Monthly Archives: February 2012

Away with Wisdom

A weekend away from Valdez also meant away with some wisdom. This last week, E and I made the six hour trek to Anchorage, ran some errands, did the usual stock pile of cheaper groceries, went bouldering at the Alaska Rock Gym, picked up Roy from the airport, and squeezed in a slightly unpleasant visit to the dentist. Now, don’t get me wrong. My dentist was great, but it’s never a pleasant or lovely experience to get teeth removed, and my teeth just happened to be the very wise ones. Thankfully, I only had two. The pain and soreness that comes with the removal of wisdom teeth is incredible. I am also not one to take pain medication, so this journey has been quite an interesting one. As of late, things are going pretty well. I have a dull pain in my face/jaw area most of the day and at night, it seems to get a little bit worse. I’ve been icing my chipmunk cheeks regularly and rinsing my mouth out several times a day with salty, warm water. On the ‘good end’ of things, I am four days out of surgery, and according to the dentist, within five to seven days, I should start to feel better. Day five is tomorrow! In other good news, I can also try to incorporate real food back in to my diet then, too! I have been craving some delicious and tasty foods and treats, but until later this week, I am stuck on an all-liquid or really mushy food diet. Blurg.

Other things I am looking forward too after all is healed and better.. working out and skiing with energy! Because of this liquid/mushy food diet, my energy has been really low. I get tired skinning up the mountain; heck, even walking too much exhausts me, and I’m afraid to workout in fear that I will get extremely light headed. No good and no fun.

No worries though. Soon… it will all be over. Oh, I can’t wait.

Two-fer Tuesday

Ski update. This spring is shaping up to be the best ski conditions Valdez has seen in several years.  Hopefully it stays nice for all our friends planning their AK dream trips come March and April.  We are playing host for several groups of friends rolling up here starting with a friend of a friend for a week starting the 24th of this month.  A bit of a break and James will arrive for 3 weeks, and the last two of those during Tailgate Alaska he will be joined by Curry, Bubbles, Jerrod and Theo.  As soon as they ship out Ben literally gets here the same day during the start of the World Heli Challenge and we are planning a hut based boat-in boat-out ski trip out at some cabins in the sound.. So much to look forward to in the final months of winter.

Here are some recent photos of our ski trips here lately.  A highlight was standing on top of both Tones Temple and Sapphire in the same day with Sarah.  We skied the NE face of Tones and then broke trail to the summit that gave us both frostbite last year. The most amazing position I have experienced in The Pass to date. Been soaking it all in but also looking forward to our big climbing road trip coming up this spring… More on that later!

Cordova

Hey all,

Robyn and I took the ferry to Cordova, Alaska famous this year for having to call in the National Guard to remove snow during the latter part of December.  If you are curious you can youtube “Cordova Snowpocalypse”. In reality they didn’t get as much snow as we did in Valdez but people there are used to it snowing and then raining and melting.  This time it just kept snowing, and the locals didn’t get their roofs cleared before the rain came resulting in several crushed buildings from snow load.  They also have quite the history of Avalanche devastation with a few regular performing any paths leading down to the road near town.  This year an avalanche near town brought down 4 acres of forest with logs 3 foot in diameter. To go and teach an avalanche awareness to such a great and educated town was a privilege. We stayed in the Orca Adventure Lodge watched scores of sea otters from our window over the ocean and taught 2 days worth of classes.  On the last night we celebrated my 27th at some of the local bars and ended the night having dinner with Hoots and Kirsti, the avalanche forecasters for Cordova as well as our good friends.

PUNXY PHIL

4 Years ago we were there to see Punxy himself.  It was quite a spectacle, and dammit if we didn’t stand around in 10 F weather from 8 PM till 6 AM for a front row spot all the while listening to the local dance team P-H-I-L what’s the spell?!

Ski Porn

Latest pictures from around these parts.  Went up right behind the house with Robyn and members of our AIARE Level 1 that we held earlier this year.  Explored some steep terrain in hopes of finding an easy up track.  We didn’t get anything easy but the steep skinning and short bootpack at the top provided some EXCELLENT turns. Robyn is a natural in the up-track, looks as if she was born to tour!

A couple days later Sarah and I tried to access the goods behind the house again.  Skinned through a wild old-growth stand and battled our way to the first bench… No luck on an easy up-track yet, but we did have an exciting run down an area that had me pointing pillow lines with little room for error next to an ice fall..

Photo of Jago Chute. The dotted line is our extension through the cirque to the upper ridge of what I am calling Brown's Peak. Photo is courtesy of Aaron from his new book Chuting Valdez.

Yesterday I skied out Mineral Creek with Aaron and Stu to try and access a peak behind Jago Chute.  2.5 miles along the creek bottom led us to a 4,700 ft climb to a wild perch on a sweet spine.  In the ONLY semi technical point of the climb my crampon came off my boot and provided momentary high blood pressure as I punched in for handholds. No summit option from where we were but the pow was memorable nonetheless and Jago Chute is top notch skiing from the cirque 2,000 ft or so to the valley bottom.