Far Out Places: Fear and Loathing in Girdwood, Alaska

Gathering my bags in Anchorage airport, food poisoning announces its arrival over the loudspeaker. It seems Glenfiddich has lost the war with an airport lounge chicken curry. Shame. I quickly pen a savage online review for Singapore Airlines to ponder before breaking the 100 meter dash record. Graciously the beast in my bowels didn’t appear mid-flight. And they say, chivalry is dead. Many unpleasant stops for roadside prayers later we reach Angel Collinson’s house and I slump into bed for a violent 48-hour sabbatical.

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I am reborn in my patient chauffeur’s new home of Girdwood, Alaska. Angel moved up here to be with Chugach Powder Guides’ Jeff Hoke, a true adventure man with a punk rock collection as deep as his curious three-mattress bed. Jeff would be running our snow safety and activity plans while his vastly superior moustache also lent him plenty of authority. Helpful for dealing with a bunch of over excited degenerates, like Angel’s younger sibling and my good mate Brother John Collinson. So Alaska. The most written about ski location on this slowly melting globe but with a twist, for this time it’s late January and not the usual March or April. A bitter arctic cold has settled in, making itself at home in the back of my throat, freezing every nose and anything else foolish enough to be uncovered. For the entirety of our three-week trip, it was -20 degrees. Will I ever be warm again?

Did things get a little weird in Alaska in January? Yes they did. Nic Alegre photo.

Awakening from hibernation I discover days as short as the hairs on my ginger upper lip. I find ridiculous facial accoutrements helpful in gaining local acceptance when 60 degrees north. Though its Pedialyte-induced damp is a drag in such Baltic temperatures. I carry a brown bagged, hip mounted one-liter at all times; the perils of dehydration cannot be overstated. The “35 percent more” electrolytes are slowly restoring me to my abstract glory and the use of metric system confuses any overly large local that takes exception to my foreign accent. The low-hanging sun creates an eternal dusk, midday ceases to exist and the long, ink black nights crush my regular insomnia into 14 straight hours a night. Incredible. But the light, in those brief hours that it appears, is like nothing I have ever seen. An impressive palette of colour washes over the mountains, cycling through endless shades, from bright pinks to deep purples, turning the TGR media team into a pack of salivating, rabid dogs. Well, more so than normal. Even Bob Ross, the patron saint of technicolor television painting, couldn’t have reproduced it, and the ensuing explosion of his right cerebral hemisphere would be recorded on some backwater bathroom wall as his best attempt to date.

Monday. Engine screaming, I bounce the sled side to side, gradually banking it further over as the 80cm of hyperlight density snow explodes all around, the tiny crystals billowing in a golden haze of glory. A stark contrast to the hours of crashing sleds, digging out sleds and generally struggling to pronounce sled without a symphony of expletives. But we are finally standing on top of a line each. This is where the real debacle begins. Dropping in, I cant see a thing, it’s actually too deep for skiing lines and I am completely blindsided by sluff, I’m SuperBowl 2018 Tom Brady, rolling ass over face in a torrent of abuse, wondering where all this went wrong. Johnny is next into the washing machine. He spins a large 360 but savagely lands square on a truculent rock and his backpack tears apart, scattering its contents further than Genghis Khan’s seed. Angel skis more conservatively, letting her sluff fall away from her and rides out to start setting the waist deep boot pack up to the ridge top snowmobiles. Definitely a Monday.

Sometime around noon in early January somewhere in Alaska. Nic Alegre photo.

Tuesday. Wedged into the backseat of a B3 helicopter we cruise out to an afternoon zone that we scoped earlier and wait as the light creeps into the face. Raring to go, we pick our lines while munching on the Collison’s endless supply of candy. On my first line I air out the closeout cliff and catch an uphill landing perfectly. Whipped into a tearing tomahawk, head first and backwards, I flip endlessly, praying I have enough speed to clear the bergschrund that I know is open and hungry for my body. Poleless and humbled I shuffle back to the heli. The crew is stunned I’m unhurt and point out the rocks I just smashed through, the big hole gouged through my pack and shovel testimony to the impact.

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John pushes me to get straight back on the horse, so I steal Jeff’s poles and seconds later I’m solo on the ridge, the flutes peeling out of sight below me, the make-or-break exit hidden between two massive cliffs. I drift away on one long, deep breath and let the previous chaos consume itself until the countdown pulls me back to sweaty-palmed reality. Strangers in my hands, I stare across the glacier and push off. Drilling down the spine I’m fixated on finding the blind exit as the sluff rages, each turn releasing fresh ammunition as I race toward the exposure. Foot to the floor, I squeak through the choke and punch it over the bergschrund as Niagara Falls thunders 150 feet off the exposure I just danced above. This is why we are here.

