Alaska: Post 4/4 April 11

The last skiing day was by majority vote a day dedicated to heli skiing. The pictures below show some of the great terrain you can hit in the Alaska back country. That may be a bit redundant as I am not sure Alaska has any real front country... In any case if your into skiing this is a place that I recommend. If you are into back country skiing also known as ski mountaineering then I recommend you drop the whole heli skiing thing. It's a mix of, on the one hand, assembly line skiing where quantity (of vertical) and speed of execution will trump quality any time and, on the other hand, spending a fair amount of the day aimlessly sitting around waiting for a chopper to show up... I couldn't help thinking I'd rather be on my skins.

Here are (some of) the pictures (click to enlarge):

The chopper drops you off...

...is going and...

...is gone.

Now you ski some cool slope (Mike in this one)...

...and me here...

Then you get picked up and here is a picture
from within the chopper...

...then you get dropped off and on it goes.
What you don't see here is the wait in between

So, where's the slope?

Spicy traverse...

and cool access..

...then down...

...and further down..

Nice line

The guide pointing out our next landing zone

Winter wonderland...

...and yet more winter magic.

Yours truly skiing God knows what,
just can't remember...

It's not Chamonix but they do have spires and Aiguilles.