The Snowboarder's Journal - frequency 17.2
CHAMP CAMP: A Week on Chugach Ice
Words, Photos and Captions: Colin Wiseman 2019-10-21 19:29:16
That’s peak 7061. It’s the egress if we have to walk out,” Jason “Champ” Champion says over his headset.
The pilot chimes in, “That’s a long way…”
We are 10 minutes into our heli shuttle to a distant glacial snow camp somewhere north of Thompson Pass, AK. The idea of walking out seems laughable.
“How far is it from the parking lot?” I ask.
“Around 15 miles to the Tonsina Glacier where snowmobiles could get us—if you can maintain a straight line across the glaciers,” he replies.
“At least we have a lot of cheese,” I say.
As it turns out, we don’t have enough cheese.
The forecast a week prior had been typical Alaska: mixed sun and cloud, possibly some blue, possibly some snow. Good enough for window shopping, maybe a few high-quality days. Via two RVs and one fire truck, our crew—Austin Smith, Curtis Ciszek, Eric Jackson, Blair Habenicht, Liam Gallagher, Alex Pashley and me—arrived in Thompson Pass on the back end of a mid-April high-pressure system. In the Alaska Snowboard Guides’ (ASG) parking lot, crews from Japan, Tahoe, Washington state and beyond assembled to live out their Chugach dreams. We’ve come for a slower experience than the typical heli program—a week on a glacier affectionately known as Champ Camp.
BUILDING CHAMP CAMP
Champ’s from Tahoe. I first met him in Valdez five years prior at another heli op. He guided with an understated approach—no egotistical scare tactics, just the essential info required to safely ride big Chugach ramps. It was great. Since then, Champ’s joined forces with ASG and Dave Geis to create Tour Camp. Though the concept of a predetermined week on an alpine glacier seems a gamble given Alaska’s notoriously fickle weather, Champ’s rolled with the punches and pulled it off successfully three years running. He knew from the start that Tour Camp would be about more than just the snowboarding.
“After five or six years of coming up here, I turned the corner to where it wasn’t about attacking the mountains anymore,” Champ told me. “I wanted to slow things down, get away from the hustle and bustle of mechanized guiding, and enjoy all aspects of the Chugach.”
Tour Camp was his way to do that. Beginning in 2017, he offered a “glamping” experience beyond Thompson Pass. Logistics are taken care of. There’s a cook, food, heated tents and guided splitboarding. But it’s still raw—you’re camped on a glacier in Alaska far from the trappings of civilization and the human element is exceedingly important.
“We’re our own resource out there,” Champ said. “It’s more challenging and there’s more to consider. When that helicopter leaves and the weather comes in, it’s just us—we do a lot of the decision-making as a group, making plans for the day, mitigating hazards, keeping ourselves safe and working together as a team. It can be so rewarding.”
HOME IS WHERE YOU PITCH IT
Camp, at about 4,500 feet of elevation, appears below as a small web of trails, kicked in by co-guide Jonathan “JC” Cahill, Danny Wilkinson and Ryan Thomford. Danny and Ryan, snowboarders from Colorado, were clients during the first year of Tour Camp. They liked it so much they signed on as employees for subsequent seasons. There are platforms where the tents and kitchen will go, along with a stack of gear, long-lined in by the bird that morning.
“What do you think?” Champ asks.
He waits with equal parts pride and concern for me to take it all in. From a relatively straightforward westerly ramp to mellow turns to the south and an imposing, steep face bisected by a couple of chutes due north, our immediate vicinity holds enough diversity to stay busy through most conditions. Farther to the north, the glacier shows its icy teeth over a roll then carries on to some steeper ridges. Beyond that, the Chugach, forever.
“A lot of options,” I reply.
Once camp is set up, Mary, Blair, Champ and I set out to ascend the closest target: the western face. It’s smooth going up the gut and the ridgeline to our left waits in the afternoon sun. Halfway up, we stop for a break, looking down upon camp, now a tiny blip on a massive expanse of ice. “I can see my house from here,” Blair says.
Post-holing up a crusty old sluff track, we top out on a craggy ridge. Across the next glacier is a large avalanche crown, kicked off by a group of heli-boarders that morning. It changes the mood, but we still feel confident in the face, having ascended the middle of it. The other three begin skooching toward the far shoulder while I wait to document their descent. Then clouds roll in.
In the Alaskan alpine, you need light. It is our first sign of weather and transforms what we hoped would be deep, fast turns into a blind creep down our ascent track. On the plus side, Danny has the grill firing on the glacier.
