importantly why, to those that I care about.  If you are looking for a good movie that really explains why people are called into the mountains, I highly recommend Steep.  It is a documentary that came out a few years ago about the evolution of steep skiing.  The people in the movie are fully skiing bigger lines and in more serious terrain than most of us, but the sentiment is there.  Whether you love skiing, love the mountains, or know someone who does, you should check this movie out.  

All Time in the Zone!

We have had two amazing days in the zone.  April Fools was no joke out there!  We had been down in the Chugach for over a week and everyone was doing their best to keep the spirits high.  But all the stress and worry went out the window on Wednesday morning when we finally woke to brilliant blue sky and incredible snow in the zone.  

Ice Box, Worm Glacier

Sometimes it is tough up here in AK, waiting for the sunny days to get out and fly the heli's.  It seems like it never happens enough.  But then you get a day out and you remember that it is worth any down day to ski deep, steep powder on some peak deep in the range.  When it goes off here, I really do believe there is nowhere better.

The guide meeting in the morning had us all on pins and needles, dying to get out and check out how much snow there really was in the zone.  We knew it would be deep, and we knew the winds hadn't been huge, but watching the weather is nothing compared to really getting out there and putting your hands in the snow.  We all agreed that we needed to start off slow and get a real handle on the snowpack before we started increasing the angle.  Lucky us, there was about 45 cm of super light snow on top of a classic Chugach snowpack.  Sluff was moving around, but we were able to ski some awesome runs.  

The first day out we skied in snow so deep and light that it was pretty much a face-shot on every turn.  We hit four different runs, and got eight nice long laps.  I think my favorite runs of the day were either Nailed It, or our first run down Ridiculous.  Each one of those is about 3500 ft.  and super aesthetic.

Sarah J. slaying with her heavy camera pack on!

Yesterday was just as good as the day before.  We awoke to a little cloud cover, which broke in no time at all.  The satellites were showing a bit of low pressure pushing in, and we thought it might turn into a half-day if it really came in on us.  But once again we scored, and had another killer eight run day!  

So part of heli-skiing is putting in landing zones and pickup zones.  It can be pretty important if you want to put a heli in somewhere tight to have it flat and flagged, especially if the light gets a bit bad.  So yesterday I was on top of a run called Barney Finger Dip.  It is a bit of a tight landing for the pilots, the blades are only a couple of feet from a big rock, and the pilot has to keep power up on the heli for a toe-in landing.  That means that basically the heli is still flying while we are all getting out and the skids are hanging out into space.  Pretty great if you ask me.  But, the point of the story is that we skied off the top and into the best snow we had found all day for about 4200 ft straight.  And trust me, the snow was fantastic everywhere, so the best we found was unreal.  It was so good in fact that my crew got to the bottom and we decided to "hot lap" (go back right away and do it again) it.  Pilot J takes us right back up and as we are coming into land this is what I hear in my headset, "So I take you in for a tough landing, you take me right back to it, and you didn't even build me a good LZ?"  It wasn't even until this point that I realized that I had forgotten to put it away.  Needless to say, we spent a good bit putting in a bomber landing after that.  Then skied some more of those best turns ever!  Thanks Pilot J!