Back in Salt Lake, after the long drive on Wednesday it was hard to motivate myself to do anything. Everyone was raving about the good powder the previous week too so I did little other than solve pressing camera issues. I tried to tour on Friday but a system was moving in and it seemed too windy to be worth the effort. On Saturday, I took part in a ski-touring race in the Alta/Solitude/Brighton b/c before getting on a plane. The destination was:
On the drive from Anchorage I got a taste of things to come.
The weather had been fairly miserable during the previous few weeks: no snow and nuking winds. However, it snowed for a most of Sunday, laying down about 1' of not-in-Utah-anymore powder. On Monday, full of expectation that the clouds would clear, giving us great skiing on smooth powder we headed up to the N side of Thompson Pass to ski a N-facing shot called RFS. RFS is an abbreviation apparently, with S standing for "steep" and R standing for "really". Oh and how we were wrong. The clouds didn't clear at all giving us unbelievably flat light. It was one of those situations when you kept switching between goggles, sunglasses, or au naturel. The powder, when it wasn't whoomphing, was sitting on top of some brutal sastrugi. Whilst the R and the F stayed the same, the S became s**t. Not a great introduction to the Chugach.
On the way up in a bit of light.
The Bridal Veil Falls on the way back down to Valdez.
