Palmer Creek Skiing & Hiking

Original post is from 5.24.2014. Updated below to include a great day hiking above Hope in July 2026.

Palmer Creek is one of those zones that is on everyone's hit list. Early season, mid-season sled access, summer skiing - it has it all. There are challenges though. Early season you're fighting alders. Mid-season the 20 mile sled approach shuts most people down. Late season the approach requires a bike; except for Alex  who runs faster than I bike. Then there's the fact that driving from Anchorage to Hope means your passing countless other epic zones.

But, after skiing a line lower in the valley the previous weekend I was excited to get back. We drove down to Hope the night before, planning to catch some tunes and hit the hay early. No one goes to bed early on a summer Friday night in Hope.

Despite an unplanned late evening we were soon on our bikes inhaling the heavy smoke from the Kenai fire.

 
An hour on the bikes, a short bushwhack, and one stream crossing later and we were on snow. Almost too easy. Perhaps not quite as warm as Neil was making it look, I was wearing a jacket at this point.


Some cute little old man turns lower down the valley:

Jack River Packraft - June 2016

Updated in 2025 include another great day on this gem of a river.
For my birthday last year we mountain biked for two hours, then ran six miles barefoot on the beach, then went climbing, then did a class III float, and finished with a sunset hike. This year, after throwing around a few equally unreasonable ideas we settled on the Jack River over Caribou Pass as a logistically feasible combination of birthday fun.

Starting along the Parks Highway 3.6 miles south of Cantwell, we followed an ATV/bear/moose trail across the flats and were soon gaining elevation.


ATV trails are an interesting contradiction for non-motorized users: they leave eroded scars on the landscape, but without them, vegetated trail-less areas would be nearly impenetrable. Perhaps they are the true multi-use trail? Andalyn is probably debating this conundrum here:


At 3,000 feet we began to sidehill and wrapped SE into a valley towards the pass to the Middle Fork Chulitna drainage. As sidehilling goes it was quite pleasant.

Moody Creek Packraft - 6.3.2017

Updated in 2025 include another great day on this little chocolate river.

After a dry winter in the Alaska Range (and everywhere else), spring 2017 brought persistent cool weather to Southcentral. We wanted to get onto the water, but the weather history was tricky for predicting how much water we'd find. Driving north on the Parks Highway, the plan was to make a game-time decision. Passing Honolulu Creek, it had way too much water in it, so we headed for Moody.

We dropped a bike shuttle at the Healy bridge then parked at Dragonfly Creek to begin our customary late start. Following the dry drainage was straightforward and within a mile we were on the clear ridge.


Complete with game trail highways, the ridge was a great way to gain elevation towards the plateau above. Pretty good views southwest into the foothills of the Alaska Range too.


It also had vivid folding rock patterns to check out. The quartz intrusions are neat. Alex for scale:

Wolverine Peak Ski - 4.10.2020

Updated in February 2025 to include another great day on Wolverine.

It was April and we were all chomping at the bit. But, I was tired from my solo Bench Peak slog the previous day, and was looking for more vertical and less horizontal. So, Connor, Jordan, and I settled on a circumnavigation of a Turnagain classic - Wolverine.

We parked at the Eddies lot and followed the familiar trail into the woods before leaving the Iditarod Trail and contouring into Wolverine Creek. 


Leaving the hemlock forest behind, we startled two moose who, cautious of hungry bears, high-tailed it up the north face of Eddies. Oddly, the moose were still postholing towards the heavens as we skinned out of sight. 

Under Wolverine's iconic northwest-facing catcher's mitt we turned left and started climbing. I'd found good snow in the mid elevations of Bench the previous day, and hoped for the same, but no luck. By the the upper face we were front-pointing on a nearly unskiable mix of rime, ice, icy windboard, and debris.

Photo: Connor Johnson

Kickstep Mountain Skiing - 1.25.2015

Updated January 2016 and again February 2025 to include more great days on Kickstep.

There are days that you know that you have everything in your favor: weather, stability, beta, etc. Then, there are days where some pieces of the puzzle might not fit, you don't know how it will turn out.

Josh on the approach up CFR ridge.

Sunday was a day that started out as a question mark, but in the end, it lined up perfectly.

The warm up run.

The question mark was the weather, forecast to be cold and breezy. Cold enough that a wrong turn, avalanche, or crevasse incident could mean hypothermia. We set our sights on a smaller objective: the Library via Tincan Proper.

The Library dwarfed by Kickstep.

Pioneer Peak Ski - 3.30.2018

Note: updated below the original post to include an evening lap on the north face in March 2022 with Tony, and again on a magical late summer day with Nyssa in August 2024.

Over the last two days Brian and Sam had both skied Pioneer, and it was about to get a refresh - it was time to go get it. Only two small problems: I didn't have ice tools, and Alex had a project due at work. Easily remedied. I went to REI and Alex called in sick with a bad case of powder fever.

