Clothesline Couloir and other Adventures in a Bi-Polar Winter

With another tropical fire hose pointing at Alaska this past weekend, Joe, Nathan, and I went to eke out the last of the good lighting and stable conditions on offer in Hatcher on Saturday. We knew the weather was moving in fast, and despite blue bird skies, cold temps, and relative, calm, we resisted the urge to chase after something more committing or deeper. Instead we focued our efforts on two short, steep, narrow lines that rewarded us with deep, cold, stable snow, shelter from increasing winds, good viz as the skies went opaque, and a some little-league technical skiing to dull our edges but sharpen our senses.

Photo: N.W.

Photo: N.W.

The last of the light.

 Our first line was super straightforward. Despite deep dry snow, the Verts helped us make a reasonable climb. Up on the ridge, we climbed a bit higher to investigate skiing into a hanging bowl that fed into two couloirs, each featuring a clothesline tram cable across it. Despite the obvious apparent decapitation hazard (the cables aren't really a threat without another 3 feet of snow or if you're also an NBA point guard), the bigger concern was dropping into the hanging snow field that had been exposed to more wind and loading without assessing it from a less committing position (e.g., from below). Also, there's this really good rule to follow in Hatcher: If you haven't seen it, you probably shouldn't ski it. More on that later.

Looking down before taking first crack at this beautiful shorty. It skied as good as it looked.

Photo: N.W.

With storm clouds rapidly moving in, we opted to stay in the neighborhood and try the clothesline couloir next.
The line had a minor twist in it, and was a tad wider. Up we went.
Well, wouldn't you know it, just around the twist was a "stone wall."
OK, not really, but the line features a barricade of large boulders. We climbed up to the rocks, and, although they presented an obvious necessary down climb, we decided to press on.
I'm glad we did, but that's a real reminder on Hatcher skiing protocol. From above, the rock wall looked like a crux, at worst. I'd just hammered the last couloir at high speed, and had we dropped this one, I likely would have felt confident going into this one hot. The stone wall was too big to even consider trying to leap over, and, even if you did, it had a few gremlins lurking below. This line required a cautious and slow approach with an emphasis on slough management, tipetoeing down the rocks, and then exiting as you pleased.
It was a little league kind of challenge, but fun practice.

Time to transition. The clothesline couloirs end in a large rock face, so we picked a dividing fin to post up on. Photo: J.E.

Adjacent to the Clothesline couloir was it's apparent twin. This line however, filed into a narrow slot, despite it's inviting appeal from above.

 

 

Our line, with the apparent clothesline hazard, but the stonewall out of sight.

Joe navigates the stonewall. Photo: N.W.

Exiting. Photo: N.W.

As predicted, the fire hose slammed into the Kenai, but despite warnings from the National weather Service of "Impossible travel conditions" we somehow managed to make it to Tin Can, and found great skiing Sunday and Monday. I guess anything is possible...

Nathan's O face. Photos CG or MN

Photo: CG

Fact: Cody skis deep powder better than anyone I know. Photo MN

Photo CG

Rinse and Repeat

Entangled, I’m fighting through twisted sheets and covers.
Less than 5 minutes ago my eyes opened blearily to another spring-like day in the middle of winter. It’s Sunday. Am I going to ski today? How hard is it raining up there?
The screen on my phone opens immediately to the state’s DOT web cam page. I look at the images from Turnagain Pass. It’s cooler than it’s been the last few days, but the pavement is dark and glossy. Something like .01 inches of liquid precip every 10 minutes. Wow.
Next I flip to the Summit Lake cams. Huh, the road is white. My vision is still blurred, I flip to another camera. Ya. There’s snow on the road and in the trees. It was 40 degrees and pouring rain there 24 hours ago. Must be wet stuff.
Hmmm.
Next to the avalanche center’s page.
Oh good: extreme danger rating for Turnagain; limited on-snow observations thanks to a week of nasty weather and only brief respites between storm fronts; perceptible water values that seem fake. Tons of snow...somewhere up there.
Do I go? The hazard rating says no, but I’m not planning to jump into big terrain either. It would be good to get the decks on the snow, see what the story is, put some vert in the legs. This is going to break, some day.
What’s the alternative? Oh god. It’s so bad: it’s embarrassing; skinny skis on flat, groomed, trails; maybe skinny tires on flat, dry asphalt?  
No. Not on a weekend in the middle of winter.
It’s enough to start a frantic battle.
There is no preparation for this. I can’t bring myself to pack a bag the night before for a ski I don’t even think will happen, the disappointment is too much.
Some years, are so unpredictable. This one is beyond predictable: storms, nonstop.
Some years, I read every weather forecast package like a child’s Christmas list: please, send us a storm track! Where is that parade of lows marching across the mountains burying their slopes?
This year, it’d be nice if that parade would just chill.
That’s it too. One to two degrees of Fahrenheit determine where on a slope measured in 1,000s of feet the rain will turn to snow; one degree goes a long way between starting the day sopping wet, or waltzing off from the car in a winter wonder land.

