Backcountry Skiing..Your Winter Window Into The Chugach.
Short and long-term models and forecast discussions indicate rising temps and precipitation for the weekend. With a soft, unconsolidated, deep 300cm+ snowpack above 2700′ in Thompson Pass the avalanche hazard for most aspects and elevation will increase to CONSIDERABLE beginning Friday morning. Sloughing, point releases and “channeling” may be large as there is really no bed or weak layers, just […]
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SKI– VERY GOOD -Solo up Schoolbus via Telemark under flat light conditions finding good powder skiing when the sun popped out enough to ski it. I found 4-8″ of new snow over the nice old snow and spotty slabs we had previously. AVALANCHE – With the sun busting out a bit tomorrow and more on Thursday, a CONSIDERABLE avalanche hazards […]
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Glide cracks are not that common around Valdez compared to the Turnigan Pass recreational areas. The areas we recreate are mostly void of glide cracks, thus we don’t think of them as a daily hazard while backcountry skiing. Like cornices, they are largely unpredictable and thus require some respect and distance especially when naturally active. Glide cracks, at least from […]
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This is perhaps the largest documented avalanche to hit the city off Town Mountain. It completely buried the parking lot to the street and the entry way. Pretty impressive now as it was then. Read on about the possible trigger of such a massive slide!
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SKI – Skied solo across Odessey Lake yesterday and today to get at North Odessey Gulley finding good powder conditions with some surface imperfection mainly with 1-2″ thick soft wind slabs of generally small size mixed with powder. 2-3″ new last night. Slab density and depth increase with elevation and exposure thus careful assessment on steeper routes is recommended. Ski […]
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SKi- EXCELLENT powder skiing on most aspects and elevations in Thompson Pass. With excellent light I was able to get some good shots (SEE BELOW) of today’s tour in Moonlight Basin. JP caught up with me and we definitely got in the goods. Enjoy the weekend! AVALANCHE – Overall stability in Thompson Pass is GOOD and should remain so through the weekend. […]
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Skies opened up today enough to probe around and get some good skiing. First skin was to the summit of Little Odessey, finding it well-rimed and icy near the top. Dropped the opposite side and found good, but variable snow down to Harveys Ditch. With blue skies moving in, we headed to Schoolbus and poked around at mid-mountain finding fair […]
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