The sun is rapidly sinking so it’s straight back into the bird for one last rushed run. John sends a massive 360 off a cliff and inevitably stomps before racing out the bottom. It seems the kid has no desire for straight airs any more and it fires me up even more. Sliding into an upside down steep, tight and technical line I get bucked off course and find myself straight lining, blind in a sluff cloud, never ideal. A mini spine tosses me into an unintended half backflip and I’m a ragdoll being torn apart by some vicious child. Inexplicably, I’m back on my feet, snf through sheer dumb luck, I manage to jink right out of the sluff and rocket down the face into the flats.

Please tell me you guys got that on camera?

“What on earth just happened? Did you fall down the whole face and ride out of it?!?! On Kingpins ?!?!?”

It must be my lucky day. Though two crashes in three runs may suggest otherwise. When is good luck bad luck? Who is to say?

High Angle Angel is still on the ridge and rips down a diagonal ramp above some huge cliffs, adroitly working her way down the high consequence line, as the setting sun lights the face a brilliant pink. The flight back to base is one hell of a trip, the colour so staggeringly vibrant I wonder if someone has dosed the candy.

Big Wave Dave is inducting us into the Alyeska ski resort secret society. Place your hand over your heart and repeat after me. Do you solemnly swear to drink the fizz, the whole fizz and nothing but the fizz, so help me fizz?

‘I do.’

“Welcome to the Fizz Nation!”

The recipe of Alyeska’s infamous Fizz Drink is a closely guarded secret. Big Wave Dave makes it alone, under the light of a waxing moon, before escorting it up the tram to the bar. The two-drink maximum is more about preserving the recipe than any regard for his patrons wellbeing, despite the 2,500 ft of steeps back to base. We are celebrating an incredible photo session; shooting powder turns against a cloud inversion layer turned to a rolling firestorm by the setting sun. Photographer Nic Alegre rushes around snapping frame after frame as the orange layer pulses, every inhale and exhale the cloud draws dictates where we can shoot before we finally descend too far and the session draws to a close.

"Upside down steep spines". Nic Alegre photo.

Leaving in the dark of the next day, we silently skin our way up to a zone called the Library, an impressive valley full of spines for those with desire to wade up them. Clipping aluminum ascent plates to crampons triples your footprint making the ascent process slightly easier. It also has you walking like a saddle sore cowboy. Is that you John Wayne, is this me? We separate to our own lines and tangential thoughts and start climbing. It’s my first time ascending Alaskan spines on foot and at first it feels a little spooky. Solo and assessing the stability on the fly, it is impossible to ignore the consequences should you make a mistake. Help is only as close as the crow flies, and with these conditions they will take plenty of time to arrive. Unless you’re lucky enough the avalanche will carry you all the way back to the media day camp. 

Or conversely, unlucky enough, as any slide that large will most probably leave a mark. Jeff has been monitoring conditions leading up to our trip and with the impressive amount of skiing these hardy locals do, my confidence in our information grows. With each step, the spine contours unfold, one rib at a time, feet either side of a luscious lip, precisely envisioning how each slash will decimate the line you so lovingly stomp your way up. A more intimate approach to line skiing, the slower approach reveals such intimate information allowing you to unload with devastating power. It’s like a wild night with an unhinged ex-girlfriend, you probably shouldn’t, but there’s just so much prior knowledge. And knowledge is power.

Johnny Collinson wears sleeves if and only if he is charging big lines. Nic Alegre photo. 

Name the only Governor of Alaska to have a porn parody character based on them?

‘Oh we got you now you slippery bastards!’

“The only thing you’ve got my small, furry friend, is an overgrown back. ”

Sarah Palin is scrawled into the answer column and the abuse continues.

Quiz night at the Sitzmark Bar has descended into a slagging match. The guides from CPG and our TGR crew are hell bent on making a scene, the boasting rising as the number of correct answers falter. Which may have have something to do with the incessant consumption of anything vaguely brown and over 40% ABV. The night had started in a much more gentile fashion. Friend of the group Dawn had prepared us a meal of slow-cooked wild moose, having previously relieved the moose from the pressures of the modern age, accompanied by wild salmon and salad.

We have been in Girdwood for almost three weeks now. Between the guides and their extended circle, it has felt more like living in the community than merely visiting it. With only one snowfall to speak of and largely sunshine everyday this has not been the typical Alaska ski trip. We have skied so many days I’m unsure what the total is, unheard of when a similar sized trip may only yield three memorable lines. There is no desire in the crew to leave, this place has welcomed us in and genuinely feels like a second home. We have so much more to explore, lines to rebate and all agree we will return to delve deeper.

We pull over in our dilapidated camper Lil’ Rickety, cursed for its constant racket of creaks and groans, my three-day-old burrito has more structural integrity. The tide is going out in the iced over Turnagain Arm. A great churning, mesmerizing ice flow grinds past us as the ocean breathes in. Sitting on the roof, sipping whiskey, the only sound is the cracking of ancient ice as the mountains run blue, to purple and finally to black.  

Two men in red. And a proper adventure mobile. Nic Alegre photo.