Busting through treeline at 2,000 feet. Cathy Flanagan running the Lost Lake Trail, near Seward, Kenai Mountains, Alaska.

Alaska stinks for trails. You could hit every good trail in a month, then you’d realize Alaska isn’t about trails. Alaska is about true wilderness. Saying that, Alaska does have some unreal trails. One of those is the Lost Lake Trail.

Lost Lake is a 15-mile trail near Seward. I’d argue it’s the best trail in Alaska. Hemlock forest cloaks the lower elevations of Lost Lake, the trail-side blueberries are crunchy and the bear poop steaming. The Seward area is a mega playground: boasting two ice fields, steep ski mountains and Prince William Sound.

Want to make the trek on you’re own? On August 21, is the Lost Lake Run, a benefit for cystic fibrosis. Somehow more than 700 people pack onto this trail for the event. If I was into organized sports, then I’d love the Lost Lake Run. Check it out: www.lostlakerun.org

See more of Joe’s running photos at www.stockalpine.com/photos/run/

Osprey Athletes Alaska, Cathy Flanagan, Joe Stock, Lost Lake Trail, Trail Running

Anchorage is a mountain runners dream. From the edge of town, the tundra and rock continue unlimited with zero crowds. Six years ago, I spent the summer running the 35 named summits in the Chugach Front Range — those peaks that rise above Anchorage and are divided from the rest of the Chugach by Ship and Indian Creeks.

Read more…

Osprey Athletes adventure, Alaska, Chugach Mountains, Joe Stock, Mountain Running, outdoors, running

The Wrangells didn’t follow our plan, but we realized a first class adventure was guaranteed when our bush pilot looked like Merle Haggard.

In early May, Gary Green’s Pilatus Porter shrank to a speck on the horizon above Skolai Pass, and then the mountain silence surrounded us. Dylan Taylor, Danny Uhlmann and I were left standing on the desert-like Solo airstrip in the eastern Wrangell Mountains. We had skis, food for 10 days, a pile of maps and a heap of curiosity. This was our first visit to the Wrangells, a high and glaciated range that juts north from the Saint Elias Mountains in Alaska.

Carrying our skis, we hiked to skiable auffice (overflow ice) and skied all day along the Middle Fork and camped among rubble at the glacier terminus. The next day we skied a thin coating of snow over glacier ice into a steep-walled cirque until a ground storm stopped us. The wind howled all night and loaded the dramatic ski terrain with hairtrigger avalanche slabs. Encased and trapped by avalanche slopes, we searched the basin for two days for an escape route — often retreating from whumphing faces and sometimes releasing avalanches from hundreds of feet away.

Eventually we found a 9,000-foot sneak to the Chisana Glacier, but there we discovered a new hazard—crevasses. Not just regular crevasses, but little, hidden and nasty crevasses that kept us roped together like sled dogs. In silent, pink twilight we crossed the vast Chisana neve and camped at 8,700 feet looking across to Mount Bona (16,421’) and Mount Churchill (15,638’). The next day we continued searching for thicker snow. Anything to bridge the crevasses and subdue the avalanches, but the crevasses just became deeper and more hungry and the lurking avalanches waiting to stuff us into those terrifying slots. Trapped, we searched the maps for an escape route. We gambled on taking the Nizina Glacier out toward the mining-gone hippy town of McCarthy.

We skied 25 miles down the Nizina Glacier, skated across the new pro-glacial lake and crested a terminal moraine to see a sight of staggering beauty. The vast Nizina floodplain stretched out and around the corner to McCarthy. For two days we walked together down the tundra-coated cobbles, stumbling as we watched dramatic patterns on the limestone walls and iceflows appear in the steep canyons between. When the river banked hard against the mountains we bushwacked on bear trails, dragging our skis in the duff. But somehow the irony and agony of carrying skis was subdued by the crippling beauty of Alaska. Late in the evening we walked into McCarthy. A week before tourist season, the town was silent.

Compared to our Big Idea, the trip was a non-event. Our plan was not to dodge avalanches, tiptoe over crevasses and take our skis for a stroll. But we didn’t feel cheated. In many ways our trip went exactly as planned. In Alaska plans are often just talking points. The real objective is the unknown and the plan is no plan. Except for one plan… I’ll be visiting the Wrangells again real soon.