Gear starts flying, eggs and bacon sizzle; in the haste, eggs and bacon will fly too. Clean up can happen later.

Now it’s the car that’s flying down the highway, hydroplaning across lake-sized puddles. Pouring down rain hammers on the windshield. If I put an outboard kicker on the back, I might actually get better gas mileage. Absurd.
Turnagain is deserted. Three cars in the lot at Liability Mountain. It’s raining at the road, but I can see snow in the trees no more than 200 feet above, and they’re heavily coated. It snowed hard last night.
They really weren’t joking about those perceptible water values, huh.
 

The snow is there on the road in Summit, just like the web cameras promised. Three to six inches of soaking wet slush, and still falling. Pullouts go by, some still buried in a foot or more of nearly set-up wet concrete…or maybe it’s snow. One of the lots is cleared enough though, and the car squirrels its way to a stop. There’s another car here too, a guy named Matt, visiting from out of state. Expecting the potential for some deep trail breaking, it takes very little convincing to get him to come along and check things out. I think we make it all of 100 feet above the road before we figure out we have mutual friends.

The snow is heavy, but with every 100 feet climbed, it gets deeper and deeper, and still falls heavily from above.
By the time we reach the upper limits of tree line, it’s gone from 3-6 inches of mush to 18 inches of fresh.
Speaking of tree line, where is it? I was on this slope a couple weeks ago, and there is way more snow up here. These mountain hemlocks aren’t known for their exceptional height, but wow, I almost feel bad for some of these guys. It’s going to be a long spring.
Despite the non-existent visibility, the snow feels great, and the gentle rib beckons us to upward to ski from the cloud-covered summit. These mountains fall away from the sky at such a consistent angle, you can practically ski them with eyes closed, just keep making the same turn, over and over again.
Rinse and repeat.

 

Photo M.M.

 

 

 

