Hello Readers,
It’s been a while since my ski season abruptly ended when I broke my collarbone at the end of February. Another epic season at Eaglecrest Ski Area continued through mid-April. The official one that is. Far as I can tell, the post season for hikers and skinners is still on, some snow still up there. I won’t get back on the mountain until next season, and did not make the annual helidrop this year. But guess what? This weekend I found in my files a write-up of last year’s day outing to Sheep Mountain, Father’s Day-Solstice Weekend 2021. Here it is, one year later!
Around here when the sun comes out we tend to drop the inside to-do list and go outside. The week leading up to summer solstice in the rainforest was, well, rainy. So when the forecast called for clearing on Saturday, the day before Father’s Day, the 2021 heliski drop is on.
The event begins with an email sent to a list of skiers, asking if they want to pitch in for the annual opportunity to get dropped off on top of a mountain by helicopter, ski down to sea level and hike out. We’d pretty much packed up our gear for the season, but it didn’t take much to wax up our skis. The prospect of buttery sun warmed snow, surrounded by your pick of Goldielocks slopes - not too steep and not too narrow - could not be passed up.
I’m excited and apprehensive. The natural world can be unpredictable, and sliding down snowy slopes in one of nature’s ski areas is no exception.
The day dawns with sun emerging from behind the tallest peak across the channel from our house. In a few hours, we’ll be plopped atop the mountain next to it by a loud whirling contraption.
“Almost ready,” I tell my husband, hovering by the kitchen counter. I’m slipping spruce tip blueberry muffins into a zip lock bag, ready to hand out to breakfast starved skiers. Karl is anxious to get going. We still have to pick up our son, Kanaan, across the bridge and head out to the Coastal Helicopters hangar by the airport.
We pull up along the curb at his downtown Juneau apartment. Day pack on his back and a sealed container of leftovers in hand, he appears a bit bewildered, hair swept up in several directions at once. “I slept too late,” he says. “I know the feeling,” I say, apologizing for the inheritance of my own tendency.
We pull up to the hangar and a line of open hatchbacks, the usual suspects we know from the local ski area parking lot ambling about in shorts and ski boots, smearing sunscreen on noses and securing ball caps. It’s like Christmas morning, the psyche level high for the unopened gifts awaiting us on Sheep Mountain.
Jen, who organized this year’s outing, wears a tie dye skirt over long johns and holds a clipboard. She clomps through the parking lot, stopping people and checking them off. We step into the hangar waiting room, get our gear and ourselves weighed and counted. After the pilot gives a group safety briefing on the tarmac, we pile into cars and caravan out Thane Road to park by a beach on the channel alongside a stream. In a few weeks the first salmon will be wriggling up that stream to spawn.
My son and I are in the first of a half dozen groups of five sharing a helicopter ride to the top of Sheep Mountain. I’m squeezed between two guys in their 30’s who do this kind of thing more often than me, Kanaan, just back from a gig as base camp manager for a ski movie, and Brian, his ski area trail crew colleague and avid snowboarder. My last helidrop was at least four years ago, and I’ve apparently forgotten some things - ear plugs to filter the piercing whine of the high spinning rotors for starts. The pilot is ready to go and I’m still fumbling with the triangular seatbelt.
The big yellow dragonfly ascends up steep chutes lined with leafy alders, cottonwoods, spruce and hemlock trees bursting with fresh shoots of needles. Mountain goats dot the verdant slopes. The channel falls below as a snowfield comes into view. The helicopter hovers over the white expanse. I’m both giddy and fearful, praying for a safe landing.
The pilot settles onto a helipad created by nature-wide, and round. Jen is waiting, perched on one knee. She opens the door and we peel out one by one, crouching low to avoid the rotor. Kanaan unclasps the basket attached to the side holding our skis and poles. He swiftly takes them out, placing them in a neat pile and secures the door closed. In a huddle on our knees, we look up as the copter rises from the snow and then descends in a whirl. It feels like we’re in a ski movie.
We’re plopped in the center of a panorama of distant mountains, icefields and iconic peaks all the way to British Columbia, the crag of Devil’s Paw clear as can be. I never get over that this amazingness is not far from our home across the channel.
