Alaska- A Chronological Tale: Part 2

The day is half.

Standing under the monolith of Peak 6500 we wait for the heli. The day is far from over yet. Spine Cell now stands in the light. I just skied arguably the best line of my life. Usually life altering moments are great times to take a break, reflect for a second, maybe cheers a beer. That time is not now.

We load into the heli. Fly past dozens of peaks and round the corner into the back of a glacier carved valley. Pressed into the back corner, a corrugated curtain of spines awaits.

Rumor has it that Jeremy Jones has camped out in Girdwood for weeks waiting only for Spine Cell to come into good conditions. Its combination of features, pitch and length are absolutely ideal. It's the track that was built purposely for the Bugatti Veyron, it's the clay court for Nadal, it's the course that Tiger built. It's perfection in skiing.



Now it was time to ski the son of a bitch.

I noticed a great starter line. The spine started just to the lookers left of the cornice. Had an open pitch into what looked like a little launch ramp that fed into a curtain of spines.



What ensued was a line that was essentially simple in its follow through but divine its pleasure to ski. The dangers weren't omnipresent yet the steepness was great enough that the turns are a balance between floating and falling. Every turn is a gravity fed reconnection with the snow, the moments in between those turns are space walks.

When you lift your feet, you fly.


Another view of the Cell. Henrik's tracks on right. Mine on left.


By this time Henrik and a were on such a roll that a ten ton boulder coming down a mountain would have troubles keeping up with us.

We skied on.


Tracks with gap.


We skied and we skied. Lapping Spine Cell a total of 6 times each Henrik and I absolutely exhausted ourselves. The heli buzzed over us with the cameramen dangling off the edge of the skid while we dropped in in 5 minute intervals. We would finish our lap, have mere seconds to click out of our skis, jump into the heli and prep for dropping in on another line. The helicopter would do a test lap to see how the pilot could fly the line in order to keep the filmer and photographer's lenses focused on the action the entire time. Breaths weren't caught and hearts weren't calmed by the time I had to drop in. I skied lines that were lines of a lifetime like they were afternoon laps on KT-22. That is exactly how incredible this day was. Extraordinary was the ordinary. A lifetime of dream-skiing was packed into 12 hours.

The stoke could not be contained. (And this photo is also included because Scott Gaffney was whining on my facebook page that he wasn't included in the last post. Whaaaaa.)


Going home.