Kickstep in the Clouds

With a big front barreling north and heralding the return of the incessant storm cycle, Cody, Nathan, and I went for Kickstep Mountain on Friday. We got the line, not the summit.
The initial plan was to go for the so-called Snake Couloir on the mountain’s eastern shoulder. The idea was to skip the long west ridge accent and associated cornice tramping, and boot the line head on.
While Kickstep is an iconic mountain, and a coveted Turngain descent, it’s not actually that big. Top to bottom, its maybe 1,200 feet of vertical. If you ski the mountain’s west fin, which seems to be the run-du-jour for many, you lose a lot of vertical traversing the summit ridge, scoring around 800 feet of very steep wall. The main run goes right from the steep summit cone and threads down through a narrow couloir, but once out of the choke, its wide open apron skiing. The Snake goes from fairly close to the eastern summit, and sustains its pitch as it winds between 1-2 sizable cliff bands (depending on the snow pack, there was only 1 this year) almost the entire way to the valley floor.
When we squared up below the Snake though, we were greeted by the sight of epic wind loading on the eastern side of the line. The glacial bulge of snow that would over hang us for the remainder of the day if we headed upward was hardly confidence inspiring. Topping out seemed unlikely as well: big broken cornices were peeling away from the eastern summit nub, and a pair of twin grooves ran down the entire Snake from where a pair of car-sized chunks had tumbled down the face…so, huh.
On the bright side, the main Kickstep line (Is there a name?) that goes from the summit and sneaks through the massive cliff band was in, and fat. We decided to stick with the plan of booting this line head on as well. In retrospect, I’m glad we did.
The line begins its descent off the steep, west summit cone, and sends skiers into a pair of adjoining v-shaped basins that drain down through a narrow couloir, spitting skiers back out on a big apron.
If one has ever wondered what it’s like to get flushed down a toilet, this is a good place to find out.
As we entered the couloir, we found it had been crusted up. I’m going to blame sloughing as the main culprit, but even though the chasm isn’t even ADA-certified width, the west side was bullet proof, while the east was punchy, so definite sun-effect as well. I’m sure the wind got in on the action too.
At the top of the couloir there was this awesome, wall-to-wall, bullet proof section of snow, with what we will call, an “ice bollard,” a 6 inch rock hard pylon, right there at the top of the choke. It was probably an old piece of chunder that arrested, got buried, and now promised to pop someone off their ass right before things got real.
At times, the Verts were as much a liability as a help, struggling to dig in more than a meager toe hold.
Above the couloir conditions improved a bit to breakable and then to soft snow.
We hit the ridge with the wind swirling snow flakes down on us. The final 200 vertical feet to the now cloud-encased summit were to be conquered another time, conditions hardly warranted our current presence.
We transitioned and began the descent, which went pretty much exactly how one would expect given the surface conditions encountered on the climb.
Nathan set the line off the ridge and got us above the choke. No surprise – the guy who seems to ride the fastest when the going gets rough and narrow – he pretty much blasted through the chasm, que up the Delia Banana Couloir (LINK).
Cody and I came through next, skiing far more conservatively. The ice bollard was the biggest pucker factor in my mind, the last thing I wanted to do was slide across it and get tossed into the narrow casm below. I crept down into the last meters above the choke until I was finally able to ID the bollard’s location amidst the flat light: it was easy, the cascade of broken chunks of slough that were tumbling around me were catching it and jettisoning off into the atmosphere.
Re-grouped on the wide apron, we party skied back down to the valley floor and made our way through the increasingly milky conditions.
Kickstep is a coveted ski in Turnagain Pass. It’s iconic, and looks like it could host a line or two for a ski movie. That being said, it’s also way more common to see tracks on Kickstep these days then it was 5 years ago. It seems like within 24 hours of the end of a storm cycle, someone will have nabbed a line on it. It’s a worthy ski for sure, and I would like to go back some other year. In fact, maybe if we’d been skiing with a foot of slough-tastic dry snow that wanted to sweep us away and flush us down that chute, I would have felt differently, but other than being annoyed by the marginal surface conditions, I wasn’t intimidated. I can’t qualify exactly why either, but I was way more gripped dropping into Grand Daddy Couloir in similar conditions earlier this year than I was dropping into Kickstep. I guess that’s fodder for another post though.

Kickstep, early March 2013.

Upper portion of Kickstep, seen from Pastoral in February 2013. Green line was route skied 2016, red is so-called snake couloir.

Great views.

The last couple 100 feet to the top. Not worthy.

Into the flush.

Posted up above the crux. Photo C.G.

 

Down the tube. Photo C.G.

 

Get Out When You Can

The story of the season for the El Nino winter of 15-16 in Southcentral Alaska is a diverse one. Told from Anchorage, it’s depressing and brown. Told from anywhere north of Anchorage, its been on the dry side. Told from south of Anchorage below 800 FSL its rainy; but told from above 800 FSL…its glacial?

The storm cycle that dawned December 26 has gone on with very few real interruptions. Some years, we enter long-term wet cycles where it storms for anywhere from 12-36 hours, with as many hours a reprieve between systems. This season, entire weeks have passed by where the Eastern Kenai and the Northern Gulf of Alaska has been under the continual blast of one cyclone after another. The result: a Kenai Mountain snowpack that is tracking toward the record books.

