The next morning after having better assessed the scene, we realized the loose wheel had machined the rim apart along the drive, but that we were relatively lucky as we’d only need new bolts in order to get mobile.  Jimmy and I went to the local “country store” in search of some bolts which unfortunately was late opening and then didn’t have the exact parts we were looking for.  We returned with some new bolts and made an effort to put the trailer back together before realizing it was futile and that we were best off pushing on to Valdez without the trailer, doing some ski touring, and returning with the proper parts.

The trip played out like a reintroduction to all the Valdez stereotypes.  Friday was a reintroduction to the length of runs that are possible when it’s sunny.  Saturday we got lost on above giant cliffs when we were tricked by a sucker hole, and recovered to ski a fun chute before finding excellent long powder runs on some alder slopes.  Sunday we were forced to make do with high winds, blowing snow, and zero visibility, which kept us from skiing, but because we’d retrieved the trailer Saturday we were able to pass the day with my snow machine and Josh’s kite.  Graham was granted access too an old cabin short hike from the road (pictured both above and at this link) so each night we hung out around the stove, stuffed ourselves on moose or sausage, and drunk a bunch of whiskey.  A fantastic fun weekend in Valdez, I can’t wait to go back.

Most of our days were spent sight seeing, rather then hitting any large lines (until Sunday, sort of), which was fine as the area has a massive amount of terrain and we didn’t see a single ski track the entire weekend.  Saturday we had some high clouds and winds which put a damper on our activities, but the rest of the time it was sunny and calm.  The Hut was fantastic too, smaller then most but still comfortable with two people.  Nights were spent either eating a bunch of food or drinking mixtures of rico mint chai and tang.   I even took a night lap Thursday.  The view out the front door wasn’t bad either.  I’ll have some video of the skiing later.  Oh, and Mt Sanford was gorgeous last night.  My desire to ski off one of those huge solitary peaks in the Wrangells increases by the day.

Filed under: Front Range, Skiing Tagged: Alpenglow, Arctic Valley ]]> http://dongshow-productions.com/2010/02/15/arctic-valley-lift-skiing/feed/ 2 dongshow http://dongshow-productions.com/2010/02/14/sunny-powder-day-with-guns/ http://dongshow-productions.com/2010/02/14/sunny-powder-day-with-guns/#comments Sun, 14 Feb 2010 07:13:48 +0000 dongshow http://dongshow-productions.com/?p=1354 ]]>

After over a week of near continuous snowfall I woke up this morning to Max confidently claiming it was going to be clear and sunny until late this afternoon.  Sunshine and deep powder is always exciting, but we were both skeptical of how the snow pack was going to hold together, and decided to go for a mellower tour and shoot some guns.  With the Olympics getting started a little Alaskan biathlon (alpine ski touring with hand guns, rather then nordic skiing with rifles) sounded like a fantastic option.  The snow was the creamy greatness we expected, and despite the clear signs of instability, our test slopes and ski cuts didn’t produce any activity.  None the less we skied cautiously, figuring there were plenty of pockets waiting to pop with the snow settling and slabbing up since yesterday.  Still an excellent day, after yesterday’s too deep to turn experience it felt fantastic to get some speed again.

Also, I’m compelled to mention that today was rather tragic elsewhere in the mountains, stay safe and take your time everyone.

It was really one of those days where it was too deep to ski anything that was  flat enough not to avalanche, where you would just kind of go straight with the snow so deep you can only go slowly, maybe wishing you had wider skis, but with a monster sized smile and getting the occasional face shot as you dodged a tree.  More days like this please.

On a side note, today was probably too deep to take the dogs, they all made it back to the car, but they made me nervous a few times as well.  It was double over head, and when they weren’t on the skin track they were tunneling through the snow.  Coda had an incident with a tree well and both Boozer and Walter aired a good sized pillow.  Enjoy the video, it’s poorly encoded and framed in black since I did a poor job of encoding it, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment.

(via Homeboy’s Ski Blog)

All day I’ve been feeling aggrieved that I’m in the office dealing with endless video codec or rendering issues while outside my window it is a calm, sunny day with fresh snow.  Then I came across the picture posted above, which is from a frightening large avalanche from Tamokdalen, Norway, and suddenly I felt much safer sitting here in the office.  There has been all sorts of avalanche related reading today as well.  My morning started out with the insane tale of a Swiss skier who survived after being buried for 17 hours in an avalanche, and a Washington area avalanche scare involving a whippet self-arrest above some cliffs.  Not the most positive day of mind-skiing, but sometimes horror stories are what’s needed when I’m marooned from the slopes in my dingy downtown office.   Anyway, there is a blizzard warning forecast for tonight and tomorrow, I’m welcoming all the snow, but a little afraid the Chugach is going to look like a war zone when it’s all done. And finally on a side note Caroline has come through with my new picture definition of the Wasatch scene.  I think that pretty much captures everything.

