Photo: Dirkgroeger
By Christian Hincheldey
The powdery snow whirls through the air while the helicopter fights the turbulence above us and disappears into the deep blue sky. Slowly we move our protected upper bodies from the pile of skis and backpacks that otherwise would have been sent into orbit by the power of the rotor.
We are at the summit of The Pipe Line in Alaska’s Chugach Range, a range whose staggering amounts of snow and amazingly steep hillsides meet the demands of even the most seasoned off-piste skier or snowboarder. This is our second lift, and while the delicate snowflakes slowly settle on the 45-55 degrees sloping hillsides, we remove most of the ice coating our skis before getting down to business.
The bindings click, and at the very edge of the hillside our guide yells with his characteristic accent, “Okay guys, ready to go vertical?” We can’t see the hillside yet, because we have to jump onto it from a two metres high snowy ledge that defines the mountain’s jagged profile.
Our first jaunt was a nice, relaxed run down a glacier, but this is extreme. I look at my friend, Frank, whose face seems to have changed colour, chameleon-like, at the sound of the guide’s cheerful voice. He’s quite a bit paler than the reptile, though.
Photo: Dirkgroeger
Our front guide Rick and his tail guide Ty lay down the final guidelines for the upper slope. “Listen up, guys, when you shoot into her, you wanna go fast down, no stopping and no falling. Do huge, fast turns, so you don’t spend too much time on her.” This introduction doesn’t make Frank’s skin colour appear any healthier, but he grits his teeth, takes the plunge and disappears into the powder.
After seven seasons as guides in Austria, Frank and I had a dream of going to Alaska to test the mountains, take some pictures and maybe do a documentary on skiing in Alaska. We got hold of a digital video camera with a decent colour card, plenty of film and of we went.
We arrived in Anchorage late one evening towards the end of March, rented a car and drove down to the small town Girdwood, home to Alaska’s only “real” skiing area (with ski lifts). Our budget was too tight for a 4x4 for twenty days, but ten minutes of non-stop charming convinced the salesgirl to upgrade us from economy class to a genuine mid-size automatic Mercury floater with summer tires! The car had ample room for all our gear and four pairs of skis, but we did regard the summer tires with a certain suspicion, especially when we woke up the next morning and discovered 60 centimetres of newly fallen snow. We didn’t know anything about the condition of the roads up in Thompson Pass at Valdez.
Photo: Dirkgroeger
Alyeska at this end of the Chugach Mountains would prove to be an excellent skiing area with just six ski lifts, one of which was a cabin lift, and a breathtaking situation right by the Turnagain inlet. The backbone of the area – the north face – which is a wide hillside with a number of black off-piste routes, called “double black diamonds”, had a reputation for being some of the very best woodland skiing terrain in all of North America, and that proved to be correct. “The Christmas Chute”, a steep ravine on the north face, would later in the week be used for the Red Bull Snow Thrill, another “free-skiing” event in which free-skiers from all over the world compete on extremely steep hillsides. The weather in Alaska is totally unpredictable, and we had driven through this particular ravine in a dense fog the previous day without knowing it. We had simply assumed that it was a perfectly ordinary black diamond.
After a week of warming up in the mountains around Girdwood and the local ski bar Chair 5, we were ready for Valdez, and a full day’s drive in the floater brought us to Thompson Pass, approximately 45 kilometres from Valdez.
Before leaving home we had checked the four helicopter operators of the area via the internet. The cheapest and most hardcore supplier of heliskiing in the area was ABA – Alaska Backcountry Adventures (the first to introduce heliskiing in the Chugach Mountains).
They promised sublime powder experiences with the slogan “Access the goods”, and that did sound promising. The initial meeting with ABA in Thompson Pass was indeed auspicious. Three helicopters, an old propeller-driven aircraft and a container with an office constituted the basis of ABA. In the middle of nowhere. Following a so-called heli-briefing, where you learn how to behave around the helicopter and how to load your skis, we completed the mandatory avalanche search course. Equipped with a so-called avalanche beeper, you have to find a person buried under the snow. The course would prove to be valuable to many participants. Then we were ready.
Our classic alpine skis really got us value for our money. Several hundred turns through the most awesome powder snow. Our two guides both use so-called flat skis, which prevent you from sinking down into the snow and almost make you surf on top of it, a bit like a snowboard. In Europe this kind of skis are sometimes called senior citizen-skis.
After the second heli-lift we’re completely busted, and once again we’re ridiculed for our traditional skis, which from their point of view take too much effort. A battered old truck picks us up by the highway and drives us back to the ABA base. In the evening, when the temperature drops to minus ten degrees Celsius, we start the engine of our floater and head towards every ski-bum’s paradise, Tzaina Lodge. In this wooden cabin, a heavy, ambient reggae-ish music captivate skiers and snowboarders from all over the world. The events of the day are washed down with a couple of cold beers before we drive back to our tent. Utterly exhausted, ignoring the rumours that the first bears possibly have left their winter lair, we crawl into our sleeping bags while the northern lights illuminate the sky above us.
Go further: Read about skiing in Chile in July.