Snow Depth and Snow Water Equivalent at Center Ridge (1,800’) in Turnagain Pass

Feb 15*	Snow Depth	Snow Water Equivalent
2016	101	35.5
2015	35	NA
2014	50	14
2013	90	20.9
2012	124	29.4
2011	87	20.2
2010	103	27.2
2009	66	18.3
2008	94	30.1

*Snow depth is approximated by comparing the previous and following day readings to eliminate anomalous recordings

Basically, '15-16 has no peer in the SWE department at this site. Snow depth, if compared only a week prior, would have held a lead over all other years in the table as well. Of late, the cycle has resumed and a massive front that moved in February 20th and reinvigorated the cycle by dumping two feet of snow at the highway elevation overnight is likely shoving '15-16 right back up to, or closely trailing, the epic winter of 2012. At other sites around the region, the numbers tend to sit closer to average, except that the USGS reported earlier this month that a measurement site of theirs situated above 4,000 feet on Wolverine Glacier outside Moose Pass is in the record-setting territory as well. In other big snow years, February through mid-March are traditionally very stormy and snowy months, and the long range forecast looks to support that this year as well.

From a skiing perspective, relentless storm cycles are a mixed blessing. The positives are obvious, but for the working stiff, getting out into the mountains has been a real challenge this year. If we’re lucky, there seems to be one day a week where the fortunes will favor anything more than storm skiing conditions. Identifying what day that will be, and then trying to make it line up with a work schedule and your partner’s schedules feels something like landing a space craft on the moon of a far-orbiting planet.

That being said, the storm skiing hasn’t exactly sucked, and Presidents Day revealed blue skies in Turnagain and some fantastic and deep snow on Corn Biscuit and upper Bertha Creek.

Clean slate for the morning.

 

Photo C.G.

 

Grand Daddy looking mystical.

Excited for another.

Last run, fading light.

 

A couple breaks on storm days too:

Photo M.N.

A deep day in a quiet zone.

Keeping tabs on a persistent layer.

Efficient skin tracks

Efficient runs.

 

It's a good life.

 

Catching a Break in Bertha Creek

Santa brought ScAk a pattern shift. For some little boys and girls, it was coal; for some little boys and girls, it was deeeeep.
The storm track shifted significantly, and a non-stop line up of powerful North Pacific storms started hammering the coastal mountains of the southern mainland.
Temps shot up across the region, Anchorage lost all its snow, and the freeze lines that had stayed near sea level for most of November through December climbed.
Between Christmas and January 3, the tree line zone in northern Turnagain Pass saw 9-feet of accumulation. Maybe another 3-5 feet has fallen since. As January wore on, the track shifted subtly to allow temps to cool off just a smidge and the storms to slightly de-intensify, but in general, the pattern has been about the same: ~5 days of storming (often with as many storms) and 1-2 days of brief breathing space; a classic AK wash cycle. The snowline throughout all of this has bounced around daily but remained fairly consistently between 800 and 1,800 FSL. Basically, alders – remember those? Ya, they can shove it. Heavy wet snow has sent them to the deepest depths they’ve been in in years!
Turnagain looks better than it has in 3 years, and thanks to an accompaniment by strong winds, some aspects are so filled in, they’re close to unrecognizable.
Other zones have not fared as well. Hatcher and the Front Range have just caught a lot of wind, and Summit, though it did see some accumulations, also saw very high winds (by Summit standards), which were a bit too much for the thinner snow pack there.
The relentless and intense storm cycle has made getting after it a challenge for the weekend warrior. Momma nature has been calling the shots on when she will let the N-Pac chill, and those days haven’t always lined up.

This has made for a whole lot of tree laps on Tin Can. Fortunately, with so much snow, fresh tracks are available daily, and there’s some ridiculously fun skiing to be had in nooks of that mountain that haven’t been ski-able in some time. Occasionally we’ve been lucky to catch a lull and a glimpse of sun for a run in the alpine, but it’s been nothing to write home (or blog) about.
Finally, on Friday, we caught a reasonable break.
Meredith and I headed up, taking a quick drive through the Summit zone to observe the conditions there, before settling on Corn Biscuit.
We followed a freshly broken skinner up the ridgeline and on to the second peak, where we ripped skins and charged down the south face.
Lighting was good, with the sun rising above the low clouds and putting its rays (they’re getting stronger…) on the aspect.
We found a soft carvable base that skied great. The only three other people on the mountain vamoosed after a lap, and one solo guy showed up. We broke a new skinner back up the face to the col between the 2 peaks, and tagged a second line from the same spot but veered down a slightly different aspect that held better snow.
For lap 3, with the evening lighting dimming, we dropped over the north side of the col into the middle north chute, guided by the rock fins, trusting the excellent snow we found there. The flat light exit from into the creek that drains Magnum-Corn Biscuit back to the road is quite the affair: a narrow traverse above a deepish canyon, it was a good laugh that the most exposed skiing of the day was found within sight of the cars.