In the morning, we’ll chop blocks of snow to fortify the kitchen and our three tents against the wind, then head out for some turns when the sun breaks through in the afternoon. In between, we’ll learn a bit about glacier travel from Champ and JC. The next day, we’ll do the same, minus the sun. Forecasts are calling for weather, but it doesn’t look too bad.
In retrospect, we probably should have spent more time building those walls.
WHEN THE WALLS CAME DOWN
“We’re coming in!”
E-Jack is standing at the door of our tent in the middle of the night, holding his wadded-up sleeping bag and pad like a messy burrito. Mary’s right behind him. Outside, headlamps dance around a downed tent flapping in the wind. Around midnight, I’d awakened to increasingly heavy gusts slapping the tent walls against my head. I’d reminded myself that the Arctic Ovens were built for this environment and went back to sleep. Apparently the biggest one wasn’t built strong enough for this storm.
As I later learn, the five-person tent collapsed, bringing the walls down upon our comrades. One pole snapped, and they held it together for a moment, then another one broke. When Austin realized the circular central support was shattered, they abandoned ship. The guide tent also suffered a broken pole, and they were only able to save it with an ice-axe-and-ski-strap splint. While E-Jack and Mary cram in with us, Pashley and Curtis find lodging in the guides’ little two-man gear tent. Austin, clad in a Himalayan suit and minus-40-degree bag, opts to bivy in the kitchen.
MAKE CHAMP CAMP GREAT AGAIN
Austin is buried in six inches of snow.
“How’d you sleep?” I ask.
“I was too warm,” he says.
Apparently, enough down can get you through any glacial tent malfunction. Austin stays put while Danny gets breakfast going around him. The winds have calmed down somewhat, but we are stranded in a sea of white.
Champ appears in the kitchen. “Anyone who has an emergency locator, don’t hit that SOS button just yet,” he declares.
“Why would I do that? I’m having the time of my life,” Curtis replies.
He means it. Despite the calamitous evening, no one seems too phased. We have plenty of food and energy to match. There is nothing to do but dig. And if there’s anything a group of seasoned backcountry snowboarders does well, it’s digging.
The first step: secure shelter. The five stranded folks begin tunneling into the glacier, extracting snow with a Rubbermaid bin hauled by a rope. Meanwhile, the rest of us fortify the walls around the still-standing tents, stacking blocks overhead. Walls intact, we put the full crew’s energy toward the “mole hole,” as it becomes known. By 4:30 p.m., the finishing work is underway. Mary starts chipping out a stair set.
“This takes me back to my rail days,” she says with a smile. “This might be the best day of the year.”
Self-sufficiency is fun. What could have been catastrophic becomes a team project and a good day’s work. By 6 p.m., under E-Jack’s enthusiastic direction, the salvaged stove from the tent is rigged into a nook in the snow cave’s wall. The mole hole will be warm and comfortable.
A METAPHYSICAL INTERLUDE
The storm continues for three days. Dig, read, talk, repeat. Blair dives into Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception and begins to extrapolate on the Meaning of All This.
“Snowboarding’s like taking that trip to another planet, fully in the moment,” he says, beginning a monologue on the metaphysical meaning of sliding on snow as it relates to Huxley’s experimentations with hallucinogens. It makes a lot of sense in the moment. The whiskey is long gone and tobacco rations are running low, but we still have a bit of weed.
I begin writing: Take that trip. There’s nothing to do but lie here, watch the water drip, drip, drip, as it melts through the zippered window, stove on. I dress, all-gray puffiness making me feel like a Florida retiree. But I’m going out into knee-deep snow on an Alaskan glacier, not a power walk to the mall for a froyo. Should I still use my walking sticks? Gray puffy pants, intended to go under waders while flyfishing, gray micro puff hoodie, intended for belaying ice climbers. Black down booties with limited traction. Should be wearing Gore-Tex and snowboard boots, but fuck it. Another puffy coat, gloves, balaclava, ball cap, beanie. Sunglasses, even though it’s snowing. Breakfast is on. Hashbrowns and sausages. Danny is killing it in the kitchen. Drip, drip, drip.
Blair stands and peers through our little portal to the outside world. With base layers on bottom, a vest up top and red-tipped Smartwool beanie, he looks like Jacques Cousteau. I ask for a weather report. “It’s as white as it gets,” he says.
ROSE-TINTED LENSES
By dinnertime, the wind has finally stopped, but it’s still snowing. We’ve been steadily digging, clearing, puttering around camp like we are trying to meet code on a suburban lawn. In the kitchen, Champ hands me his rose-tinted goggles.
“Look at the flame,” he says.
