Backcountry Skiing..Your Winter Window Into The Chugach.
Here’s a comprehensive summary by NOAA on this past winter in Alaska. Valdez certainly experienced some of these trends with three consecutive low snow years under 200′, yet this winter produced near.record snowpack depth above 3000′ in the Chugach. Where, or, where has Alaska’s winter gone?
Read more
Elevation 55 has been busy and you don’t have to go far to see their efforts using a few hand tools and and their own schedule. Residents and visitors alike now have the beginnings of a mountain trail that is doable by a vast majority of hikers right from town. The high school trail is too challenging for most, so […]
Read more
Congrats to Zack Fields and team for completing the Chugach Traverse at the end of April. Zack wrote his trip report for Anchorage Press, his second article on backcountry skiing around Valdez. Enjoy and maybe this trip will be on your Valdez tick list next winter. http://www.anchoragepress.com/headlamp/chugach-crossing
Read more
My fascination with maps began in the Coast Guard where I was trained as a ship’s navigator in Orlando, Florida by the Navy. This was followed by a couple of years at sea in Alaska before washing ashore in Valdez in 1979. During that time I had plotted the ship’s location on charts using various means of determining our position, […]
Read more
In the most recent edition of the Avalanche Review, a Valdez Heliski guide was discussing backcountry safety when he actually was quoted as saying this..(April 2016 pg. 34) “Crowds are going to give us a problem that we don’t have a solution for. I for one don’t know how to ski safely in a situation where I don’t know if […]
Read more
Nice first day of spring in Loveland Basin favoring the un-brapped terrain along the north shore. Longer than normal video of mostly telemarking. some gentle 1/2 piping along with cursing carbon made ruts. For clarification, the entire drainage including Loveland Peak and Tones Temple South is in Loveland Basin. The DOT Glacier is named for the state road crews on […]
Read more
Sam Shirk(Valdez) – Obsession
Read more