Hunter snapped the photo above Saturday.  I really like how Tin Can looks like a complete zoo with all the tracks and the people along the ridge.  The skier in the slide is the one who triggered it and is in the process of squirming his way out in the photo.  You can see what the next skier down kicked off here.  It’s snowing hard in Anchorage, long may it continue.

Graham, Jeff and I skied Ptarmigan this afternoon.  They both had class this morning, so I lounged around in bed for a while looking at the blue sky out my window.  Our first choice was to ski Big League this afternoon, but the weather was deteriorating quickly down south, and with sunshine in Anchorage we decided to head to the front range and hit Ptarmigan.  The weather was typical of how its been this last week; fast moving clouds, with flurries and sunshine at the same time.   We skied the obvious chute that starts to the right of the summit which made for a great little afternoon tour.  I even tripped and somersaulted without consequences which got everyone laughing.  Lets hope the weather improves.  Looking at the Tordrillos (pictured bellow) while getting ready really wet my appetite for skiing some new stuff.

Anyway, now that Dave has coined the term “mind skiing” in the comments I’ll pass along the mind skiing and other things I’ve read in the office the last couple days.

• To get things started there is a great local story of skiing Aconcagua with strangers.
• In a quest for the most predictable study of all time, a paper published by Dartmouth has determined that ski areas exaggerate their snowfall reports more on weekends.
• Apparently the snow pack in the Wasatch isn’t looking good, and Andrew Mclean has a great post on avalanches complete with illustrations.  Still no content from Stinsmania or Politics to share, extremely disappointing.
• Finally, Unhappy Hipsters has had us in tears all week.

So, as mentioned earlier Graham, Jimmy, Charlie and I skied the south face of Wolverine yesterday.  It was a first for each of us, and a line I’d wanted to do for as long as I’ve lived here.  To top the whole thing off we did it in typical Dongshow style with a late start, minimal food or water (I went all day on 20oz of coffee,  a bite of Grahams chocolate and some Jubelale!), forgotten equipment and wet boots.  We hadn’t really planned to ski Wolverine either, and I was sure we were going to be forced to turn around until we reached the top.

Our late start was due to our lack of a clue as to what the weather was going to do.  After a round of 7:30 phone calls we decided to meet at Carrs around 9; once there we resolved to decide what to ski on the drive down south, and at Tesoro we made the call to give Wolverine a try.  We parked at the Eddies lot and went up half way before taking off our skins and skiing off the north side to towards the Sharks fin and across the ravine. (Charlie realized he’d forgotten his beacon and pushed on anyway)  We had our skins back on around 12:30 and skinned up the valley, past the south face of Wolverine and up the back towards the east ridge.  Going around the back made gaining the ridge surprisingly painless, with a short skin through a small flattish chute and up through a mellow bowl with some amazing mini golf.  But we didn’t have time to look around too much, as the good light is obviously fleeting this time of year.

At the time the ridge walk to the summit had me freaked; I was thirsty, tired and I hardly took any pictures as I was genuinely scared.  Both the potential long tumble over sharp rocks to my right and large cornices above a steep exposed face to left were hard to ignore.  At one point as I made my way up a steep section (second photo from the top) Jimmy broke off a large cornice with a light tap from his pole.  I saw nothing as I was climbing, all I heard was the sound of it releasing and a Charley scream.  Luckily Jimmy was standing on rocks and the incident passed as a stern warning.  The route required a couple down climbs which made me nervous, (descending steps kicked in rime above corniced ridge lines never thrills me), but in the end I can’t complain as it left us at the exact point from which we were hoping to ski from.(the top right in the picture above.)

The line skied fantastic, very steep with soft snow and minimal sluffing.  The snow was a little harder in the lower chute, but by the time I got there (I went last) it was covered in enough sluff to be easy smooth skiing.  I was shocked to see hardly any snow rumble down hill when Jimmy put in his initial turn / ski cut, but it was just that kind of day where things continued to turn for the best.  Also worth mentioning is that the apron on Wolverine was deceptively large, I came out of the lower chute with a huge smile thinking it was over but it seemed to go on forever.  After a couple of beers at the base we skied back to the Eddies lot, which passed without any surprises and we arrived just before dark.  Charlie has to be thanked for documenting everything, he took a pile of pictures and got a little video as well.  I’ve attached that to the video of Graham’s run.  The attentive viewer will get an excellent view of the pole flask he’s constructed.

