I’ve had two personal ski days this winter. With no snow in the early season, I ice climbed and taught avalanche classes. In the midwinter, I taught back to back avalanche courses and guided skiing. A lot of fun days on skis, but all of them on the clock. When skiing off the clock, I can kick back, let my friends make the difficult decisions and ski steeper, higher consequence terrain.

On my two personal days this winter, I skied the pointiest peak in the Hatcher Pass area and the pointiest peak near Turnagain Pass. Both near Anchorage, Alaska.

Dana Drummond booting 50-degree powder near the summit of The Pinnacle at Hatcher Pass.

Dana on the summit of The Pinnacle after leading the exposed summit pitch.

Dana on the summit of the Pinnacle. The Western Chugach are in the far distance.

Dana skiing the approach gully to The Pinnacle. See more photos of The Pinnacle here.

Dana breaking trail below seracs on Carpathian Peak in the Kenai Mountains.

Andy Newton and Tobey Carman heading to a break in the sunshine below our ski route on Carpathian.

Dana lining up to jump ten feet across the bergschrund to the Spencer Glacier below. See more photos of Carpathian Peak here.

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Last winter it snowed in Southcentral Alaska from October through April. This winter it hasn’t snowed since mid-September. But that’s great! The ice is fat and juicy and the temps warm. Ice climbing season is here!

Last week, Cathy and I climbed 2,000 vertical feet of ice in a shrubby gully deep in the Western Chugach Mountains.

We used the rope on five pitches and soloed the rest.

Cathy pulling over the top of another belayed pitch. She’s wearing a big metal orange knee-brace to prevent her knee from locking. The next day she got the flip-flopping part of the meniscus cut out.

On the last belayed pitch. We topped out at 5:30 p.m. in total darkness. Over two hours we thrashed down 2,000 feet of thick alder back to the road. Oh, we long for the sun and easy approaches of Colorado!

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Joe Stock is a mountain guide and photographer based in Anchorage, Alaska.

Dreams of Brown Moose is a classic early-season ice climb in the Portage Valley near Anchorage. This 500-foot, Water Ice IV route has the ingredients of a proper Alaska adventure with a bushwacking approach, dodgy thin ice, overflowing water and deathly avalanche terrain. I went with Sam Johnson, a life-long Alaska climber, artist and Ph.D candidate to give it a shot.

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Andrew McLean packed the Bear Tooth Theater for the annual Friends of the Chugach Avalanche Center fundraiser. This is the biggest event for the Friends, who provide weather stations, salary and gear for Southcentral Alaska avalanche forecasts. To over 400 fired up Alaskan skiers, Andrew told stories from ski adventures in the Wrangell St. Elias Mountains in Alaska. These are the most vast mountains in the U.S., and Andrew’s current ski obsession. Between slide shows-he gave another show for the Hatcher Pass Avalanche Center–we played in the hills above Anchorage.

During 45-minutes of  laughter, Andrew told of one expedition where “The Sex Troll” drug his kite, ready for any puff of wind, across the Bagley Icefield.

At a Chugach trailhead with the fat tire bikes loaded onto the Rice Rocket. Or is the Honda Rice Rocket loaded onto the fat tire bikes? Andrew had never ridden a fat bike, so I gave him the Alaska experience.

Some hazards on the ride into the Chugach. We counted 16 moose along 4 miles of trail.

We biked around Gray Lake below Ptarmigan Peak.

Along the way we noticed this iceflow up in the rocks on Ptarmigan Peak.

We came back the next day and climbed this beautiful route. It was 300 feet of rolling water ice 4.

Following Andrew’s lead up the steepest section. Thanks for coming up Andrew and supporting the Friends. And thanks for the mountain time!

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Danny Uhlmann and I thought a couple pitches of ice climbing would be fun during our day off. The weather forecast seemed fine: no precip forecasted and low winds. We took the 9,000-foot Midi lift up from Chamonix to the alpine and trudged over to our route: the Chere Couloir on Mont Blanc du Tacul, a sub-peak of Mont Blanc. As we neared the route we realized the wind was funneling through the pass where the climb was located… Here’s what ensued.

The Chere follows a gully in the rock up the right side of the Triangle du Tacul.

Danny geared up, minus goggles. We led with our faces down, blind, climbing by feel. Our frozen sunglasses protected our eyes with a layer of ice.

At the top of the six-pitch route we exited the wind venturi — and the raging sandstorm subsided enough for a cup of mud.

Then we rappelled back into the blizzard.

And experienced a nice exfoliating facial for the boys.

Final rap down over the bergschrund. Let’s get out of here!

We ran back to the Midi station and zoomed down to the warm valley below. Next time we’ll bring goggles!

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With Chris and Gavin from the UK on the summit of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps at 15,782 feet, a couple weeks ago.

Guiding in the Alps surrounding Chamonix is the norm for American IFMGA guides. Over half of America’s 80-something fully certified guides are here this summer. Why? Not because the pay is great. The plane ticket here is expensive and the dollar is lame against the euro. It’s also not because the US doesn’t have great rock for guiding. The western US has some of the best rock in the world. It’s not because Chamonix is the birthplace of mountain guiding, either. We’re here because the guiding is AWESOME! With our customers we can zip to the alpine on a tram and climb impeccable rock all day, then whisk back to a comfortable town where guides are socializing and living their normal life. Small, non-knee crushing backpacks are another bonus.

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Chugach Avalanche Center forecaster Wendy Wagner above a class III avalanche on Manitoba Mountain at Summit Lake. This is Wendy’s second season with the Chugach Avalanche Center. She came up from the Utah Avalanche Center.

It’s a fat season so far in south central Alaska. We’ve had relentless warm storms that are plastering the mountains with thick snow. Most of these storms are combined with winds over 100 miles per hour… while it’s grim now, the base and mid-pack are rock solid for when the good weather rolls around and the spring ski season will be huge.

Here’s a gallery with a few photos from our season so far…

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Thanks Osprey blog readers for your helpful comments on my Tear Down the Cairn post. I realize it was written with some arrogance, but sometimes it has to be done to get a reaction. Below is a second go at cairns — this time, I kept it to Alaska. Keep sending your opinionated, but civilized comments so I can keep working on this project. Cheers!

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Hiking into the Wedge (right) on a rare Alaska trail.

Anchorage is legendary for bad rock climbing. The crags along the Seward Highway were awarded a top five in the worst climbing areas in the US. For that reason, I’ve never climbed on the Seward highway although it is just minutes from town. By driving an hour you get high quality granite in the Talkeetna Mountains near Hatcher Pass, but it’s tough to catch dry conditions at there. Then Kevin Wright showed Cathy and I “The Wedge”. Solid rock just outside Anchorage! It is a bike and then a hike, but it is close!

Here are some photos from our trip…

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The double fisherman’s knot has plagued me for years. For climbers, this bomb-proof knot was traditionally used to tie ropes together for rappelling. Now most climbers use the flat overhand (aka the Euro Death Knot) for rapelling. I switched to the in-line overhand when the double fisherman’s made my cordelettes impossible to untie for anchors, threading boulders, or rescue scenarios. But I was still stuck using the double fisherman’s for my prusik loops. The knot would weld shut when I desperately needed it untied. And one more annoying thing: the double fisherman’s is near-impossible to teach clients.

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