Archangel Valley, AK: July 2, 2009

Back in April, I lamented that the ash would ruin the summer skiing.  I felt my consecutive months streak would be in jeopardy.  I considered finishing my season after the Valdez trip, but Dylan convinced me otherwise.  Just keep it going was the gist of it.  So I did.  I found good snow through May and June.  I found bad snow through May and June.  I also found some half decent snow in July.  

I got up early and made the 90 minute drive to Archangel Valley in the Talkeetna Mountains.  The dirt road leading to the Reed Lake trailhead is notoriously bad.  So once I got off the pavement, I had to keep the Jeep at about 45 mph to fly over the deep potholes and through the ruts.  The suspension is shot but stiff.  It rides like a dream this morning.  I am completely out of control.  At every corner the vehicle "skips/bounces" towards the outside of the road.  It's OK because I have my lights on for safety.   

I arrive at the trailhead in record time.  Upper Reed Lake is about 5 miles up the trail and it is the bottom of the schuss run.  The trail is mellow as it follows a creek up the valley.  The trail is slick as rain soaked clay conspires against me.  The trail is fun as it disappears into a maze of car-sized boulders.  Whistle pigs greet my arrival into the upper valley.  Lower Reed Lake is a glacier blue/green.  I follow the creek up past waterfalls to Upper Reed.  There is still ice covering about 25% of the lake.  Here my adventure starts.  

Bluebird.  I hike up scree along side of the snow.  Sweat stings my eyes and coats the inside of my Smiths.  I can see the entire run.  Garmonts on and commence booting.  It goes quick and soon I am at the pass looking over several glaciers covered with ash and snow.  Upper Reed Lake is far below still showing the the final evidence of a harsh winter.

There are some clouds building but I am in no rush.  A Clifbar, some water.  Man, those clouds are building quick.  A front is pushing up the Bomber Glacier.  There is a very sharp line in the sky delineating blue from black.  And it is coming my way.  Now I'm rushing.  ("You can see Russia from here!")  I hurry down the slope.  Recent snow over the ash makes for fine skiing but the white gets less continuous.  The ash slows me down.  Then the thunder.  The thunder that starts behind you and circles all around you 2 or 3 times.  Echoing off the steep walls of the mountains surrounding you.  There isn't supposed to be weather like this in AK.  I guess no one told the storm.  Now even the ash laden snow gives way to rocks.  There are some ribbons that go lower.  I milk it low.  Real low.  The absurdity of the situation is not lost and I smile.  More swirling thunder.  Shit!  I transition into to hiking garb and work my way around the lake and back to the trail.  The thunder engulfs the valley and the winds pick up.  All of the metal in this entire valley now is residing on back and in my hands.  Hustle.

Thunder, rain.  A hard rail.  A hard hail.  Small hail, larger hail.  I can feel the hail hitting my hood.  Thunder.  Now lightening.  Hail.  Rain.  Wind.  Hustle.

  

"Nothing's gonna happen."  The Skier Boyz mantra calms me.  The storm is moving into the next valley.  "Nothing's gonna happen."  The black skies are now gray.  Thunder looms, but now in the distance.  A trace a blue.  Far off thunder.  "Nothing's gonna happen."  

Month #21 was an adventure, but they all are to some extent.  I am have my doubts about August, but I had my doubts about May, June, and July.  I suspect that I will take Dylan's advice and "just keep it going."  And after August, it all starts again with late September face shots.  

Pistolero

BUTTERFLY 6/28

The butterfly sits on mt superior and is the last snow to melt out due to the two couloirs above it constantly shedding snow into there. I wanted to ski it last year but i was too lazy, so i went up this year.
cool shot of suicide chute, two folks were hiking it then skied it as i was going up.
water flowing on the south face, pretty awesome. my route was up the apron, hit the rock band to the lookers right of the bottom waterfall, follow that straight up next to the waterflow and hit the butterfly, you can see it way up there
skied each wing of the butterfly then down the middle, then i put my hiking boots back on and traversed over from the bottom of the butterfly to about halfway up suicide chute, topped out, skied suicide which was the deffenition of sub par skiing and hiked down the waterfall then fell down part of the waterfall at the bottom of suicide and put my skis back on and avoided inevitable landmines of jagged rocks littered through out the bottom apron. cool ski in a wild location this time of the year.
the turns in the butterfly, if you click it you can actually see them twas a day well spent. hwood lets get a crew up baldy for some july skiing wedensday!

Mt. Shasta, CA

On June 19th Josh Boyd and I made a 24 hr. push from SLC, UT to climb and ski Mount Shasta. Arriving at the Brewer creek trail head at 2 a.m., after a 12 hour drive we slept for two hours then got on the mountain to experience an epic day. It wasn't too bad because we were excited to be in CA and on this mammoth volcano, the second largest in the U.S, 14,140 ft. Todd Glew, who works on the mountain as a guide and road dog met us for the climb and ski. I am almost positive that this is the first time three buffalos from Beverly, MA had stood on top of this volcano together. Our route was the Wintun-Holtum on the north side of the mountain.

