Thread: TR: 'Hippy Camp' in Cordova

One dark and rainy april morning in cordova, ak, a tired and grumpy crew of old college buddies rolled off the ferry, drove the short stretch of coast to the old cannery that’s now home to points north heli adventures, found an open door, and curled up the couches they found inside…

…and woke up a (very short) few hours later to the hustle and bustle of a heli op in full swing. The rain was still pounding down, but guides and clients were coalescing into groups, practicing with beacons, getting tours of helicopters.

Nhtele, miss zula, dale, and I wandered about, played some foosball, talked about backflips off the sunken piers (turns out the water is really quite shallow), and otherwise pretended we were enjoying the down day sequence in your average ski film.

Yep, there’s some skis.


While the other 40 or so skiers running about were to spend the week at the cannery for some heli-skiing, the four of us were there to check out PNH’s new heli-access touring set-up – or, as we heard it described that first day, Hippy Camp.

After some rounds of foosball and an unsuccessful attempt to find espresso in town, we met up with our guide, Jeff, who assessed our basic skills in a very thorough 20-minute briefing. We then returned to staring out at the rain.

By dinner time, we must have already been getting on someone’s nerves. As Kevin, the owner, announced that no one would be flying for the next few days due to weather, he quickly followed it up by saying “except for the touring camp group, we’ll get you guys out of here tomorrow one way or the other.”

And sure enough, by mid morning we were loading gear onto helicopters in a steady fall of rain.

And we’re off!


Hippy camp is a swell place. A little village of arctic oven tents and mega mid kitchen carefully tended by jeff and packer/cook/assistant/resident bad-ass fisherman Wes.


After about 30 seconds of settling in, we were clicking into skis and skins and ready to go, despite low vis, heavy clouds, and some light and very wet precip falling from the sky. We skied 2 pleasant low angle laps in the heavy wet pow, before getting bored and harassing jeff for something more fun to do. In what was to become a pattern, jeff said something like, well, I guess we COULD go do that thing over there…
And so we went.

Miss zula booting up sluffhead on day 1 of hippy camp.


NHtele letting the sluff run free in the steep and exciting crescent, on the shoulder of sluffhead. Just an hour earlier he’d been griping that we’d be stuck skiing low angle pow all week…I think this cured him of that notion.


Dale tearing it up in creamy pow down the face.


(later, when the clouds broke, we got to admire our run and some of the tracks on it, which we all admit was pretty darn good for a rainy/foggy first afternoon).


we got back to camp, busted open the first box of wine and second bottle of scotch of the trip, and settled in to our new home while Jeff and Wes whipped up a pretty epic Salmon dinner, the first of many ridiculously good meals. Yum.

day 2 dawned grey and uninspiring. We slowly rolled out of camp after a leisurely breakfast, and skinned up to the ridge. Jeff informed us that, due to low vis, we were pretty much confined to the low angle pow off the ridge for the day. We must have looked very sad, because it took about 45 seconds before: “Well, I guess we could head about 3 miles down the Simpson glacier, skin up a steep wet slope, and then ski some sweet lines.” Which we did. Very few pics from day 2, due to the weather, but this was the main zone of interest:


we took 2 laps on shakedown street, marked by the green/yellow arrow on the right, and had big smiles on our faces by the time we were skinning back up the glacier to camp. (side note, the red arrow marks ‘the nest’ – an un-skied line that jeff had been eyeing all season. We’ll return to that shortly).

Day 3…stumble out of tents…and…BLUEBIRD! We’re psyched.
the group skinning out of hippy camp


and scoping out spines to ski on nearby Dano’s


However…it turned out that the clear weather turned the creamy warm pow to, well, everything but – ice and debris and slush mostly. No Dano’s for us, but we toured around checking out the zone. Here, nhtele finding some good snow


Dale got bored, and scampered gracefully up and down this unfriendly looking first ascent/descent:


Heading back up toward camp after a long day of crusing around.


Day 4, once again blue and clear, and we had a mission (drumroll please): The Nest. See red arrow on earlier photo. A very cool looking line that as far as we know has never known the touch of a skier. We headed off back down the glacier, skinned up the steep lower slope amongst the wolverine tracks, and came to the base of the nest itself


Booting up, we found what we had not even dared to hope for: soft, cold pow on the protected northfacing line. Awesome. Before long, we were topping out on the sweet knife edge summit


The views were spectacular.


