MASSIVE ALASKA: AK Giveth, Taketh Away

When you come to Alaska, you come prepared. You come with beacon, shovel, probe, and harness. You come with down coat, two way radio, spare googles, and digi cam. But if you really know what’s up, you come prepared to wait. Slow roast, marinate, call it what you want, but a couple days spent lying around is absolutely draining. “This must be what it feels like to be in an opium den,” CP ponders. We fill the time with a harddrive full of seasons of TV shows. In case you were wondering, the second season of “Dexter” is really, really good.

Crack, it’s blue. Our guide Tom Burt calls from Mile 33. Don’t think, react. Tom Burt wants to go heli-skiing in Alaska…right now. Go, go, go! We roll up to Mile 33 from Haines, scramble to assemble the gear, and wait. Heli-skiing is the antithesis to instant gratification. Sure you get plucked from the side of the highway and plopped on the gnarliest peak you’ve ever stood on in just minutes, but you wait in the mud pit at Mile 33 for an hour to get to that point. With something like 10 groups flying in two helis, it’s a logistical puzzle to difficult to fathom. Still, we’re not complaining. We’ll take waiting in AK over traffic in LA any day of the week.

Tanner Hall, Dana Flahr, and crew get dropped on a ridge with six prominent peaks on top, and countless spines, flanks, flutes, faces, and gullies below. From across the valley, through a 200mm lens, Tanner looks like and ant dropping in. He’s slays a few turns down a flank that rolls over onto a steep face that in most other parts wouldn’t hold snow. Tanner is maching now, each arching turn taking him hundreds of feet further down. The face chokes up and he points it into the shadows. For a split second he’s gone, but quickly blasts onto the apron below picking up speed and running away from the boiling river of sluff ripping down just beside him.