See more of Joe’s photos at: www.stockalpine.com/posts/wrangell-ski-tour.html

Osprey Athletes Aether 60, Alaska, backcountry, Joe Stock, mountains, Osprey Packs, skiing, Wrangell Mountains

This winter my goal is a chicken-shit mentality.

After a hellish summer of climbing deaths—Johnny Copp, Craig Leubben, the Toulumne climber on the route next to us…—I began questioning my risks. If the odds caught up to Craig, they’d surely catch up to me. Novices appear to have surreal luck. They center-punch the gnarliest avalanche path on an extreme hazard day and survive. But how about me? I want to spend 200 days a year in the mountains for another 20 years. The smallest risks I take quickly pile up, unless I can outsmart the odds.

I realized skiing high-consequence avalanche terrain is my greatest risk. Especially those steep, powder-filled gullets. Those lines I crave so bad that the hazard becomes imaginary. My goal is to claim “Chicken Shit!” 10 times this winter. I’m up to four.

The first two times I chickened out were on the south face of Kickstep at Turnagain Pass—a steep run with huge consequences. After heeding my senses and bailing twice for alternate tours, Ryan Hokanson and I got Kickstep on round three.

A few weeks ago I was skinning up below the Col du Passon above the Argentierre Glacier in Chamonix, France with some random Californians I’d just met. Ahead, a group broke trail, tip to tail, through deep snow up the moraine wall. One of the Californians looked up and said, “Was that crown there before?” The skin tracks disappeared into a fresh avalanche. The debris pile, and track setters, were out of sight.

“Oh we would have heard some thing,” said another Californian and they went back to putting on their skins. I sprinted over the crest and spotted the dazed and snow-plastered track setters extracting themselves from the avalanche debris pile. Seeing everyone okay, I went back to the Californians. “Hey guys, I’m going to bail. Have a great day though!” Tic! That’s three! I skied piste at the Grand Montets. Not a bad alternative. 

Then Cathy and I tried the Haute Route, the famous trail from Chamonix to Zermatt. A route crossed by thousands each year. Being super early season, we waited for clearing storms then started from Verbier, Switzerland. We plowing through deep storm snow and crossed three passes. 

 Fifteen minutes from the Praflueri Hut, our first night’s destination, I crested a moraine wall and Cathy yelled, “Avalanche!” I skied off the shuddering slab and it piled into a deep, cracked mound.We skied the avalanche bed surface until the hut was just minutes away. Although deserted, the hut was shelter. In fading light, another heinous moraine wall appeared before us. We searched, but only found steep, whoomphing slopes.

We spent our first night on the Haute Route inside this ancient concrete water tank. That’s four. Six to go.

See more photos from skiing in France at www.stockalpine.com/posts/chamonix.html

Uncategorized Joe Stock, Osprey, Osprey Packs

Joe Stock is an Alaskan adventurer, AAI guide, photographer, writer and has worked as an Osprey pack tester for many years (ala Osprey Athlete). We love Joe.

I’m nervous. Normally, mountains are just mountains. Some are huge and glaciated while others are just rocky. Add a frenzy of foreigners, a network of telepheriques, a 300-year old guiding history and the mountains suddenly become daunting to me. These are the French Alps around Chamonix. Tomorrow we’re going there.

Guiding in France is a rite of passage for IFMGA guides. Chamonix is the birthplace of mountain guiding and still sets the international standard for guides. My wife Cathy and I will base in Chamonix for the next month, taking the lifts to mountain summits for day touring, then spending two weeks hut-based in the area. I’ll take any odd work from guide friends in the area, but focus on learning the system, writing, and shooting.

The world’s finest ski tour is the second portion of our trip—the Ortler traverse in the Italian Alps. This will be a recon before I guide five customers across the Ortler for Sierra Mountain Guides.

Cathy and I are taking Mutant 38s as our main ski packs since ice axes go inside the pack while riding the telepherique. On lighter days, we’ll use the Kode 30. We have the Flap Jack and Flap Jill Mini as our townie bags.

The Osprey quiver!

Mowzers perusing the trip literature. Her favorite book is Mont Blanc and the Aiguilles Rouges – a guide for skiers by Anselme Baud. The steep skiing history has her wiskers twitching.

Cathy running at Bethany Beach, Delaware where her parents live. The east coast called this the Blizzard of 2010.  Reagan International was shut down for four days from 30 inches of snow, but it looks like we’re flying out tomorrow.

