Alaska- A Chronological Tale

You often hear skiers middling about the audience of a ski movie never seeing an accurate representation of what is "really going on" in Alaska. It's a noteworthy complaint but in all honesty, I wanna see you shred, not whine about standing on top of a line for two hours. To me, talking in ski movies is like Long Dick Johnson and Steamy McHole trying to "act" in between their doing-it scenes. It just tends to undercut the thesis.

So now that we've determined words and ski movies go together like Sunnis and Shiites, let's not put a full containment cap (top kill?) on the original subject. You see blogs are made up of all kinds of words and are generally boring in the first place. So maybe in the next few posts I'll peruse this subject of "A day in the life of filming in Alaska". Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. But whatever the outcome...whatever, I'm blabbing now.

Day 2
Day 1 was met with collecting ski gear the airlines had lost the day before, signing filming permits, getting briefed with the heli and being introduced to our guides. Standard protocols for any trip. Day 2. Well Day 2 broke blue. It was game-fucking-on.

Henrik Windstedt and I loading up.


When the sun is shining and the cameras are ready in Alaska, I gotta say the feeling is not made of pure exhilaration and excitement. When the cameras of legends like Scott Markewitz and the boys from MSP are about to be focused on you for the day, the pressure to perform percolates nervousness into your veins. The helicopter starts whirling and soon you're vaulted into the lofty dangers of tall mountains from the safety of a parking lot. It's 0 to 220 mph in seconds.

The beautiful sights can calm but flying into the unknown still tickles your tension wires. Leaving Girdwood and flying over the sound.


We flew south in search of terrain. Soon this face of rime, ice and powder came into view.


Yet unfortunately it lacked the necessary terrain to shoot. Its ice and rime was creative and fun looking yet the airs seemed few and small and its beauty on camera might not appear on the big screen. So we moved on in search of the legendary Spine Cell. We knew the light might not be on it yet. But we flew on in search of the goods.

Sure enough when we arrived the notorious face was shrouded in the shadows.



You could see the potential but its amazing spines weren't highlighted by the sun and the face was unshootable for the cameras. It always seems to baffle me how uninteresting terrain can look in the shadows. It can be easy to skim your eyes right by a full-chubby face while it's in the shadows. It's when it's in the sun that it captures your gaze like a shot of optical heroin.


What Spine Cell would end up looking like that afternoon.




But anyways, we're foregoing chronology. Let's jump back into the timeline.

While we waited for Spine Cell to come into the light we decided to get some warm up runs in the light. Both for the camera's and the skiers, it was necessary to warm up on less critical lines.

We scoped the eastern flanking wall of Spine Cell. It looked small from the air but would work for the first lines of the trip.



Henrik and I decided to start our skiing off on the two prominent spines on the looker's left side of the face. Essentially they were mini-golf but it was a great way to get the feeling of the steepness of AK under your skis and a little air under your feet. As it usually is with AK, our judgment of scale was out of whack. We originally assumed both exit airs on the spines to be mere 5 to 10 footers. Sure enough they were 20-30. They probably aren't shots that will make it in the movie but nonetheless they were fun.

My second line was another failure in judgment. Not that I didn't expect the air to be bigger than the first, but I assumed a medium 30-35 foot huck was in order. Much to my surprise when I rolled off the edge of the cliff I found out my air was more like 60-65. I literally had so much time in the air to think that I jockeyed back and forth between going for the stomp or not. At the last moment of flight I said to myself, "Well this is MSP. So I should probably go for the stomp."



Despite the mid-air wish-washing a stomp it ended up being.



I immediately got to the glacier floor below completely wired and excited like I just mainlined a pound of coffee. Confidence began to boil in me. I was then ready for the rest of the day.



With Spine Cell looking like it wouldn't be in the light for another few hours, we decided to go exploring.

