Ten days on the Matanuska
By Nicole GordonI’ll never forget a family member’s response when I told him that I was undertaking a ten-day backcountry ski trip in Alaska’s legendary Chugach Mountains.
“Oh. Is there any good skiing in Alaska?” he asked, without a trace of irony or sarcasm.
My family hails from the Midwest and Brooklyn. Things that I take for granted aren’t always obvious, like the function of climbing skins or the rationale behind sleeping in the back of my station wagon on winter weekends in the mountains. I explained that Alaska has some of the best backcountry ski terrain in the world, and that even though I already live in Colorado, where there is lots of skiing, it would be worth the trip up to the last frontier.
Actually, I really didn’t know what I was talking about at the time. I’d heard all about how the mountains have a greater rise in Alaska, so you get to ski more vertical. But the significance of this didn’t dawn on me until the tiny plane dropped me off on the Matanuska Glacier and I surveyed the snowy Scandinavian Peaks surrounding me, glazed in the soft light of early spring. I love Colorado, but this was not the Rockies. Absolutely spotless 3,000-foot, 45-degree couloirs plummeted from the summits down to the glacier, each one covered with a thick blanket of stable powder unscoured by wind and untouched by rocks. Or anyone else’s tracks.
The five of us had flown in, one-by-one, on a Superpiper so small it fit only a pilot and one passenger, with skis and poles strapped to the wing. Sitting on the runway in Palmer, it looked like a toy plane a child might get for Christmas, decorated with bold red and white stripes and sporting ski runners in place of wheels. I was scared to fly and joked about wearing my ski helmet during the flight, but once we were up in the air, the view was too amazing for fear.
It was all ours for ten days, this treeless, gigantic place among the crevasses, seracs and blue glacial ice. A place where every skin track takes you someplace new and you can never ski it all, and the snow will fall soon and cover your tracks. Where you hear thunder and turn to see an avalanche roll down the peaks on the other side of the glacier, and where the ice shakes beneath you and you realize, indeed, it’s an earthquake.
Where the 10 p.m. sunsets are followed by après-ski auroral light shows during nights that are terribly, rightly cold, but you wake in the morning to warm sunlight lighting the walls of your tent. The answer is yes, Alaska has very good skiing. It worked like this: We would get up in the morning and drink tea since there was no reason to rush in the land of lingering daylight. Then we would skin several thousand feet up, which never felt too hard at an elevation relatively low compared to Colorado. Take in the view; peel skins; deep breath; go. My skis felt like floating on a magic carpet. At the bottom, we’d turn and look at our tracks and catch our breath. Back at camp, there was more tea to drink while waiting for alpenglow, stars and the aurora.
But the real story is, my trip to Alaska packed powder and misery in equal doses. If we hadn’t been thirty miles from the nearest road, there are moments when I would have grabbed my pack and headed for Anchorage. There were no broken bones, plane crashes or avalanches. What dogged the five of us was much less insidious – difficult group chemistry, plain and simple. I’d been on trips before when there were plenty of personality conflicts, or when people just didn’t bond and have fun. This time, though, being in an especially challenging environment magnified the conflict, until tension and stress reached a breaking point, and I thought I might crack like one of the crevasses downslope from our camp. Powder is one part of the skiing equation and people are the other; skiing is best when you are at ease with both. I was not.
I came home feeling bitter and cheated that a place of such enormous beauty had left me so frustrated and for a while wondered if maybe the whole trip had been a mistake. It was spring, so I tuned up my mountain bike and moved on.
At a family gathering months later, someone asked me, “So was there actually any good skiing up there?”
I thought for a minute, and the bitterness began to come back. Then I pictured the Scandinavian Peaks and felt cold air blowing on my face.Yes, Alaska has very good skiing. But I need to go back, because next time it’s going to be even better.
Nicole Gordon lives in Boulder, CO, and is currently plotting her next trip to Alaska.