Pioneer's giant north face towering over Palmer.

The next morning found us driving back and forth on the Old Glenn looking for the north face trailhead. After a few laps of the road we'd located the appropriate thicket and were skinning into the alders. Within 500 vertical feet we'd reached the avy debris and were soon climbing mellow ice.


I was pleased how much better my ice tools performed than my finger nails and running shoes. Kind of like being a cyborg.

Lynx Peak Ski - 1.11.2020

Note: updated below the original post to include the north face of Lynx plus Three Bell Spire on 4.1.2023.

As we climbed out of the Webfoot couloir in the fading afternoon light a few weeks ago the Reed Lakes Valley was painted purple, pink, and gold by winter light. Looking at Montana Peak, I smiled back on the ridiculous day we had there a couple years ago, and drooled over the southwest face of Lynx Peak.


The image of Lynx was still burned in my retinas on the following Friday, so Zack, Nyssa, and Eric agreed to forgo easy powder skiing in favor of a long cold approach for variable wind-affect.

The Pinnacle was getting the first soft light of the morning as we turned away from Archangel and towards Reed Lakes. Its amazing to think that snow sticks to the other side of that vertical block. At least sort of.


Done with the approach to the approach, we wound up through the boulder fields of the valley as the arctic air carried by the north winds bit into our faces. Looking behind me, Nyssa looked more like an icicle than a human.

Behind Eric is Higher Spire which Alex, Alec, and I skied a few years ago - it links up nicely with several other nice lines behind the Snowbird.

Goats Head Soup Ski - 3.11.2020

Note: updated below the original post to include a great day of bad snow and good fun on 5.7.2023.

Backcountry skiing is the game of patience. We spend years staring at lines and waiting for them to come in. There are so many factors: stability, weather, work schedules, partners, motivation, and thin snowpacks to name a few.

For the couloir above Goats Head Soup, its takes something we haven't had in awhile along Turnagain Arm - consistent snow to sea level. But, every time we round the bend at Windy Corner, we crane our necks, try not to swerve into oncoming traffic, and hope for a fleeting glimpse of snow snaking down the 4,000 foot line to the ocean.

In early March, when Andy and Connor figured out that it was in, Tony and I weren't going to miss our chance.

We left work early with bad cases of powder fever, parked at the Windy Corner lot, skinned the Turnagain Arm Trail to the gully, then popped out of the alder tube into the lower chute.

Andy and Lance were ahead of us, and we followed their tracks as they took the subtle left-hand turn into the upper couloir.


Booting upwards, the brown and orange rock walls grew around us. 

The Wedge Ski - 5.8.2019

Note: updated below the original post to include a Thin White Line - Wedge linkup on 4.15.2023.

Yogging out of the Glen Alps parking lot on Wednesday evening my pants seemed to be getting unreasonably wet. Then it started to smell like beer too. I stopped, dug the half spilled beer out of the bottom of my pack, drank it, and continued.


15 minutes later I ran into Maggie who was eating crackers and cheese and watching the ptarmigan/maybe on a Tinder date. The crackers and cheese went nicely with the beer, and after a short chat I was on my way again.


I waded through a few isothermal snowdrifts, found the melted out trail, and continued my yog towards Ship Lake Pass.

Fairangel Valley Skiing - 4.27.2014

Note: updated below the original post to include a glorious Fair Five linkup on 4.2.2023.

By late April the high pressure that had been hanging over Southcentral for a month briefly broke down, but the warmth didn't. This left us with a predicament, how to get above the rain line? We needed something high and north facing, so we picked the highest Archangel of them all: Fairangel Valley. Perched at the top of Archangel Valley, it hides five perfect couliors: the Fair Five.

We planned to skin past the Pinnacle to Dogsled Pass, then drop into Fairangel. Looking back at the Lost Couloir:


Hard to say if that's a rain crust or just a sun crust, better keep going.


Closing in on Dogsled Pass, vaguely soft snow starting to appear.

Mount Rose Highway Skiing

Driving east thru the nuclear winter of the Cascades on Tuesday night, I started to wonder if I was going to make it to Reno. My rental bounced off giant piles of slush in the near zero visibility of the atmospheric river storm that alternated between heavy sideways snow and heavy sideways rain.

Finally, around 1:00 AM I crawled into Mike and Kristen's house very relieved and somewhat surprised that I wasn't stuffed into a snowbank somewhere in Lassen County. Mike and Kristen are old friends who I've known since first encountering Mike's sharpied Colorado 14ers shirt in freshman geology. From skiing 14ers on graduation day, to spearfishing in the warm waters of Hawaii, to hiding from brown bears while deer hunting in AK, we have so many shared memories together. In the morning it was nice to catch up with them while they quickly downloaded me on current conditions in the Sierras before heading to work.

