Man, I have been behind this week. I never even unpacked my stuff from alaska, just swapped out a couple items wednesday night to get ready for Silverton.

I’m sure everyone has taken a spin through the gallery by now, so I’ll give you a bit of backstory on some of the pics.

I flew out of flag, down to phoenix, and then up to anchorage on wednesday night. I was a bit nervous about the flight up there, expecially since the guy next to me on the flight had been trying to get into anchorage for a week, and had gotten turned around every time. The airlines were even nervous about it, because they were fueling up all the flights to anchorage in seattle or portland on the way up so that they could turn around before we got to anchorage and fly back to phoenix.

How much would that suck?

So, I made it into anchorage at about 2am, and hit the sack. Thursday I took a lazy morning, did some ski waxing and then hit the cross country trails. Aren’t these trails amazing?

12 feet wide, nice deep cut classic tracks, and beautiful views.

After skate skiing for a couple hours, I booked it back into town and swapped out the gear for the tele skis. I met up with some folks who had something going on that they referred to as “work” and we headed up to Arctic Valley for a little after work backcountry. Arctic valley is a little ski resort outside anchorage, and it’s closed for the season at this point, so we did a little skinning and a little skiing the freshies. Pretty fun stuff, and since it’s light to 9:30, we had plenty of time.

Friday i rolled down to Alyeska and hit up a long half-day. We skiied off the tram pretty much all afternoon, and got in a ton of runs before the lifts closed down at 5:30. For 4 hours of skiing, I was pretty cooked.

Luckily, I still had the energy to go out and have some drinks that night. And by drinks, I mean North Coast Old Stock. A couple of them.

I somehow believe that the 12.5% ABV of those beers contributed to the ‘interesting’ walk home where I ended up in a snowbank.

Day 2 at Alyeska involved another day of awesome skiing. The snow was killer, and I never even stopped for lunch. I think I hit every steep line that was open that day, including the Christmas and New Years Chutes. I heard the New Years chute had only been open twice this year. In case you looked at the picture and didn’t put it together, the two chutes to the left of the tram station in this picture are Christmas and New Years. Bitchin.

I would love to tell you that I went out and partied that night as well, but the truth is that I was pretty much falling asleep in my food at dinner. The couple pitchers of beer on the deck after skiing probably didn’t help that either.

I had every intention of skiing again sunday, but in the end, I could barely walk when I got up because I was so stiff. After a good bit of stretching the verdict was a day off. A hike was in order, so we took a walk and scoped out some of the other backcountry around girdwood. Killer stuff for sure.

After a killer dinner of some salmon and risotto, I headed back up to anchorage and crashed out for the night.

Monday was the final day, so a big backcountry day was in order. The place of choice was turnagain pass. Unfortunately, the avalanche danger in the area was pretty high, so we kept to some well-traveled areas. It was nice, because we were cruising up what amounted to a superhighway of skin tracks up to the top of the Tin Can trees, which made for a quick 2600 vertical feet. And the view from the top? Absolutely phenomenal.

We ended up taking two runs off the top, and caught about 4000 total feet of powdery delicious vertical. It was absolutely amazing.

The peak you see in the background is the one I was standing on top of in the previous picture. We skiied the ridgeline and also the big bowl on the frontside.

What a trip. I’ve been to alaska in te dead of winter before, and even though the skiing is incredible at that time of year, the lack of light kills you. I have to say, this march/april timeframe is the time to be up there. Ridiculous snow, and light until at least 9pm. How can you beat that?

Well, maybe I could have done without the uncertainty due to volcano eruptions.

You’re right, now I’m just nitpicking.