Backcountry Skiing..Your Winter Window Into The Chugach.
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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Skiing remains good across most aspects and elevation with a little snow last night to freshen things up a bit. Continued mild weather through the week with occasional squalls on south aspects and good sun spots in between. Watch for solar rollers on southerly aspects as the sun warm at times more so after 1pm. I am always accepting nominations […]
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Coastal clouds persisted most the day, but enough fresh snow fell last night to create vast untracked once again. Early bird this am in flat light so location matters little. Paul Nylund(Valdez) back in the elements today.
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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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