I know, a few days ago I said I wasn’t in a rush to get out, but then it continued to dump snow and Polly reminded me that we missed out on the early turns last year and then had to wait another four weeks until it snowed again. One of the hardest parts about getting out for the first time is deciding which skis are going to be sacrificed to the rock gods and this season my beloved 2006 Chugoris (aka “Chugs”) took one for the team, although the damage was surprisingly light.
We headed up to one of my favorite little high, sheltered, windloaded, northfacing snow traps which looked totally filled in. I decided to boot up to get a feel for the early season snowpack and was glad I did as there were some thigh-deep spots which had a chunky slab on top of a 3″ deep graupel layer. Continue reading ‘First Day of the 2009/10 Season’




Fred Becky’s Hands
In the process of scanning 80+ photos today, the two that really stood out for me were photos I took of Fred Becky’s hands in 2003 at the West Rib Grill in Talkeetna, AK. We had just skied Mt. Hunter via a line that Fred had pioneered 48 years earlier and Fred seemed to remember more about it than we did, despite the fact that we were there only a few days before, whereas Fred was there almost half a century earlier. Continue reading ‘Fred Becky’s Hands’