Zero Bowl - 11.11.2024

Early season skiing is a challenge for me: the snowpack is thin, there's limited beta, and I'm so hungry. These factors have led to close calls for me, those I care about, and our incredible community, and it makes me hesitant to head out. The reports of quality conditions and stability have been trickling in, and it was time for us to set aside our piles of chores and head for the hills. 

After a late start, we drove south past the snowy peaks of the Chugach and the Kenai mirrored in the still waters of Turnagain Arm, and chatted about ideas for the day. Usually, we go into each day with so much recent beta and many ideas, it was fun to start this one with a blank slate. By the time we were nearing the top of Turnagain Pass and pulling into the DOT lot, we had a plan: we'd go check out the sunny bowls, chutes, and ribs of Seattle Ridge.

Skinning up the icy uptrack, my stoke and excitement built as we caught dogs and friends enjoying the winter wonderland of a beautiful sunny day on our public lands. Cresting the ridge, we looked across the arm at the iconic ski lines crowning Girdwood, Peterson Creek, and Twentymile. We talked about our favorite adventures past and our dreams for the future in these magical valleys.

Chum Bucket Ski - 1.30.2022

Spring and summer in AK is a manic time of year. Fueled by the midnight sun I become a caffeinated wreck who finds myself craving projects at 12:30 AM - I think I'm beginning to know what meth is like. Every week my self inflicted sleep deficit grows; my blogging backlog is not far behind it. Hopefully I never catch up on this backlog as the memories of one great adventure after the next pile up, but between midnight mania, midnight fishing, and midnight real estate mini-empirism here is an effort to catch up with a look back at a sort of soft, sort of stable, and sort of sunny January day at Turnagain.

Mid-winter at Turnagain was beset with storm after storm followed by surface hoar after buried surface hoar event. It was frustrating and had me wondering why I was pretending to work as a corporate drone in this unstable and dark land.

Swimming thru the classic fog of a midwinter inversion.

By late January we finally got a break in the cycle with a brief window of calm, cold, and clear weather. Well. Sort of clear. The "problem" with these calm midwinter periods following nuclear winter events is they leave the air full of moisture, and with no wind to scoop the soup out it becomes fog. You can get above the fog, but its particularly annoying when you are also navigating a considerable avalanche day with BSH 18 inches down. So, as we swam thru the fog of the Cornbiscuit parking lot and felt our way across the bridge, we knew it would be tricky finding a safe way up Seattle Ridge to Gulch Creek and eventually TT43. Using a combination of jedi mind tricks and black magic Tom located fresh avalanches debris whose bed surface we could safely follow to the top.


As we climbed higher, breaks in the clam chowder began to appear, teasing us with windows into Lynx Creek:

Return to TT43 - 1.5.2019

Note: updated below the original post to include a Gulch Creek link-up in January 2022.
Watching old school GoPro video of Jimmy Kase ripping the TT43 spines on teles in midwinter light sold me on Alaska. After years of waiting for snow, stability, and weather to align we finally got to experience it.

As we drove south thru the pass, the bottom fell out of the thermometer. By the time we parked at Bertha Creek it was -8 degrees. Next up, was finding a way across the creek. Matt found a crossing and lead the charge across the cold water creek. Eventually the twig he was standing on collapsed, but he hovered over the water and kept his feet dry.


In retrospect, parking at Cornbiscuit and using the bridge would have been straightforward. Still, it was drier than skiing TT43 with Matt and Nick years ago:


We followed ptarmigan and hare tracks across the valley and up the climb to Seattle Ridge. Above the valley inversion the temperature rose to 10 degrees. Tropical.

Pyramid Peak Skiing - 2.26.2017

When Pyramid's west face ripped out two weeks ago we knew it was a good chance to ski it. Then it snowed 6 feet in Seward and visibility was bad in Turnagain. Seward was prioritized, but we didn't forget about Pyramid


This weekend the sun was out at Turnagain and we were looking for areas that had cleaned out since the buried surface hoar event. Pyramid was the obvious. From the Wolverine parking lot we followed the power-line and an existing skin track to Seattle Ridge.


The views from this end of Turnagain Pass are unreal and different than what you get from the non-motorized side. Spine Cell is pictured below, some day we will ski it! The peak behind it has a pretty rad face too, I think Jeff skied it in the past.

Seattle Ridge Ski - 2.9.2014

Saturday wasn't the only good day last weekend, Sunday was also rad. After a quiet day on Tin Can while an unsuspecting Anchorage slept, we knew we'd have to get a bit more creative to find untracked turns and solitude on Sunday.

We decided to take advantage of the unusual snowmobile closure on Seattle Ridge and check it out. But, about 20 parties in front of us had the same idea. That being said, starting the day by skinning in the sun felt great.


Fortunately for us, nineteen of the twenty groups in front of us decided to ski back towards the road as we dropped west towards Seattle Creek.

Standing on top of our first line we knew that, just like the day before, the storm snow was sitting on a slick layer of well developed surface facets. The question was, just how fast would the storm snow slide. I dropped first, watching cracks instantly propagate around my skis. I kept moving, knowing that I needed to get in front of the sliding snow, but the slide kept bunching up and cracking below me. Before long I popped out in front of it, but not before wasting half my run going straight.


Aliza found more stable snow: