Alaska: once America’s last frontier.
These days: almost entirely discovered.
Key word being “almost”...
Welcome to The North Gulf Coast Tour, the first guided ski quest down Alaska’s western Chugach Mountains, making human history now through April.
You’re about to participate in a project five years in the making: skiing down the glacial mountains of Chugach, one of the snowiest regions on earth. After extensive permit-haggling, mountain-ogling and route-mapping, your guides finally got the state’s blessing to lead ordinary men and women down its steep, sacred slopes. (Don’t worry, they’ve mapped out some runs, too.)
The process: you’ll be airlifted by helicopter, and then dropped on a 3,000-foot cliff overlooking Resurrection Bay. At which point, you’ll feel a warmish breeze blowing inland from the Pacific—the same one causing this year’s 500-plus inches (so far) to stick.
Your first descents will be loosely scripted and surprisingly smooth, give or take the occasional glacier chute. Each day, you’ll squeeze in eight or nine runs (more during the 14-hour days of spring) around uncharted fjord bends over deeply packed powder.
Afterward, you’ll return to a vacated log cabin on the riverbanks of Seward—not exactly the Palin estate, but cozy enough to wait out a dangerously stormy day by a stone fireplace, scotch in hand.
And hey, you’ve always wanted to try salmon s’mores.
These days: almost entirely discovered.
Key word being “almost”...
Welcome to The North Gulf Coast Tour, the first guided ski quest down Alaska’s western Chugach Mountains, making human history now through April.
You’re about to participate in a project five years in the making: skiing down the glacial mountains of Chugach, one of the snowiest regions on earth. After extensive permit-haggling, mountain-ogling and route-mapping, your guides finally got the state’s blessing to lead ordinary men and women down its steep, sacred slopes. (Don’t worry, they’ve mapped out some runs, too.)
The process: you’ll be airlifted by helicopter, and then dropped on a 3,000-foot cliff overlooking Resurrection Bay. At which point, you’ll feel a warmish breeze blowing inland from the Pacific—the same one causing this year’s 500-plus inches (so far) to stick.
Your first descents will be loosely scripted and surprisingly smooth, give or take the occasional glacier chute. Each day, you’ll squeeze in eight or nine runs (more during the 14-hour days of spring) around uncharted fjord bends over deeply packed powder.
Afterward, you’ll return to a vacated log cabin on the riverbanks of Seward—not exactly the Palin estate, but cozy enough to wait out a dangerously stormy day by a stone fireplace, scotch in hand.
And hey, you’ve always wanted to try salmon s’mores.
