Magnitude in AK

Day 1 in AK



No matter how many phone calls are made prior to coming up to Alaska you never really know what the conditions are like until you get here.  Once you are here there is no holding back with the snow reports. Horror stories of a full burial and numerous other major avalanches are recited to me before my bags are even off the plane.

After two days of playing poker and looking at weather maps the weather finally broke.The first day up here is always very humbling so we treaded lightly into the freshly coated mountains that had not seen a break in the weather for over two weeks.

With that in mind we stuck mostly to short and steep faces with good outruns and started the long process of gathering snow info and testing slopes by digging snow pits, dropping cornices, and cutting the slopes.  Basically I consider the snow pack guilty until proven innocent and expect every slope I touch to slide.

As usually it was the billygoating around knife edge ridges and getting out of the Heli onto three foot wide ridges that dropped away into the abyss that had me the most puckered today.  Once again I am so blown away at the magnitude of the mountains and the possibilities of potential lines that it leaves my head spinning and will make sleeping hard tonight.  Sun is in the forecast for tomorrow so hopefully we can ramp up the riding a bit tomorrow.   

** Jonas Emery happily drops in after a gnarly ridge hike to get to his line.**


** Short and steep. Perfect warm up/snow test.**


** Jonas rips the best pow of the day next to my line.**


** Feeling better about the snow we stepped it up a little bit with are final run of the day**