The Buffaloes begin their 7,000 ft. climb and a 6,000 ft. descent on magical Mt. Shasta.

Boyd gazes at our line and the summit above in a cloud

It was not a very difficult ascent, but the weather made it interesting, check out the huge clouds below. Typical volcano conditions.

Boyd and Glew a few hundred feet below he summit. This is where the buffaloes caught up to everyone who stayed on the mountain overnight and reached the summit first.

Buffaloes love to roam on top of big mountains!

The Glewstick carving some killer corn con cigarette.
Skiing towards the bottom we were in and out of a foggy haze. Was it the crippler or Shasta?

New Alpiner Boyd fixing the heel and fixing his problems.

The last stretch of snow before we had to hike down.

After skiing Shasta we went to the coast, climbed on the beach and Relaxed with the Arcata locals. I love California. Jake F.

HOLLYWOODS HELMET CAM

SKIING Helmet Cam 09 from jonathan fay on Vimeo.

This bad boy opens up with one KILLER april 4th 2009 run down greely hill, powder capiotol of the world. shots like that only achieved with rain-x on the lens, and regular camber skis on my feet. there are some other shots in there of vermont around xmas, some 'satch backcountry, an epically deep april 4th keyhole, and well it all closes with one of my favorite runs of all time. on the run i hit some huge rocks and should have tomahawked 100 vertical feet into little chute, luckily was dressed in all black and have a bit of ninja steeze and rode it out.

thanks if you can SUFFER through the whole thing

coors LIGHTning JUNE 14th

The Uintas. Unexplored by some, respected by all played host to a gathering that it must not have been ready for. The group consisted of ella, emile, brett, stephan, jake, jon and micah. We arrived after an inspiring, lush, green drive in the Econoline 150 from salt lake to about 40 miles east of park city. The blue bird drive turned into a snowy hike. Graupel seemingly the size of a rocky mountain oysters were periodically falling from the white sky.
The group pushed on. Snow has never stopped any of these skiers from continuing on. If we were lucky it would be free refills each lap.
The weather report this day called for mostly cloudy conditions in the morning and a 70% chance of thunderstorms and rain in the afternoon. Some of the storms expected to produce heavy percipitation. Well it was about 11 so we figured we had some time. Here is Brett checking out hayden peak? from the saddle. A storm was passing to the east over the peak and he soon found out you shouldnt look at lightning strikes through binocs.
Well drop in off the saddle before the thunderstorm hits. Here is Micah milking a few tele turns. The group gathered on the lunch rocks just intime to be right next to a powerful storm. We decided to take shelter and not hike back up with our skis ( lightning rods) on our backs aiming high at the sky until the storm passed. The storm did pass. Out of the protection we went. The sky really seamed to light up and it got calm. It was only about 25 minutes back to the top so why not take another lap.
Well just as everyone completed hiking another round of thunder was blowing in rapidly. The sky was immediately dark and tense. We hustled back to the protected grove lower in elevation.

Looking out just before hunkering down. The storm came and we took shelter from hail and sleet. A few echoing blasts later we decided its probably best to go the opposite way as the storm ( back to the car) As we left, the sleet turned into snowflakes, the ground was coated with a fresh coat of white, unbelieveable. Its mid june and we are seeing intense winterish storms. The thunder stopped and things let up again.
Lots of stuff to ski out here when the weather is right. The buffalo had admited to never skiing in june. Its mid june and it appears there are still a few lines up here to go ski. We all had a blast.

Mt Adams Lawton, WA

A volcano vacation. The next stop after Rainier was Mt. Adams, named after veteran guide of Skier Boyz Adam Lawton. He claimed the summit as a first ascent and the run a first descent for the organization. Of course he was lying because it was first climbed in 1854 and first skied in 1932. Washington's second highest volcano (12,276 ft.) is found above the Hood River Gorge Region, towering 6,000 vertical feet above the small town of Trout Lake and the ranger station. We had a good view of it from Rainier and had a see what Rainier looked like from over there.

Our guide, Adam chose to climb the Suksdorf Ridge and to ski the Southwest chute, so knowing we wouldn't be crossing any big glaciers we went a lot lighter on gear than we carried on Rainier. And our backs hurt. We made it to the trail head about 3 p.m. and decided to bivy on the mountain and get up early to summit before it got too warm. Trout Lake was 83 degrees when we left to drive to the trail head. Luckily we met some generous Sledder Rednecks who wanted to carry our bags in half of the way. Three Sledder Rednecks on sleds and six thirty pound packs. What a favor. Vrooom, Vroooom!

It felt so good to hike without our packs on, up towards Cold Springs Campground and the South Climb Trail. When we reached Cold Springs our packs were there with the now drunk Sledder Rednecks. We said thanks again and continued up the trail below the Suksdorf Ridge, now with our packs on and large grins across our faces because the scenery was getting wild and beautiful. When climbing Adams you get up above the treeline very fast and can look out and have excellent views of St. Helens, Mt Hood and Jefferson. The late evening alpenglow was illuminating the snow covered peaks and I couldn't be happier to be on a volcano like this one. Our ascent and descent came into view high on the mountain and I was excited for the next day to come. We set up our bivy around 6,000 ft. on a sandy ledge with plenty of flat plots to lie down for a quick nap before our early morning mission to the summitt.

