“11. Heli-Ski the Chugach Mountains - Alaska
In the Chugach Mountains, first descents are still routine, and nameless peaks promise ore skiable terrain than even the biggest resorts in the lower 48, Valdez serves as base for five of the seven heli-ski outfits that work the Chugach, but only Points North takes off from Cordova. Its clients gain nearly exclusive access to a 2,000-square-mile chunk of mountain, then retreat to the Points North Orca Adventure lodge, a converted cannery.”
One of our long time guiding partners and friends was recently featured over at ESPN. Congratulations to Kip Garre on all of his accomplishments throughout his life. We love you Kip!
The article starts:
Most Interesting Man in the World Kip Garre: Avoids limelight, slays internatonal gnar-gnar, drives a shuttle, dates Ingrid Backstrom = kinda interesting
We were lucky enough to close out our season in style at Points North Heli in Cordova, AK. Kevin and Jessica Quinn run an operation that is a better example of coordination and efficiency than most Fortune 500 companies. Try getting 50 powder hungry mad men (and women) 10-12 runs a day in some of the most bad ass terrain on the planet and on top of that get them all back to the lodge alive! Thanks to the entire Points North crew, most of all to our guide Alz for showing us what the Chugach is all about.
Its a strange feeling being on a ski trip and wishing it wasn’t snowing but after two down days our only option was to “drink it blue”, something this crew did with the best of them. Luckily the “three-point low” opened over the Zone and it was on!
I know, what’s eco-friendly about burning 40 gal/hr of jet A to go skiing? It’s never felt so good to be bad…check out the video.
Holy smokes! All I can say is that yesterday was an incredible day in the zone.
The morning started of with a beautiful fog layer covering the ocean. Once we flew through fog we were greeted by the glowing Chugach Mountains. The guides were a bit skeptical about the snow conditions and needless to say, it was all time classic AK Chugach powder. Light and dry “cold smoke”.
A few fun things that went down throughout the day. We were able to get the entire PNH ground crew out to have some fun. Bilek and Tres had a race down full support, tele vs snowboarder (look closey and you can see Tres in front). We all witnessed the first ever 3200′ straight-line by a tele skier down full support, pretty impressive. Bilek made 3 turns and ended up in the rear.
All the groups, along with Olympic Gold Medalist Seth Wescott and pro snowbarder Ueli, were slaying lines in the zone. Our group, which consisted of Kevin, TBrand, George and Tres, decided to do some speed-flying after the epic powder filled morning. They got addicted to the sweeter than wine line and Kevin who was officially the 1st person to ever learn to speed fly out of a heli (according to Ueli and Matt Gerdes), he got addicted as well. 5 flights later the boys were on cloud 9!!!
We are gearing up for another couple big days to come! Stay tuned and enjoy the pics…Jessica
Great days in the zone! The snow was velvety butter with amazing consistency down every run. We had a great group in house and all 3 heli’s were firing in the zone! I have attached some activity day photos as well for your pleasure. This weeks forecast looks epic! The sunny man is posted from Monday - Friday, yehaa. Here we go…
Hello everyone! Yesterday was a big surprise! All of us here thought we could be down with the weather and most everyone made it out into the zone returning with a hand full of runs.
Snow was deep and stable as I will let the pictures peak for themselves. Clouds did roll back in on us chasing us out of the mountains and we are now currently waiting for our next big blue sky day.
Current weather Fx is calling for snow today and possibly tomorrow making everyone around here stir crazy today after getting a taste of of it yesterday.
On a side note, we have more snow here at base than we have had in our 11 seasons. 4-5 feet of snow still rims the heli pad and it is snowing now.
Currently it is Monday morning and we have gone from super standby to fire! We are currently trying to launch as many groups as possible today with the current weather upon us.
You could say we are “window shopping” today as the clouds are rolling through creating some great sun spots for us to ride in. I took my sister and my little buddy John McCormick on our weather check flight this am and they have not stopped smiling! It was a beautiful flight with all of the big peaks sticking out of the clouds.
Yesterday everyone rode our local ski area Mt. Eyak with anticipations for today in the zone.
Current weather Fx is calling for more snow tonight and I am thinking it will be on us for about 24 hours. Check back for photos and more details as they unfold here…Quinner
