AK Part 3 -- Turnagain Pass Backcountry

After 3 days at the resort, I was ready for something a little more adventurous. We loaded up Brian's snowmachine and headed up to Turnagain Pass, where we thought there might be some good snow to be shredded. There wasn't much to be found, but we had a couple of days of super fun hiking in some crazy terrain!

Our goal for the first day was Pyramid Peak, which was visible from the drive from Anchorage to Girdwood. Our group was me, Brian and Elias Holt, a ski instructor friend of Brian's. To get there, we planned on snowmachining over a ridge, down the other side and across a couple miles of flat terrain before hiking the mountain. Unfortunately, a combination of a low-power snowmachine and an even lower operator experience level stymied us, and we couldn't make it all the way up the ridge on the machine. Given we'd gotten a kinda late start, we decided on hiking up and unfortunately realized that without mechanical assistance or splitboads, our goal of hitting Pyramid wouldn't be attainable. We ended up having a great time hiking around, finding some fun lines to shred on some decent snow. Pictured here is one of the lines we took, down from the little peak through the open field on the right side of the trees.

Even though the snow wasn't amazing and we didn't hit our objective, it was an awesome day hanging out in the mountains, hiking around with some cool people and drinking in the awesome energy of the mountains that went on forever in all directions. Even when the riding isn't as good, a day exploring in the backcountry beats all but the best conditions at a resort. Although you have to ride more conservatively, taking into account where you are, how stable the snow is, inconsistent conditions, unfamiliar terrain, it's a great mental and physical challenge. It takes patience to point yourself up hill and trudge for an hour through a featureless snowfield. I don't mind trudging though, it's a nice way to center your mind. You end up spending a lot of time looking at the snow, too, appreciating every aspect of its being--how the wind moves across it creating little dunes, where the surface crust is hard enough to support your weight and where you will sink through, the way its consistency changes thoughout the day as the sun moves from aspect to aspect. You have to like hiking to snowboard the backcountry: you spend a hundred times as long trudging as you do with your board strapped on.

Since there aren't any designated runs or ski area boundaries, it's up to you to decide where to go and which line you want to shred. There's an infinity of possibilities, limited only by your legs, lungs, and routefinding abilities.

The next day we hiked another peak across the road, called Magnum. It's the ridge on the right in this picture. We hiked up and dropped back down on the sunny side, far right and kinda out of the shot.








It was a long hike, and visibility was bad, but it was an awesome spot to be. Riding down in an infinite field of white was pretty cool too -- white snow, white sky, white light all round, blowing snow obscuring all ability to judge terrain features.



The flat light and inconsistent snow surface led to a lot of tomahawking: where the nose of your board suddenly drops under the surface of the snow, catapulting your body forward. It's akin to going over the handlebars of your bike, but way more fun. That's where the snow on my head came from.