Backcountry Skiing..Your Winter Window Into The Chugach.
Another cloudy day today with snow squalls on satellite Thursday followed by general drying out to partly cloudy for the weekend. Some cooler temperatures to the lower teens in the Pass at night. New snows to 10″ settling above 3000′ which has fallen over the past few day and should set up some real nice ski conditions throughout the Valdez […]
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Throughout my backcountry ski life, a number of devices have come along that obviously one should have when traveling in avalanche terrain. From an earplug as an audio finder attached to a $60 Ramer Beacon in the early 80’s, to the digital age beacons that include a whiz-bang list of features for various applications, the problem of avalanche survivability remains […]
Read morePerfect day to tour to the top of Catchers Mitt. As you can see from the 360 video we have the most snow on the planet in and around Thompson Pass AK. Skiing was good despite some bite at the surface from a melt freeze layer over powder. Very Good up high on shaded north aspects. Stability was good […]
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Wonderful day on the Pass with an early start finishing off Schoolbus which skied good and stable and “done by one”. Followed by others looking for the fresh turns with 4-5″ of less dense new snow with altitude. Bound to happen, but I was taken aback seeing Black Ops tracking up Loveland Basin first thing on a sunny Saturday morning […]
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Another classic Chugach day in Thompson Pass with skinners finding plenty of powder happiness in isolation mainly on shaded north aspect beyond Little Odessey. Some wind crust and sun crust softened up later in the day. AVALANCHE – Very little is any natural activity and old debris piles are aging nicely and long with stouter slabs all bonded to lower […]
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Spent yesterday and today getting lots of downhilling, but today was mostly skin laps(7) up to the High Traverse and some untracked powder short powder shots off the grooms at the upper mountain, which were filled with new, wet snow yesterday. First time up to the Traverse, which has always been hammered or poor skiing on my previous handful […]
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A beautiful day in the Valdez Chugach had the skinners massing in Moonlight Basin again where conditions were mixed in the brush, but very nice dry, fast powder in broad patches at upper elevation with protection. Gulleys were nice. Sluffing by sun was a non issue for me as I summited Big Odessey with a sunrise start via Moonlight Basin, […]
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