Avalanche Mountain Ski - 4.15.2023

Avalanche Mountain as viewed from The Ramp in April 2019.

I always have a hard time motivating to ski the Thin White Line. Its a lot of squeeze for the juice, and I don't like the avalanche hazard of the mid-slope bowl. But, after skiing impossibly deep (and pretty darn dark) snow on Ptarmigan at 9 PM on Tuesday night, we knew we should take advantage of unusually soft conditions around Powerline Pass.

Given the relatively long approach, we'd want to plan on linking in at least a couple other lines while back there - start with the TWL, then a lap on the Wedge, then go from there.

Several of us had grown the requisite blisters by the time the five mile approach was over and we'd climbed the access pass between Avalanche and the Wedge. Dropping into the contrastless bowl, we all did our best not to tip over in the flat light, let alone look like we had any idea how to ski.


We skied past a group of Dall Sheep rams who took a break from their grazing lunch to watch us flail down the inside of the ping pong ball.

Somehow having survived the approach, and in the basin under the TWL, we squinted up through the gray light to see that the last storm cycle had pulled out a large natural slide on the northwest face of Avalanche. Snapping our boots and skis to walk mode, we started to ascend the debris.


The recent slide made the snow firmer and the ascent easier, and we were able efficiently skin until reaching the mouth of the upper chute. Here we were above the crown of the big slide, and the climb became a lot harder as we booted up the deep snow.

Ptarmigan Peak Skiing - 4.3.2014

Updated below to include an afternoon corn harvest above Rabbit Lakes in spring 2021.

The dishes are piling up in the sink, the house is a mess, and I'm getting behind on my sleep. The conditions and weather have been incredible, and its hard to take a break. As such, I'm about a month and a half behind on blog posts.

By April the days were finally long enough to get out and ski after work. Reading Billy Finley's tasty blog post about bike accessed skiing encouraged us to check out Ptarmigan's S Couloir.

With a post-work nap in the books, I meet the usual suspects at the Glen Alps trailhead. We don't have fat bikes, so we employed a combination of walking, skinning, skating, pushing, and kick and glide for the approach


Per usual, the adventure was filled with familiar faces: we ran into LP, Owen, and Tarah, who we skied Falling water with, on the approach.
 
Then, as we started to climb the apron of the north face, our friend Andy skied down to us. Alaska is a small town.


Looking back towards Alex and Anchorage as we enter the couloir.