Osprey Athletes IFMGA Guide, Joe Stock, Kode 30, Mutant 38

Surviving winter in Alaska is not for the weak. Months of darkness, polar temperatures, cloudy skies and rain. Stateside friends ask “Does the sun ever come up?” Well that depends on where in Alaska you’re talking about. The Arctic Circle is the southern extremity of the polar night, meaning the sun never rises on one day of the year. I live in Anchorage—along with 42% of the state’s population—564 miles south of the Arctic Circle, so the sun climbs above the horizon  for about five hours on the winter solstice. The sun does a lazy arc just above the horizon creating twilight all day. We loose our sunglasses in October and find them in March.

In winter, my wife and I often vacate Alaska for South America to climb rocks and soak in the sun. This year we’re going to France and Italy, but not until February. I was dreading the midwinter months, but Alaska is all about surprises.

After Christmas, Cathy I made the six-hour drive to Valdez in the Chugach Mountains to ski at Thompson Pass. Valdez is the snowiest city in the US, so we crossed our fingers for clear skies. We got lucky. We then drove straight back through Anchorage to the Kenai Mountains and spent New Years with friends at the Crescent Saddle Cabin. We got even more lucky. Oh Alaska!

Max Kaufman, a long-time friend from Fairbanks, skiing in twilight from the summit of Girls Mountain, Thompson Pass, Chugach Mountains, Alaska.

Najeeby Quinn soaking in the midwinter sun above Crescent Saddle. She is squinting a bit, although the sun has zero warmth.

I’m spotting Jeff Conaway with his Osprey Aether 70 from the safety of a rock overhang as he skis a chute below a dangling cornice. As we prepared to drop in, a bus-sized portion of the cornice snapped off and thundered down the chute. So much for the powder, but at least we know it’s stable!

Crescent Saddle Cabin in the Kenai Mountains during the New Years Eve blue moon. Here Andy Newton and I are heading out to shoot skeet on Crescent Lake. The wailing and cracking lake ice was creeeeeeepy!!!!! See more photos at: http://www.stockalpine.com/posts/2010/1/4/crescent-saddle-cabin.html

Osprey Athletes, Outdoor Activities, Product Aether 70, Alaska, Joe Stock, Talon 33, Valdez

South Las Vegas. One house. Fourteen guides. Heaps of cams and packs in the garage. Stacks of guidebooks on the kitchen table. The air is thick with beta. “Don’t do anything on the Black Velvet wall. Too straightforward. Too many bolts to be on the exam.”

“How’d you avoid that jammed block rap on the Frigid Air?”

We’ve been training for two weeks and have another week before the exam starts. Each day we venture out to climb exam routes—those with complicated guiding problems—where safely protecting two clients involves an extra four steps compared to climbing with your buddies. Take the notorious Community Pillar descent, where just getting to the main raps involves short roping, short-pitching, intermediate anchors, a pre-rig rappel and avoiding a tempting anchor known as No Pass Tree. No Pass Tree is a big tree, wrapped with trucker slings, but surrounded by loose blocks. If you rap off No Pass Tree then you No Pass Exam.

The focus of  our training for the American Mountain Guide Association exam–and guiding in general–is safety. Climbing the 5.10+ standard while wearing a pack and pulling two ropes seems insignificant compared to learning hundreds of safety tricks. For example, yesterday we realized that if you clove-off your client to the master point between the autolocker and their knot, then they are basically off belay for a split second—the autolocker won’t catch as you are tying the client’s clove-hitch. Instead, tie-off the brake strand before clove-hitching the client into the anchor master point. Anal, but if guiding is your career, then you’ll learn to stack the odds in your favor, or you’ll get weeded out.

Osprey has been training with me the whole time. I haul the rack and ropes into the routes with my beloved Mutant 38. Then I climb with a Solo, the ultimate summer climbing pack. The hard plastic ribs on the outside of the Solo take the abuse while grinding up chimneys and the sleek, low volume make the pack almost imperceptible when climbing.

Mark Allen belaying Mike Bromberg on pitch 5 of 12 on Initiwantan (IV 5.10c), Mount Wilson, Red Rocks, Nevada.

Mark Smiley leading  the old-school 5.9 chimneys on pitch 5 of 18. Epinephrine, Black Velvet Canyon, Red Rocks, Nevada.

Uncategorized AMGA, Joe Stock, Mutant 38, Osprey, Red Rocks, Rock Guide Exam, Solo