Jeff was psyched.


NHtele was inspired to put together materials for his redbull sponsorship application


then… we slayed it. It was rad. A steep drop in, hard left turn, then awesome steep cruise down the sweet north face.

NHtele displaying perfect form on the runout


The decision was quickly made to head back up for round 2.

NHtele getting stoked for the drop.

After some snacks, some admiring of wolverine tracks and eagles, and some heckling nhtele for accidentally deploying his airbag, we skied warm afternoon corn back to the glacier, and made the long trek back to camp.

Day 5 was warm and sunny, and we were basking in the glow of our long beautiful days, and also the glow of bota box #2 and bottle of scotch #3. We cruised around the neighborhood skiing nice ripe corn with beautiful views until we were happily exhausted and sunburned.


The best backcountry hippy crew you could ask for


the next morning we caught the heli back to cordova.
LHS and miss zula say thanks for the lift guys!


kicking it on the docks before early morning ferry, about to meet some fishermen, share some coors lite and pickled salmon, and spend the night on a fishing boat. the only true way to end a trip to cordova.


My first time in AK, and a completely fantastic trip. Props to PNH for setting up a rad camp, getting us out there in less-than-stellar weather, giving us free rein to wander and play in a sweet zone, and hooking us up with such a fantastic guide/ski partner/chef. We’ll be back!

(ps - most photos courtesy of dale, photographer extraordinaire)

Holy.Shit.


That was spectacular or even a bit beyond.

Care to share what that kind of stuff cost you, you had a guide & stuff for the 5 days?

sounds like a really cool trip, thanks for sharing.

This being the first year they had the camp up and running, they were offering a pretty sweet deal:

$1500/person all-in for heli in/out, full camp set up with tents, cots, propane heat, generators, kitchen etc. (5 days & nights), guide, all food. Plus a night and day at the cannery in cordova.

I think that next year they're going to bump it up a bit ($1950?) but it's still a pretty sweet deal considering what you get.

Really cool! Touring for the win!

Great TR!

Definitely a nice option, hippy.

I wish I could have made this work. It looks like a great week.

Love me some AK stoke. That looked like a helluva lot of fun!

Oh wow - I am going to have to keep this on my radar. Awesome TR!

Wow...kick ass.

how much vert on "the nest"? hard to tell from the photos.

Fantastic work. I heart AK.

What a great trip. I love the wide angle shots with endless mountain peaks.

Sent from my ST17a using TGR Forums

Yep. This was a pretty cool tr. Thanks fer sharing!

what's the harness for?

Originally Posted by Vandeezy

how much vert on "the nest"? hard to tell from the photos.

it wasn't super long. the steep part of line itself probably wasn't more than 1000 feet, then you get to keep going for another good long ways down to the glacier.

Originally Posted by talus

what's the harness for?

glacier travel/potential crevasse rescue

Glaciers.

Yeah, that trip must not have sucked!

Nice work. And surprisingly affordable, $1500 for all that, compared to $800-$1000 per day for heli skiing that doesn't include food and lodging.

Thanks for the great trip report!

Looking forward to having you guys back next year!

Quinner / PNH

Very coo TR, thx for sharing. Would love to go back to AK one day.

Originally Posted by lhs

glacier travel/potential crevasse rescue

oh i avoid those things and use a swami instead. btw if ur not roped up in crevasse area and pitch down say bye bye. looks like u know whats up though

We were the "first group" up there the end of March...................slightly jealous (not really sour grapes.....we had a great week there) of the progression of the cool/wild stuff that got skied over the next couple of weeks! What a spot for a base camp!! we had a mix of old and young in our group, so not quite hippies, but awsome access with great snow this season......we also got warm temps after the first two days, but North facing stuff still stayed great pow....[two thumbs up for another tele skier up there] and props for bringing the womenfolk.....very nice camp setup, but not all women could be happy without a shower for the week......still great memories, especially in light of the s@#$%y Colorado conditions we've had this year........the only problem with these reports is that this may get so popular that maybe tough to get future spots.....hope so for the sake of Jeff, Brennan, and props to PNH for starting this "thing" from scratch! thanks, Chet

oops....on closer inspection of the pics, it looks like NHtele was actually on AT gear.........Yo, Chet

really cool trip