Fireballin; AK
You can check out all of Daves work - Photos, Art and Videos at www.rockymountainsherpas.com

We were driving north on the Jasper highway. As I gazed at the snowy peaks speeding past, an unparalleled sense of freedom lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. Our vehicle—a 26-foot RV aptly named “The Fireball”, was taking us to Alaska.

More specifically, it was taking us to the jagged peaks of the Chugach Mountain Range, just outside of Valdez. We knew these peaks only by reputation; they were the stars of the ski and snowboard videos all of us had grown up watching. Before the early nineties, the fluted peaks had been deemed unskiable by the locals. Guys like Doug Coombs and Matt Goodwill put the notion to shame--the past fifteen years have seen some of the best athletes in the world lay tracks down the craziest, most unique lines ever ridden.







The peaks of the Chugach are normally accessed by helicopter. The skiers and snowboarders that ride there are often sent by their sponsors, rolling with a healthy budget that gets drained by the local heli-ski industry. It costs about $700 American for a full day of guided, flight-accessed riding in Alaska. It’s the playground of the rich and sponsored.

Our crew—Malcolm Sangster, Dave Mossop, Callum Patterson and I were neither rich nor sponsored. We were on loans from our parents. In fact, one day of guided riding would have cost us around ¾ of our liquid assets. It was clear from the moment we left—wherever we went in the Chugach, we were on own and we were walking.







After four days of driving and a three-day hiatus in Fort Nelson, The Fireball delivered us to Valdez. Halfway there, a disastrous carburetor incident shot flames into the cockpit of our trusty vessel. Its repair cost us what had originally been our heli-budget, but we made it.

Thompson Pass--the last high mountain pass before Valdez--looks like an asphalt landing strip laid across one of BC’s highest glaciers. The area is strictly alpine. There’s not a tree to be seen and massive avalanche paths run from spine-ridged summits straight down to the road. The terrain that makes Alaska famous was being framed by the windows of our rolling house. We bounced around from one side of the RV to the other, trying to take stock of everything we passed.

We pulled our decrepit RV into the parking lot at the top of the pass and parked next to the shiny ones that the more financially blessed had rented from Anchorage. An entourage of American shredders had already made camp there. They’d been heli-skiing for about a week and seemed almost jealous of our ski-touring intentions. We instantly distinguished ourselves as the broke Canadians in the crappy RV.






On our first day in the big mountain mecca of the Chugach, we woke up to sunny skies. We geared up for the day, Malcolm and Dave with skis and Callum and I with splitboards. My harness was designed for 14-year-old girls, but its snug embrace was the only defense I had against the snarling crevasses that dot the landscape. We set out for the day.

As we gained elevation, we started to recognize lines made immortal by in the movies that inspired our trip. The Tusk, The Books and Python Peak dominated the views across the valley. We felt like tourists wandering around Beverly Hills, trying to get a glimpse of the stars.

It hadn’t snowed in three weeks and the snow in open unprotected areas had been blown into series of ankle to knee-high ridges. It’s a condition known as sastroogi and it makes for incredibly crappy skiing.

But it looked like the steep north-facing aspects were holding some decent snow. With no guide to show us the nuances of the area, we’d simply ski what looked good. We found a 50-55 degree face that looked like an inverted fang. It looked good.






We snuck around the back and before we knew it, we were peering down our first Alaskan descent. At least we could see our whole line?

I turned my skis into a snowboard, composed myself and dropped in. The snow was just soft enough to hold an edge so I accelerated through a few turns and skipped across the sastroogi on the glacier below. Fuck it felt good.

I grunted incoherently at my cohorts above and watched as they put their own marks on the face. Mossop shredded the line like he’d stolen something, airing off a rock at the top and harnessing the subsequent acceleration until a nasty bit of windfuck sent him into an unintentional cork-360-t0-face.

Our guard was down after that, but we still had 2000 feet of skiing to get back the RV. We started to commit to a slope that had seen over six hours of sun—a classic weakening agent for an otherwise strong snowpack. Luckily, as the slope rolled over, Malcolm’s instincts were triggered.







Taking his lead, we skirted the slope until being forced to commit to a few hundred of feet of skiing off its shoulder. After Malcolm had the slope behind him, I dropped in. The snow around me broke into a thousand pieces and grew into a sizeable avalanche.

I pointed my board at the flats and tried to outrun the slide, but I lost the race. As the mass collided with the bench it turned over on itself and sent up a head-high plume. I came into the turmoil with speed, still on my feet. The impact launched me upside down and I found myself floating through the air staring at the blue Alaskan sky.