I look. It’s pretty.
“We’ll wait until Monday, maybe Tuesday to think about walking out,” Champ says quietly.
It’s Saturday. Due to weather disrupting communications, we haven’t heard from base in 48 hours. The storm has confined us to a hundred-yard radius. But life is simple, and simple is good. Camp is an oasis of calm.
ORDERED CHAOS
“Chaos is God’s body. Order is the Devil’s chains.”—Skeeter, Rabbit Redux, John Updike
In a melding of Huxley and Updike, Blair and I are discussing the apathy of order versus the creativity of chaos—essentially, how society needs disarray to function. It certainly applies to our current balance in camp, and it is certainly the deepest conversation I’ve ever had on a snowboard trip. Blair doesn’t necessarily agree with my social democrat view of the world, tending to side with a more libertarian ideology. But we’re willing to hear each other’s thoughts and we have enough time.
Then the sun shows through still-falling snow. We decide to shake off cabin fever with a mellow tour. Moving on the flats is easy, but breaking trail uphill is slow. We walk closer to a chute that Curtis and Austin had ridden early in the trip. After discussing conditions, Blair, the only one of us who even thought to bring snowshoes, leads the wallow, with Danny behind, and me trailing.
It is knee deep, waist deep, then chest deep. Our trio tops out on loose rock just below the true peak. I realize I didn’t pack goggles. So much for a mellow tour. Danny lends me his dark sunglasses. Blair drops first and disappears into a plume of white with a toeside turn. Danny goes next, then I call my drop. Face-shot management is an issue in sunglasses, but I reach the bottom fully reset mentally—buzzing. One good line can do that sometimes.
It feels like we’ve entered the eye of the storm. At dinner, with zero wind, snow accumulates on the bills of our caps faster than we can wipe it off—maybe two inches per hour. Will we walk out soon? For the first time during the trip, rationing becomes part of the conversation. Soon, it’s just Champ and I left in the kitchen.
“What makes Alaska so great is the weather, and it’s hard to predict the weather,” he says. “I feel fortunate that such a big group is willing to come out here and give it a shot. Even though we’re battling with some difficult conditions, that’s a major part of it: coming out here and putting yourself in this location and hoping for the best.
“Despite the challenges, this trip has been fun. We have some talented athletes in camp, and it’s been fun seeing how mountain savvy they are. But the camaraderie has been the highlight—everybody is having fun, making jokes, and making the best of all conditions. And that’s what spending time in the mountains is all about. I think we’re gonna miss the simplicity once we leave.”
Laying down to sleep, snow sings a quick pitter patter on the roof. “That sound is so ominous,” Blair says. “Never have I wanted it to snow less.”
LIFTOFF
The thrum of an incoming helicopter stirs me from a restless sleep. I open my eyes to yellow-tinted light as JC pops his head through the vestibule of our tent.
“Your ride’s here! First four ready to go, load up!”
He’s wide-eyed, but not panicked—moving efficiently, as a guide should. The skies behind him are gray. It’s still snowing lightly. I can’t see the mountains. Liam and Blair begin milling around the tent’s little propane heater, assembling gear as the mole hole crew departs. We hear the helicopter again before we can see it. I’m surprised the heli came back for a second load. Everything’s moving so fast. We scramble inside. I close my eyes and feel liftoff. Count to five, count backward to one. Slow down the count.
I hate these fucking machines. I love this helicopter.
We swoop and bounce through eternal white. My mouth still tastes like sleep.
The ride smooths out and I open my eyes. There’s a snowbound river below, then some bare ground. Then the parking lot in a time warp. It’s a ghost town, save for a few remaining ASG staff who are packing up operations for the season. The heli is grounded, waiting for another window to pull Champ, JC, Ryan and Danny out of the field. It won’t come until tomorrow morning.
E-Jack turns on playoff hockey in one of the RVs. There are decisions to make. It just snowed a ton. We sat through the storm. The sun is coming. We need a heli, a pilot, a guide, snowmobiles, money to pay for all of it. We need a plan. Couldn’t it be as simple as glacier life? Anxiety creeps back in. I’m bored of the internet within an hour. We all are. We can see the mountains, and there is hardly a track on them.
A huge thank you to Jason Champion, Dave Geis, and the rest of the Alaska Snowboard Guides crew. To book you own AK adventure visit alaskasnowboardguides.com.
Photo Caption: Camp on day two, with small walls and all tents still standing. Blair Habenicht, Alex Pashley and Eric Jackson prepare to head out for a post-lunch tour.
©Funny Feelings LLC. View All Articles.