Soon we buzzed around the Chugach in search of terrain. The guides pitched forth ideas while we grazed around looking at potentiality. Off in the distance our guide Clark pointed to one of the highest peaks in the area. He said, "There's Peak 6500, we haven't really gotten it before, you guys wanna go check it out?" We could see its steep flanked headwall and lightly featured spines from nearly 10 miles away. We happily agreed to Clark's suggestion.

And then we were there.



Holy Moly did this face look like fun. The airs in the top quarter of the run looked like a pleasurable size. Not too huge to scare the crap out of you, but big enough to sail. Likewise, the 50 degree angle of the face allowed for any hop to turn into a lengthy flight.

As we got to the top, Henrik questioned the snow density. It looked firmer than the first run and the higher altitude of Peak 6500 hundred suggested that fact as well. Henrik decided to take a snow assessment lap on the far skier's left of the face.

His snow assessment lap seen in the foreground of this picture. You can see that the snow hinted at a firm density.


After Henrik's run, he radioed up to me in a nervous tone, "The snow is quite hard. I don't know if it's going to be good to send it on."

His words coursed through my head. I took note of Henrik's comments but felt only confidence. I radioed back to Henrik and the camera crew, "It's okay man, I feel confident with this. I'm ready to go."

I mentally lined up the first two turns into the twenty footer and where I had to be to clear the bergschrund at the bottom of the face. "Dropping in 10," I radioed.

Soon I was absolutely nuking down a creamy but dense 50 degree face. I arced two turns, let my skis run and picked up my feet moments before my air. I sailed 20 feet of the deck for what felt like a casual minute. 60 feet had passed under my skis before I landed. The speed after the air was intense. I used all of my old Downhill racing skills to lay into two last turns at 60+ mph before the air over the bergschrund.



The run felt like a DH race. Accelerate, air, haul-ass, finish. Adrenaline juice was now flooding my body.

After another lap (tracks seen in above photo) my eyes were attracted to the biggest feature on Peak 6500. It was the obvious A+ line. But part of me wanted nothing to do with it and my body tried to suppress any thought my brain was putting up of skiing this line. With the harder snow on the runs before and what looked like a massive air out the bottom, the line had a high injury potential

Henrik decided to ski a spine next to my exit air. I thought it was a good opportunity to assess the size of the cliff. If I could take a picture of him skiing next to the cliff then perhaps I could get a good estimation of the exit air's true size.

I snapped the pic and then got scared.



Henrik looked absolutely tiny next to the cliff. Yet I still couldn't accurately gauge the cliff height. All I knew was that it was going to be big. The height to me looked like it was at the highest borderline of my stomping ability. I stood at the bottom on the glacier below. My mind bounced back and forth. I radioed to the crew. Mentioned my thoughts. Soon I had said too much. Awakening the possibility to the public pushed my desire to ski that line over the edge. I was going to ski it.

We flew up to the top. Within moments I was standing on top and was absolutely petrified.

The view of my line from the top.


I couldn't see a single foot of my line. I had no idea where my spine and air was. I radioed to the cameramen across the valley for assistance. They all tried to direct me with directions like, Them: "You see that spine to the right of you? Me: "No. I can't see shit."

But eventually the time was the time and I felt that this was a line I could do. I roughly figured out where I needed to be, uselessly tried to get my nerves in check and got counted in.

I dropped over the rollover, took three slower paced turns to get comfortable with the snow and hopefully place myself on the correct line. Soon the slough I had kicked off from my first turns was tickling my back and threatening to pull me into death traps below. I picked up the speed. Spotted my spine. Eyeballed the blind take-off of the exit air. Picked up my feet and suddenly I was soaring. Time slowed down and I felt nothing but the sensation of flying. After what felt like minutes of gliding I landed with a forceful impact. Sped away from my slough. Hopped the bergschrund and woke up out of the concentrated daze of skiing and flying. Buzzing like a high-tension wire, I was so excited I couldn't even scream (a first for me).



And then it was about 1:00 o'clock. Time for lunch....



....And time for a break in the story. The second half of the story will continue next Monday..

See what became of this face in the afternoon session.