30 Days in the Chugach Range, AK: Weather, Snow, & Photos:

[Gopher]

Hey Guys, I just spent 30 days in the Chugach Range, AK. 20 of them camping, climbing, and skiing on the Shoup glacier near Valdez. I wanted to share a conditions report and some photos of what has occurred in the Chugach in the past 30 days. Hopefully it's useful for some of the crews headed up to Alaska this month.

There's a bunch more photos (48) on my website if you wanna see more (taking too long to put all photos in, sorry): http://snowbrains.com/30-days-chugac...ak-photo-tour/

Also, we have some detailed reports from Turnagain Pass from the past few days and there will be one from today late tonight: http://snowbrains.com/category/locations/alaska/

thanks.


1st night on the Shoup glacier, March 15th, 2014

The past 30 days in the Chugach Range of Alaska have been inspiring. This place never stops teaching lessons and never lets you drop your guard. For the first time in my life, I feel as though Alaska and her people have let me in. She’s now calling me and I can’t resist. It won’t be long before I do a season here.


Sugar Mountain

Where These Photos Are From:

I arrived in Anchorage, AK on March 13th at 2am, skied powder at Alyeska ski resort on March 14th, flew onto the Schoop glacer on March 15th, spent 20 days climbing, camping, and skiing on the Shoup glacier and Sugar Mountain near Valdez (filming for the movie Sugar Mountain), flew off the glacier on April 3rd and watched Jim Chaplin snow kite for a couple hours and saw Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe at the Bear’s Tooth, skied a few days at Alyeska, skied a few days at Turnagain Pass, I leave here on Friday and I don’t wanna.


College Fjord on April 3rd, 2014.

Weather and Snow Conditions in the Chugach the Past 30 Days:

The Chugach got a few feet of snow ending on March 14th. One sunny day followed that storm before another small storm dropped about 8″ (up on th Shoup, at least) on March 16th. The day after the small storm a heavy wind event ripped through the Valdez area and damaged a lot of the perfect snow. There were still great turns to be had on North and Northwest aspects. After the wind died down on March 18th, the Chugach experienced an unprecedented for March, 18 days of sunshine and warm (for here) temperatures. Weather didn’t return to the Chugach until April 4th when a weak storm did almost nothing for about 3 days. The night of the 7th the weak storm finally kicked into gear and dropped 6-12″ of snow. Dust on crust in spots and perfect powder in spots. The higher the elevation and more north facing the better.

I hope you enjoy the photos.

30 DAYS IN THE CHUGACH RANGE, ALASKA:


Raw Sugar Mountain


Dragon Spines were fun to ski.


Chugach Range near College Fjord.

[cat in january]

Nice pictures to start my day with. Will click the full report and look forward to the film

[Mike Pow]

Let me be the first to say Sugar Mountain looks very sweet.

Cracking pics.

[Vt-Freeheel]

3 thumbs up

[FussyDutchman]

Unreal pics and quite the way to spend 30 days, well done and then some!

[hutash]

Hey Guys, I just spent 30 days in the Chugach Range, AK. 20 of them camping, climbing, and skiing on the Shoup glacier near Valdez. I wanted to share a conditions report and some photos of what has occurred in the Chugach in the past 30 days. Hopefully it's useful for some of the crews headed up to Alaska this month.

There's a bunch more photos (48) on my website if you wanna see more (taking too long to put all photos in, sorry): http://snowbrains.com/30-days-chugac...ak-photo-tour/

Also, we have some detailed reports from Turnagain Pass from the past few days and there will be one from today late tonight: http://snowbrains.com/category/locations/alaska/

thanks.

I knew this was going to be a good right from the first pic.

[gointhedistance]

Awesome - beautiful shots.

[TBS]

Very cool trip. Totally understand why you want to spend more time up there

[neufox47]

Awesome, color me jealous.

[liv2ski]

Moar!!!!

[Charmander]

Great stoke! Can't wait to put some time together to read the full TR.

I might have missed it but do you have a link to a promo or somethin for the movie you were shooting for? muy interested

[Gopher]

Hey Charmander,

Stoked you're interested in Sugar Mountain. There isn't a whole of info online just yet. They do have a Facebook page with some info:

https://www.facebook.com/sugarmountainak?ref=br_tf

As more media is developed, I'll surely be getting stuff up on my site: snowbrains.com and the best pieces I'll throw up here on TGR.

Right now, the plan of the editors is to make it into a "highly stylized adventure movie". They want to show to that this trip was about more than skiing. The filmers they brought were top notch. They had big cameras and shot a lot with 100 to 200 frames per second and captured some beautiful moments. They also had a drone that got some shots that are hard to understand.

It appears that drones will be the next big thing in action sports movies and it's neat to see these guys were on it as one of the first.

Super challenging tho as the drone crashed and or broke almost everyday. Danny, the drone guy, was a ninja and was able to fix it everytime it broke.