Solo and in a totally new-to-me climate and snowpack, I decided to dip my toes in with a day at Mount Rose Ski Area. Driving out of town, and leaving the desert behind, I was impressed with the huge snowbanks of the Sierras rising above me.

The rare inbounds day was a leg burner for me, and a good chance to interrogate as many strangers as I could about local conditions. I could only laugh at myself as most of these reasonable people couldn't answer my unusually specific questions about the climate history of the area. At the same time I was starting to form a mental model of the snowpack here, and was stoked on the challenge of operating out of my comfort zone.

The next morning after a nice breakfast date with Nyssa, I headed into the backcountry of the Mount Rose Highway. From the Tamarack Lake parking lot, I scrambled over the ten foot snowbank, then skinned towards Tamarack Peak. Coming from sea level, I couldn't believe the impact the elevation was having on me, and struggled to keep my heartbeat below the aerobic threshold.

From the peak I looked down on the deep blue waters of the lake.


Operating alone in this unfamiliar terrain, I spent extra time thinking about escape routes and likely avalanche behavior before spooning existing tracks into Tamarack's north bowl.

Goat Couloir Ski - 12.30.2022

Goat Couloir is one of so many Southcentral AK ski classics that has been on my radar forever, but seems to just keep getting pushed down the list by other objectives. It’s tricky given its solar aspect and the high winds that rip through the Crow Pass gap. Plus, there's the teetering schoolbus cornices that are always threatening to peel off and bounce down the line.

Goat as seen from TT43 in January 2019.

On a calm gray day in late December, Nyssa and I thought we had a window for good snow and acceptable stability to go goat hunting. Plus, the striking rock walls of the couloir would hopefully provide some much needed visual reference under the contrastless faint light of a dark midwinter day.


Skinning away from the Crow Creek winter parking, the alders stood tall and unencumbered by snow. We followed a tube through the thickets, then started the tedious skin up the creek. We tried not to slip off of the rickety ice bridges and plunge our skins into the open water as we high stepped up the boulders of the ravine.

Nest Peak Ski - 2.19.2023

This past December, we began to notice unusual stability and snow quality in the south end of the Anchorage Front Range. Since then, we've been focused on taking advantage of these rare midwinter conditions. As this Eye of Sauron has focused, we've ventured deeper into the mountains of Bird, Ship, and Indian.

On a rare sunny Saturday in February we skinned out of the Penguin parking lot hoping to check out the north couloir and west face of Nest Peak. 

Intense snowfall the day before had coated the birch trees in flakes the size of silver dollars, leaving behind a magical tube of winter as we followed the trail up Penguin Creek. The first few miles of the well-worn ATV trail were fast until the path ended and we waded into the downed windowmakers, devils club, and alders of the forest.

Reaching the top of the old growth, we began to traverse towards the hanging valley under the west face of Bird Peak that we hoped would take us to the final pitch up Nest. This contouring route behind Penguin Ridge was about what you would expect: inefficient, bushy, and tedious.

Slithering under alders, falling into trapdoors of facets, and tiptoeing across slabs sitting on facets, we emerged into the hanging valley. There we were surprised to see a group of moose who were equally surprised to see us. Honestly, they had a far better reason to be confused than we did.

Passing the swamp donkeys, we climbed into the featureless cloud layer. This pea soup was a small problem as we'd have to roll the dice on the right route thru the gullies of Nest's east face.

Peak 6530 Ski - 2.25.2023

Peak 6530 first came into my awareness years ago while looking south from Bashful Peak with my good friend Charlie on a perfect midsummer day in the Chugach. I thought that its northwest face draped with a bulbous glacier looked like an aesthetic ski line, but thought it was guarded well enough by a long approach and alder jungle that it would remain a pipedream for me.

Peak 6530's northwest face as seen on Google Earth:


...and cool imagery showing the extent of that hanging shroud of ice near the end of the summer melt season. I assume there's less ice now than there was in 1996.


In February 2023, the zone came back to into my mind for winter objectives upon a recommendation of Benevolent Peak from Aaron while chatting at the ARG. With a weekend forecast for clear skies, but also the possibility of wind, we decided to check out Eklutna’s East Fork. By 9 AM on Saturday were unloading sleds a the Eklutna Lake parking lot as large snowflakes lazily fell around us. With the insulating clouds still holding in some "heat", it was relatively warm as Nyssa, Mike, Austin, and I sledded across the lake to the East Fork trailhead. We knew it wouldn’t stay warm for long.

At the bridge over the East Fork, we parked the sleds, shed layers, and skinned into the unbroken snow of the incised valley. I was impressed with the trail winding past the peaceful river and tucked under the giant walls of the Mitre as we followed the tracks of moose and wolverine up-valley through the mixed forest of birch, spruce, and cottonwood.

