Snowboarding

Thursday was another bluebird day on Thompson Pass Alaska. Although I had exhausted my heli budget, I was determined to get some snowboarding in. Plus I still had the Fuse bindings that I borrowed from the Spark R&D guys the day before. I had already tested them going downhill, but I figured today would be a good day to test them going uphill as well.

I woke up on Wednesday morning to the wonderful sight of bluebird skies and the feeling that I would be blowing the rest of my heli budget. However, since I only had a few runs left, I had to wait until the afternoon to get the rest of my time in to give priority to the full day groups. In the meantime, I planned on making use of the Big Mountain Taxi service as much as I could.

It was still snowing on the Pass on the morning of day eleven of Tailgate Alaska. The clouds had rolled in and it was impossible to see the peaks of the mountains so it seemed unlikely that the heli was going to fly. However, Happy, Badger, and Patrick were milling around at the base thinking that the clouds would break and that we would get to go up. So Justin and I put our names on the fly list for the day. I was hoping that it would be a good one to use the last half day of my heli time. I got lucky, the clouds broke and the decision was made to scramble the helicopters.

I woke up on day 10 of Tailgate Alaska to total greybird skies. It seemed unlikely that anything was going to go down, even Big Mountain Taxi was grounded; the light was really too flat to see any terrain features whatsoever. I've learned, from watching the movie “Lines”, that when in Alaska, you should expect strings of days like this. The trick is finding something to do on them.

The NOAA forecast for Valdez on Sunday called for snow showers in town, and snow in the Pass. This time they were right because I woke up on day 9 of Tailgate to see snow falling to the ground. On the one hand I was glad since the Pass could use a little bit of cover to bury the tracks from the past week, but on the other hand I was a bit disappointed because it meant I couldn't go snowboarding. However, since it was Easter Sunday, I thought I should go to town anyway to call my family and wish them a happy Easter.

The King of the Hill is a contest that was started by Nick Perata in the 90s. Although the last one was held ten years ago, it seems like the time is ripe for the return of the big mountain snowboarding contests as is evidenced by the growing popularity of the North Face Masters series. Tailgate Alaska seems like the perfect event to bring back one of the original big mountain snowboarding contests: the King of the Hill.

I woke up on day seven of Tailgate Alaska to bluebird skies, however, I decided not to fly for two reasons: 1) I had worked my shoulder the day before taking a nose dive in the sun crust, and 2) I wanted to get some runs in with the New York boys who were heading back to Anchorage the following day to catch their flight home. So I gave up my spot on the heli list to Gabe, and got some chips for the Big Mountain Taxi to do a few runs with Paul and Rob instead.

I woke up on day six of Tailgate Alaska freezing my butt off. Apparently the heat in the RV stopped working again so getting out of my sleeping bag was a tedious affair. On the plus side, the sky was looking only slightly overcast, similar to the morning conditions on Tuesday. I was hoping the sun would burn away some of the clouds and we would get to go up. The ABA guides seemed positive about it so the decision was made to fly on day six.

Wednesday in Thompson Pass turned out to be a down weather day. Even though it looked promising when I woke up, which compelled me to get my gear together and walk over to the helipad, it didn't take long for the window to blow over and for clouds to roll in. When I got the official word from the ABA guys that Wednesday was going to be a day for “window shopping” (i.e. waiting for windows in which to fly), I decided it would be a good opportunity to drive the RV into town to get gas and a few supplies.

I woke up on Tuesday morning to what looked like overcast skies. Even though I didn't think the helicopters would be flying, I decided to get geared up anyway. I put on all my snowboarding stuff, my climbing harness, avalanche transceiver, and loaded some Clif Bars and water into my pack and made it over to the village area. This was a good decision as it happens, because what looked like clouds was actually valley fog which was quickly burned off by the sun. By 9AM, the skies were starting to look bluebird and the helis were getting ready to fly.