I came down on my neck and shoulders with authority. Thankfully, I was able to stand up just as the slide petered out at my calves. It was the closest call I’ve ever had and it really messed with my decision-making process for the rest of my trip.

Thompson Pass was ridiculous, so we spent a few more days seeing what it had to offer. We skinned up a cat road on the back of Mt. Odyssey that delivered us to 3500 feet of Alaskan gnar. Eventually though, as the sastroogi claimed every one of us with spine-jarring faceplants, we grew tired of the wind-hammered conditions.






We’d heard of a zone closer to the coast that was sheltered from the winds that consistently victimized the Pass. We wouldn’t have the road to put us at eye-level with the goods, but the access was still perfectly manageable.

We started our day at sea level and toiled for a while through heinous travel conditions. After two hours, we were breaking trail through something we hadn’t seen for our whole trip—a foot of blower pow.

The avalanche danger seemed reasonable, so we kicked steps up an impossibly steep ramp that tested our nerve on the way up. Once on top, we could see Prince William Sound—the site of the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill— nestled amongst the dragon-teeth peaks of the Chugach. The exposure off the back of our line was nauseating. Never before had the sheer sight of terrain had such an effect on me.







Callum and I played a game of rock, paper, scissors of which he was the champion. He strapped in and then disappeared over the roll into oblivion. In retrospect, I’m glad he dropped in first. I was scared. The run was so steep from the top it was like it wasn’t even there. I sat there, lost in myself, until I heard Malcolm yelling hysterically below.

I couldn’t see a thing from where I was, but apparently Callum had made five turns through the buttery pow before leaning into a hard heelside carve that sent him off a thirty foot cliff. It was an intentional launch, but given the steep landing, he went three times bigger than expected. He climbed out of his bombhole and finished his run cheering, pumping his hands above his head.

The northern sun was lighting our ramp from the back so when I dropped in, I collided with my shadow. It was like looking in the mirror—I could see my roostertail shooting out behind me as my 30-foot-tall shadow and I made turns down the face.






As it turned out, it was Callum’s last day riding of the trip. I’m sure as he was on the plane on the way home he reflected on a day that had changed his life. To hell with his English degree.


Malcolm, Dave and I still had ten more days in paradise. We endured a few days of bad weather until a massive high-pressure system ushered in another week of clear skies. It was time to get back to the goods. Dave nursed a bad knee in the Fireball while Malcolm and I dove into a sea of debt, giving into the temptation of a half day heli-skiing with H20.

We cruised around for the morning in an Allouette helicopter that seemed more suited to Hawkeye and Honeycutt.At the end of our day, lead guide Dean Cummings poked his head into our heli, shook our hands and gave us a well-practiced slayer sign as we were taking off. The ritual seemed to be included in the astronomical price.





Partly for Dave’s sake, we played the experience down when we got back to the RV. But there was an element of truth to our lack of excitement—we’d actually gotten to way better riding with our feet.

Missing a morning of heli-skiing seemed to fix Dave’s knee, so we drove back to Mt. Odyssey for a sunset slide that same night. It was 9:00 pm before we dropped into a 55-degree face turned tangelo orange by the sunset.

With Dave feeling strong again we decided to go camping for a couple nights. We knew of a spot before we even got to Alaska. The Books are a collection of north-facing ramps stacked 270 degrees around the periphery of the Hayden Glacier that stack against one another like staggered novels in a shelf. The walk in was so taxing that by the time we got there, I was too bitter to realize we’d arrived in paradise. That didn’t last long.

We spent two days climbing up to the precarious summits of the ramps that looked fun, composing ourselves and ripping back towards camp. At night we’d simply stare at the amphitheatre around us, mentally undressing the lines that caught our eye. After two nights and days, we cruised out, plowing through the river we had crossed so gingerly on the way in.





Abnormally warm temperatures and an utter lack of cash told us it was time to go home. We pointed the Fireball south and headed back towards Canada. But there was one more heli-skiing operation on the fringe of the Chugach that was impossible to drive past. After all, Dave had missed our first day heli-skiing. It would have been a shame for him to leave without seeing how the local guides manhandle their mountains.


We justified diving even deeper into debt with another half day in the heli. An A-Star delivered us to the top of the first peak we salivated over on the drive in thirty days earlier—a 5000 foot fluted face known simply as “Happiness”. Ribbed for our pleasure.

I don’t think my parents will ever forgive me for calling them afterwards and asking them nicely to pick up the tab. But we were in Alaska. Who knew when we’d be back? They seemed to understand at the time.