This weekend saw some amazing early Backcountry Skiing in Alaska. Three friends, from 3 different parts of the world (France, Colorado, & AK) went out and skied Tin-Can yesterday, and Corn Biscuit today. Yesterday, was my first real BC ski trip of the season and snow didn't disappoint.
The good weekend weather made it into a really fun weekend. After about an 2 hour climb to the popular start of Tin Can, we were ready to shred some good snow. The snow depth has accumulated to around 7 feet with pretty good stability. My buddie, Jo who is a professional Ski Instructor from France decided he wanted to launch off a cornice. He blasted off it with quite a bit of speed and I was able to capture a pretty sweet picture in the process.
After getting some pow turns, my friend had another crazy idea. We decided to build a healthy looking gap jump to the other side of a gully. We built quite a good looking jump and hoped that we had enough speed to clear the 30 foot deep gap.
Jo decided to guinea pig the jump while I took a picture. He was just barely able to clear the gap as we weren't able to get as much speed as we wanted. It was my turn next and I was able to get a slingshot from a couple of friends. As I popped off the jump I seemed to just hang 30 feet in the air for a second before I started dropping really fast. Then, POOF!
While I was able to clear the gap I had nowhere enough speed to make it to the good landing. It was kind of a disappointment as we really wanted to session it. We are definitly going back when more snow fills in the other side of the gully and find a way to get more speed.
Today, the crew headed to Corn-Biscuit to ski some lines on the West face. I was really trying to get a good training day in and only stopped a couple times on the way up. In about an hour and a half I was able to get to the top and was really stoked that my early season training had paid off.
I picked a relatively modest line with a nice 15 footer into some really nice snow. It was nice to get a early season stomp, and we all had a blast toying with some minor chutes. On the second part of the face we found some really amazing snow. I found a good spot to take a couple of pow shots including this one of my buddie Phil.
All in all, it was GREAT weekend with friends in the mountains. It's shaping up into a very good start to the season. I am looking forward to next weekend and if it is anything like today it's going to be a ton of fun. Hope to see you all up in the mountains we love sometime soon!
Greg Stafford