Falls Creek Skiing - 4.29.2018

Updated below on 4.20.2019, 12.22.2021, 2.2.2022, and again for 12.17.2022 to include more great days skiing new-to-us lines in Falls Creek. 

Around 2 PM on Saturday the texts starting coming in from Jeff: they were storm skiing untracked pow in Falls Creek. I was sitting in gloomy, windy, and rainy Anchorage mourning getting shut down on the Alaska Range by storm after storm. The forecast was calling for more of the same Saturday night into Sunday, and I wasn't going to miss out on more stormy couloirs. The next day, hiking out of the rainy parking lot in our running shoes, it was hard to imagine winter was up there somewhere.

But, by the time Andrew, Alex, and I had climbed past a sleepy black bear, traded our running shoes for ski boots, and skinned into the alpine, winter was back in full force.


Making a right turn, throwing our skis on our packs, and starting the booter up the first coolie of the day, we began to realize just how good it was going to be. From the top I looked back down at Andrew as the falling snow swirled out of sight below.


Alex ski cut the slope before dropping first. After a foot of rapid loading overnight, we weren't sure how the new snow had bonded, but nothing moved.

Little Nelchina to Tazlina Raft Trip - June 2022

Every summer I look forward to mom's annual visit. Its a chance to share our love for Alaska, the great outdoors, and a bit of misadventure. Its also provides the fun challenge of scheming up an exploit that is enjoyable for all. With road access, moderate whitewater, and a surprisingly wild feel, we settled on the Nelchina - Tazlina raft trip.

From the put-in next to the frost heaves of the Glen Highway, we'd float the brown waters of the Little Nelchina River to its confluence with the gray Nelchina River. Once reaching Tazlina Lake where it mixes in swirls with the glacial Nelchina, we'd paddle across the huge loch. Then follow the Tazlina River down its crumbling canyon to the take-out on the old gold-rush grade that is now the Richardson Highway.

We left Anchorage in a caravan with Nyssa and Bob to set the 55-mile car shuttle between the two highways. Between commuter traffic from the Valley, never-ending rockfall around the blind curves of Chickaloon, and the kamikaze moose of the Copper River Basin, this drive is a chore. Arriving at the pullout where the Little Nelchina crosses the Glen, we were all relieved to be done driving.


Its been a persistently wet year in Southcentral and the rivers have stayed stubbornly high. With its waters lapping over the bank, the Little Nel was no exception. We stuffed our gear inside the roomy cargo compartments of our two-person Forager packrafts and pushed into the chocolate milk of the river.

There wasn't much for rapids as we made our way towards the Nelchina, but with the fast waters of snowmelt, our attention was focused on avoiding the sharp spear-shaped snags of black spruce drowning in the river.

The highlight of this section for me was seeing permafrost exposed by the sinuous river eating into the S-shaped bends of its curves. Permafrost is any ground that remains completely frozen for at least two years - it isn't necessarily filled with ice - it can be frozen rock too. But, this boggy boreal landscape is wet and full of ice, and we watched ice lenses reminiscent of flying saucers dripping into the river as they emerged from the ground.

Just short of the confluence with its bigger sister, the hazard of the Little Nelchina ramped up with a river-wide log jam. Even on a smooth river like this, the danger of these pileups cannot be ignored - water is so powerful. So, we quickly eddied out and prepared to portage. The portage was relatively short, and as if knowing they had limited time to feed, the mosquitos attacked our exposed skin like a buzzing cloud of needles. Bob was recovering from his nasty knee injury, and a portage of crawling thru the thicket of alders and crutch-eating mud was no easy task. This portage would have been a bear with a bigger raft or more gear.

At the confluence with Nelchina we were all ready for a break. We pulled out on a gravel bar scoured by the power of water so to be free of brush from where the hungry bugs to stage an ambush. I think I see cheez-its, clementines, pub mix, peanut M&Ms, cream cheese, and some mysterious smashed gross yellow thing in there. Fuel of champions.

O'Malley Peak Ski - 5.6.2019

Note: updated below the original post to include another evening in our desk jockey spring skiing paradise in April 2022.

On the way home home from the Ramp the other day, we skinned under the impossibly steep north face of O'Malley. Craning our necks back we looked up at the lines snaking thru the face. Exposed and skinny, I made a pact with myself not to touch them. Within a week, I was dreaming about the Lightning Bolt couloir:


I snuck out of work at 4:00 and 30 minutes later was running down the Powerline Pass trail in my ski boots. Although it continues to dump up high, the snow is quickly disappearing on the approaches.


Within an hour and a half the approach across the Ballfield and down the obnoxious scree to Black Lake was done with. Looking up, it was hard to imagine that a continuous line was there.