Posted in backcountry, Skiing, Turnagain, video Tagged: Wolverine ]]> http://dongshow-productions.com/2010/01/28/wolverine/feed/ 5 dongshow wolverine ridge Eddies Ridge Walk Wolverine South Face graham wolverine south face ski http://dongshow-productions.com/2010/01/27/tired-happyness-video-of-hatcher-last-friday/ http://dongshow-productions.com/2010/01/27/tired-happyness-video-of-hatcher-last-friday/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 07:47:48 +0000 dongshow http://dongshow-productions.com/?p=1310 ]]>

Graham, Charlie, Jimmy and I skied Wolverine today, it was awesome, exhausting and scary, and because of those reasons I don’t have time to post much, so enjoy this video of Jimmy in Hatcher last friday and I’ll get after it tomorrow while in the office.  Oh and it was really really really good.  A demain.

Jimmy crashed on my couch Saturday night, and Sunday the two of us got a very un dongshow like early start by leaving the house a couple hours before the sun was up.  Driving along the Seward highway there were bands of high clouds, and with it still being dark we struggled to wrap our heads around what the weather was going to do.  While at the Tesoro there was talk of abandoning our plans of skiing Peterson Creek and skiing something mellow in the pass.  Luckily we stuck to the plan, as the weather turned out to be perfect.  We were a little surprised to find two other cars already parked and departed when we arrived around nine, but it worked out as we didn’t have to cut trail.  A few minutes into the valley we came across two of the people ahead of us, it turned out they had just freed their dog from a conibear trap and were turning around, with the poor dog completely spooked after getting caught.  Luckily, I’d left both dogs at home and we continued on.

When we climbed out of the valley and were up on the glacier with views of everything it became difficult to decide what to ski, everything looked great, and Peterson Creek has tons of options.  Jimmy was in the mood for some high speed turns, so we headed up what I guess is calledd Lactic Acid and skied the glorious open south face (video above).  The snow was ripple textured by the wind, but still soft enough that skis cut through it like butter.  I couldn’t help but cheering as I cruised across the smooth as glass apron, after skiing in Hatcher all week it was nice to go fast and not even consider the possibility of snagging a rock.

Deciding what to ski for our second run was equally difficult, but Jimmy led the way booting up a chute near the Shoulder of Death and was clearly motivated as he cut trail all the way to the top as I couldn’t catch up with him.  When I crawled over the cornice at the top Jimmy was nowhere to be seen, but after some shouting realized that while waiting for me he had picked out a line down the ridge which I couldn’t see.  So I dropped in first, back down the chute we’d just crawled up.  Again the skiing was fantastic, perfect snow and a beautiful run out that allowed for carrying speed and trying to race my sluff down, really fantastic skiing. Unfortunately I’d run out of batteries (this is sure to be remembered as trait of  this season when remembered a few years in the future) so there is no footage of the line.  From the bottom I looked around for Jimmy, and watched him absolutely kill the steep rib pictured above.  I didn’t really know what his intended route was, and was initially a bit concerned with all the sluff, but Jimmy skied it flawlessly, sticking to the rib till the very end and straight lining out a lower notch I hadn’t noticed.  An incredibly impressive run to top off an awesome day.

I’m back in the office currently, hopefully some more skiing will be had soon, in the meantime enjoy this Rémy Lécluse first descent from the weekend in the Valais. Oh, and hilarious TGR footage of Peterson Creek can be found in Mind the Addiction, there is some Big League footage in their as well, I love how the whole that entire section is accessed in a leisurely afternoon on skins, typical of CPG I guess.  Oh, and dogs on the Metro is fantastic stuff.

and this is a special World of Warcraft version for Usau

I’ll have more tomorrow on today with Jimmy in Peterson Creek, my internet is slow and I can’t upload anything currently.  In the meantime if your bored you may enjoy some pictures that have me craving a couple days in the Pyrenees, oh and add Japan to the list of necessary ski trips.  And this article on the growth of electronic lift tickets and the corresponding increase in fraud is good, but I always thought the point of the new tickets was that it’s easier to scam. Oh, and we’re not the only ones enjoying the pass.  A demain…