Alyeska, March 2-4, 2011

Alyeska hosted the http://nasja.org annual meeting this year. The Chugach was under high pressure and bluebird skies the entire week, as it had been the week before. Temps were in single digits in the early morning, topping out around 20F. It felt colder than that as the sun is still quite weak. South facing off-piste skied best about 2-4PM but it was not really in melt-freeze mode. The North Face had mostly firm chalk, similar to Mammoth a month ago. However the North Face was only open from directly under the tram, where it has a consistent 30 degree pitch. Steeper lines accessible from Chair 6 like Christmas Chute were closed. The 30 degrees is sustained for close to 1,500 vertical so there were potential fall consequences. Halfway down the North Face were occasional patches of frozen granular, but they could be avoided. The lowest quarter of the North Face had groomed runouts.

The mountain faces west and is mostly shaded when it opens at 10:30Am. So most of us started skiing at noon. It's not busy at all, so I still skied 29,100 vertical on Wednesday by 4:45. It closes at 5:30PM.

Alyeska is one of the most scenic areas anywhere. View from patrol shack near the top out to Turnagain Arm.


The sun starts to illuminate part of the North Face around 3:30. Best skiing there was between 4-5PM.


Thursday was the NASJA race. I got cold down there riding the slow lower chair 4 times. Most of our skiing was on high speed chair 6 serving the upper ~1,500 vertical. I skied 3 North Face runs later Thursday and finished at 4:45 with 20,200 vertical. One of these was with Greg Snow


and Scott Staples


Friday I had lunch at the Seven Glaciers restaurant at the top of the tram. Views from there:



Friday afternoon I took a long traverse out into these upper bowls.



Far out that traverse had not been skied much, so there was a similar search for a smooth skiable line as on the heli days.

Sounds like better skiing in bounds than in the heli terrain.

Too bad about Christmas and New Years being closed. Two of the best runs on this continent anyways.

Adam and I skied Christmas several times in 2007. From Christmas you can traverse into the lower part of New Year's. The upper part of New Year's is rarely open by my understanding.

The heli and lift served terrain were similar. Lift served terrain that was sketchy was closed. Within bounds there is likely less breakable crust because it might get broken up by skier traffic. There was plenty of sastrugi visible above/just outside area boundaries.

NASJA is on quite a run of snow conditions below expectations at the annual meetings. There was virtually no off-piste skiing at Sun Valley last year. Maybe 10% of Crested Butte's North Face was open in 2007 after a 3-week heat wave. And NASJA was in northern Idaho during the worst Pacific Northwest season of our lifetimes in 2005.

This trip can be viewed as below average because Alyeska averages 500+ inches of snow, and it's very impressive in powder as I can attest from 2007. But on an absolute scale it was decent skiing. The groomers were good, and you were not confined to the groomers as most of the off-piste had not melt/frozen. So it was certainly interesting skiing with enough challenge for the 3 days we were there.

Week package heliskiers were the ones who were unlucky. I have a strong impression that the clear-flying-but-no-powder conditions are rare. CPG does not use its terrain on the far side of Turnagain Arm that often because they usually have enough powder closer in. I asked what the name of the nice 35 degree chute was that I skied with the Utah Corporate members Tuesday afternoon. Our guide replied, "It doesn't have one. We aren't out this far very often."

Tony Crocker":2a5cq3wc said:

and Scott Staples
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Where's Waldo? Weird seeing Scott skiing under a different tram. Oh, hell...given what he's been through I'm happy just seeing him skiing at all.