My friends Sue and Susan arrive with the next shuttle drop. They have never been here before. They signed up after I alerted them to the opportunity. We are part of a cadre of middle-aged ladies who met Tuesday evenings during the 2021 ski season in the Eaglecrest parking lot. We skinned up the closed hill and skied down, rain, snow or shine, wearing headlights in the winter and sunglasses in the late spring.
For me, joining this group was like going to exercise class. I wouldn’t do it on my own. I needed the collective commitment to suffer through the uphill lung burning slog for the reward of shushing down. Back in the parking lot we’d have an impromptu tailgate party, toasting our accomplishment with canned gin and tonic or La Croix.
Sue emerges from the helicopter with her teenage daughter, who is sporting a tank top that will bring on a sunburn she won’t forget. Ray, a longtime member of the Dawn Patrol, a group who skin up Eaglecrest in the mornings before work, is also up here with his son. A myriad of wide open perfect pitches for skiing spread out before us. .
“This is my favorite, right here,” notes Ray. Twenty years ago Ray taught Kanaan’s middle school media class, where he and his friends made their first annual ski movie, Alaskan Monkey Business. On the horizon is Mt. Clark and more shoulders of snow. We go with Ray’s advice. Our first turns are tentative, then we ease onto a gentle slope of spring snow just softening in the morning light. A train of skiers boot packs up the side of Mt. Clark, skis on their shoulders. The hike appears steep and exposed on one side, should you slip. We decide to stay where we are and skin back up to where we started.
Unlike our Tuesday evening outings, the payoff is in reverse. The fee for the fun ski down is a skin back up the sun cupped slope to the panoramic summit from which we just skied down. The top steepens under a cornice that requires awkward mule kicks, straddling the slope with our inner ski edges to switch directions. I grunt my way through, climbing and pressing my skis up and over the incline. Up top is Ray, reclining on a sleeping pad he stuffed in his pack, waiting for his son to return with the Mt. Clark crew. Ray sticks his avalanche probe into the snow and takes a measurement: three meters, equivalent to nine feet. On the 20th of June!
After lunch at the summit, we are ready to make our way down to Perseverance Trail, where we’ll change out ski boots for hiking shoes, strap skis to the sides of packs and hike back to civilization. A natural ski area appears, beckoning a beautiful last run on smooth spring corn snow.
On the horizon are the Chilkat mountains and countless islands in water reflecting the rare blue sky. Kanaan and Karl, our guides, point to what looks like an uphill swoop at the bottom of the main fall line. Following avalanche safety protocol, we’ll ski down one at a time. It looks to me like we’d have to side step up the hump at the bottom to make it to the next flat plateau.
Sue and Susan are visibly nervous and a bit apprehensive. “I’m a Sheep Mountain virgin!” blurts Sue. It’s a long run down and from here, hard to determine the angle of the descent or where there might be glide cracks or melted holes in the snow to avoid. I am right there with them, which is not unusual when I am skiing with my kids and trying to keep up.
Kanaan thinks we can ski it all the way. “I’ll call you with a report, once I’m down” he assures. Cell service is that good all the way up here. He takes off smooth sailing, turning down this wilderness dance floor. As he approaches the wave of snow at the bottom, he gains speed and gets some air off the lip, landing gracefully on the plateau.
My cell phone rings in my pocket. A bit jittery with nerves, I have a hard time making out how to get him on speaker phone in the blazing solstice sunlight. “Stay to the left,” he advises. “There’s one glide crack on the right midway down.”
“Was that a jump at the finish?” I ask. “Yeah”, he answers. “Totally doable.”
Now it’s my turn, to not only go for it, but to inspire Susan and Sue. Maybe I’ll even try that sweet jump at the end.
I take off, turning not too fast and not too slow, edging my skis gently side to side, negotiating the surface resembling thousands of frozen small waves. Sooner than I expect the big wave approaches. I gain some speed, letting my body naturally lean back with the incline. For a moment, all I see is the blue sky and the lip of snow, setting me down gently on the plateau. I swish up to my son showing off, like my dad did skiing to me as I waited for him at the bottom of the Dance Floor run at Alpine Meadows, decades ago in California.
“That was so fun!” I shout, our smiles wide as this natural ski area.
Katie ~ Sooooo glad you are back at it, after your injury.... looks like you had a glorius day!
Great memory from 2021! Apprehension and accomplishment are truth!
Susan