The 1:30 a.m. wake up call came in a blink of an eye and everyone was getting packed up to leave. We stashed our bivy gear at our camp and made our way up in the darkness of early morning. By 4 a.m. or so we knew we were going to summit too early. We went lighter than Rainier, moved faster and it wasn't as challenging. We sat down for awhile and dozed off at "Lunch Counter", below the Suksdorf Ridge at 9,000 ft. and continued climbing about an hour later. Crampons were a big help up the ridge, a 2,700 ft 30-35 degree open slope that has great skiing. Pikers Peak is the false summit above the Suksdorf, only 700 ft below the true summit. We summited at 8:30 a.m., way too early for good skiing conditions. Luckily it was a dead calm 40 degrees out and we were able to rest comfortably on the summit for two and a half hours before we made our descent. When the conditions became more manageable we began our descent from the summit to above the Southwest chute. Being a little west facing the Southwest chute still had not warmed enough for ideal skiing so we relaxed for about another hour, then experienced a epic run. It started a little firm, but quickly softened to a inch or two of corn snow and it got goood! 4,000 vertical feet of a constant 35 degree pitch and so much room. To me it seemed steeper than that when I stopped to catch my breath and regain composure to finish the run in good style. It was an amazing run. A run of a lifetime. I could not believe how good a run it was and long. So long I stopped twice and still my legs were on fire by the bottom. It took about 5-10 minutes for each person to finish the run. Everyone was gitty at the bottom and we were all thinking the same thing. What a amazing line, better skiing than Rainier. It took a lot of traversing to get back to our beach bivy and out to the cars by 2:30 p.m. Our treat was a dip in the Columbia River by all the kite boarders, pizza, then four of us hit the road back to SLC while Bret, Adam and Topher continues the Ring of Fire tour with Hood and Shasta. I wish I could have stayed. JF Buf

Rainier 09- Fuhrer Finger

While unobjectionable skiing can be fun, objectionable skiing is the best. This is where you commit to getting up early, working hard all day, getting a little scared and skiing something really cool. When you don't know if you are going to fail or succeed, but are willing to try damn hard to make it to the top. We are the skier boys and we ski big mountains and in the case of last week we ski big volcanoes.
Mt. Rainier stands at 14,420 ft. tall and is located in WA, two hours southeast of Seattle. It is an active volcano that calls to certain climbers/skiers to be on top of her or at least try. It is the highest volcano in the U.S. and homes 26 major glacier systems covering over 35 miles. 4,000 people climb this mountain a year and about 8,000 attempt it. The Ranger Station in Paradise sits at 5,400 ft, that makes it a 10,000 foot climb to the crater at the top.


With 60-70 lbs packs we left Paradise and headed towards our base camp at 9,200 ft, below the Kautz Glacier. The Cascades weather hit us hard at first, it began to rain and we were all soaked three hours into our approach. Luckily we got above the clouds, it warmed, we dried and our objective was in sight. The Fuhrer Finger, first climbed in 1920 by Hans and Heinie Fuhrer, with Joseph Hazard. A perfect ski trail with a lot of vertical above it.
The next morning we woke up at 3:30 a.m., but did not leave camp until 5. A late start for a really long day. A party of three (non-skiers) were already in the initial chute and we headed up behind them. The first part of the climb was up a 40 degree two thousand foot chute, crampons and ice axes worked well. We topped out at 8 a.m, had a breather and continued up toward crevasse terrain. We were roping up pretty soon after. The crevasses were there, but the snow bridges were stable and we crossed them without any harm. It just took us a long time. The higher we climbed the closer we got towards a huge lenticular cloud hovering above the summit. The 30 mile per hour gusts were becoming a constant 40 and visibility was getting low. I questioned reaching the summit, but we pushed on with all of our layers on.
We summited around 3 p.m., nine hours after leaving base camp. We stashed our skis 100 ft from the summit walked to the top, spent maybe three minutes up there with winds blowing close to 50 mph and walked back down to begin our descent. The skiing near the top in the lenticular was not that great, hard pack, crunchy, wind effected, still better than walking. As we made it below the lenticular the snow surface warmed a lot and the skiing actually got good. We skied back past the crevasses and towards the chute. The snow in the finger was excellent soft snow and we skied like the boys all the way back to camp with a heroes entrance as three other parties viewed us. They were jealous of our turns and effort.

We spent the rest of the afternoon drying our gear, got to bed early after a warm meal and woke up the next morning to a hot sun heating everything. We packed up camp and skied the remaining 4,000 vert of rolling thiry degree terrain back to Paradsie. It was amazing looking back up at our line we skied the day before. Mt Rainier was a big commitment and an excellent objective to ski. It opened my eyes to expeditions like this one and what it takes to reach the summit. An amazing experience for the boys. Thanks to Stefan and Bret Beattie, Adam and Andrew Lawton, Topher and Tom Zimmer, we crushed it. Jake the Buffalo Soldier Boot pack Rasta.