 

Smiles after run 1.

Low clouds and good lighting.

Last light before tipping over to the north side.

Flat light out of the chute.

Saturday, a front was forecast to push in, but seemed to be taking its sweet time. Cody and I headed up Bertha Creek with the plan to ski Grand Daddy Couloir, or any chute on the south side of the creek, the thinking being that we would target something that provided good perspective in the anticipated flat light.

High stratus clouds moved in as forecasted, so we passed on the option to ski something south facing along the way, and headed to Bertha Creek Pass. We were about a ½ mile behind the Libbys and company. We never caught up to them, and did not know who they were until later on, but appreciated the skinner, and later the booter up the ridge. Conditions in the line itself would hardly evidence their passage.
Bertha Creek Pass is a great example of how snowpack+wind results in changes to the way mountains fill in from one year to the next. The BCP cornice is a shadow of itself, and the steep headwall of the pass is a gentle ramp this year. We were greeted by spectacular lighting reaching the Pass: the surrounding mountains gleaming in bright white, with the waters of Prince William Sound pumping a deep marine blue into the horizon. On Peak 45xx’s long, rimey, and flat summit, it felt lunar.
The drop into the GDC was a clencher. The wind had tunneled its way down the line and packed everything in tight. Conditions were chalky, and the heel side entrance sapped my confidence. I was pretty nervous about finding a patch of snow that would kick me out and send me sliding, but such was not the case. I hoped to find soft snow further down in the gut, but it was carvable chalk the whole way.
Both of us made a hell of a lot more turns than we thought we would. I tried to power edge once or twice and get some slough moving for added viz, but the snow was having none of it.
We could see the edge of the incoming front from the top, but decided to roll the dice and head up the east shoulder of Corn Biscuit. In a matter of minutes, the weather flipped, the winds kicked up, and lighting went out. Ironically, I skied this shoulder in the exact same conditions in February 2013 after skiing the south face of Pastoral with Nathan and Dan. Deja vous (LINK).
Just like last time too, we cut our losses and skied a sweet powder-filled gully back down into Bertha Creek and coasted back out.

GDC, the most obvious line off the furthest back peak.

 

Getting cold in Bertha Creek Pass. Photo C.G.

 

 

Photo: C.G.

 

Lunar

Pastoral South Face

Headwaters of Spokane Creek

Corn Biscuit, Super Bowl/Gold Pan

Center Creek and Johnson Pass

Can you find Cody? He's a tiny pixel at the top of the run about to drop in ~1,000 above

Now he's a few more pixels.

Sunday was a work day. No, not one at the office, one for the legs. The forecast had called for a rise in temps accompanied by new precip, so the plan was to go to Tin Can and do a lap or two, then pack up and head to Alyeska for a half day of lift serve. I wanted to get the initial day of lift serve pain out of the way before Revelstoke.
Meredith, Cody and I sulked through the drizzle, but found fat wet flakes falling 300’ up from the road. We ripped skins at treeline where there was 6-10” of fresh, and the clouds were playing peek-a-boo.
The snow transformed about ¾ the way down the run, but we found Kellen and climbed back up for a second lap, and wouldn’t you know it, the sun broke through and so did the summit. The wind had basically smoothed the fresh snow in the alpine to a layer of super fast ankle-deep, and we went up and skied right back down the main bowl of Common, into the trees, and traversed out.
Alyeska was work. There was nice snow from maybe the top of Teds upward, but below that it was got slushy. Cody and I did one lap on the North Face, finding some nice pockets, but ultimately finding the cat track exit too icy and rocky to justify further runs there, and stuck to chair 6 and groomer laps thereafter. By the end of the day, the legs were burning, but I guess that was the plan.

Next up: O Canada.