The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 22.1
THE LAST OF A DYING BREED IN HAINES, ALASKA
Words Jason Robinson. Photos Carver Culbeck 2024-10-01 09:28:38
One of many terminating spine walls on the flight in. This one was especially attractive.
I awake, well rested, on the floor of the relatively homey Juneau Airport. I arrived in Alaska late the night before from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and will be flying to Haines in a couple hours to link with Iñaki Odriozola and Garrett Warnick, aka Inyo and Worm, for another one of their adventures. This trip is the culmination of their entire season spent pursuing backcountry freestyle snowboarding via splitboards. The plan is to take a ski-plane out into the backcountry to camp out for a week, or two, or three.
I have my camping gear with me, so, upon arrival, I didn’t call a cab to bring me to a hotel. I stepped outside to enjoy a hand rolled cigarette in the brisk southeast Alaska night air. I sat with the feeling of excitement you only get at the beginning of a trip, when so much is still unknown and the possibilities seem endless. My thoughts settled back on the present task at hand: where would I make camp?
That’s when I was greeted by a man named Virgil. We got to talking, and I told him I’m here to camp on a glacier to snowboard. He explained to me that he’s lived up here, homeless, for the last 10 years. Virgil is a short, wiry man, probably in his early 50s. He gave me no reason to doubt his stories of building numerous rogue log cabins in the surrounding forests to live in over the years. When the authorities would discover his dwelling and give him the boot, he’d mosey along and build another one somewhere else. Currently, Virgil is at the tail end of a yearlong residency at a nearby hotel that he said Uncle Sam got for him. “They give us snacks and all,’’ he said. “I’ll go grab you some.”
He came back in under 10 minutes with a couple of juice boxes, fruit gummies and a small bag of potato chips. “You told me you were a snowboarder,” he said, and grinned as he handed me an odd-looking deck of cards. “These cards have everything you need to teach someone how to snowboard.”
He also explained that if I have a flight in the morning, no one will kick me out of the airport if I sleep inside. Enough said. Before leaving, he bestowed upon me what seemed to be his life’s motto, complete with a sort of physical rendition where he had me walk along to really emphasize his point.
Walk behind me, I’ll protect you.
Walk beside me, I’ll respect you.
Walk in front of me, I’ll wreck you.
I laid out my sleeping pad and bag on the floor of the airport and began flipping through my newly acquired “Snowboarding Training Cards,” which include 120 individual snowboarding lessons. I wondered if “How to Cross a Bergschrund” is one of the lessons provided within the deck. Drifting off, I found myself wondering how Virgil’s mantra applies to me and my current situation. I mean, I would be doing a lot of walking on this trip and would most likely be well behind the rest of the crew. Did that mean they would protect me? A comforting image that put me right to sleep.
Flying from Juneau to Haines through heavy cloud cover, I’d have no idea what lies to my left if I weren’t already aware. Without the jaw dropping peaks visible to mind surf, I’m pushed toward an introspective in-flight experience. I reflect on my first visit to Haines—2013 I believe. Driving along the Chilkat Highway, Absinthe Films’ Justin Hostynek told stories about the early AK days as the sun set behind a snow-caked Cathedral Peak. I remember feeling that I was exactly where I belonged; I had found my place in the world.
I fell hard for all that Haines had to offer. The terrain, snowpack, camaraderie, lifestyle—the entire process of riding in AK set my soul on fire. I immersed myself in the experience and, after that first trip, essentially dedicated my life to spending the better part of March and April up here. Yet, after every season spent on the Absinthe Films heli program, I found my bank account and adrenal glands completely drained. I’m so grateful for those opportunities and wouldn’t change a thing, but after a few years of going all in on heli, I couldn’t manage it any longer. I had just begun to scratch the surface of what I was capable of in these mountains, and I wanted to continue progressing my riding here. As the years passed, the dream of riding in Haines again seemed more and more unrealistic, until eventually I wrote it off as something that I would probably never experience again.
Today I find myself at the beginning of my first snowboard trip to Haines in over seven years. As the plane descends, lining up with the small-town airstrip before landing, I’m hit hard with the anticipation of getting back into these mountains. Mountains that helped shape me into the snowboarder and man I am today. But I have my doubts. Do I still have the fire? Can I ride the sort of lines I want without the heli? Will I completely lose myself in this place again? I breathe deep, letting it go. A wave of gratitude rushes over me. I’m so lucky to have a friend like Worm pushing the boundaries of freestyle splitboarding, and that he wants me to join him on his big season finale.
In Haines I hitch a ride to town and arrive at the mountain market right at 9 a.m. The woman behind the coffee shop counter is a familiar face and asks me about the board bag and backpack I’ve got out front. I tell her I’m waiting to hear back from friends that are camped along the river, out the road somewhere. “Oh yeah, I know your friends,” she says. “Our dogs have taken a liking to them.” She assures me that if I haven’t heard from them by the time she’s off work, she’ll happily drive me out.
The boys roll up shortly after. Worm’s first-gen Tacoma is packed to the gills. Worm introduces me to Inyo, then the two shuffle gear around to make room in the truck. We stock up on snacks and head 20-something miles out of town and into camp. There’s a single snowmachine with a couple splitboards leaning against it, as well as a wood pile and sizable hot tent that Worm and Inyo have been residing in for about a month. They fill me in on what their program has looked like so far, with Worm laying down a colorful story:
“The chaos outside of the tent is unfathomable,” Worm says. “Nickelback had been blaring for the past six hours when I hear a voice call out, ‘Kegan, let’s go ride the sleds, get the fireworks.’ We’re trying to sleep through mortars nearly hitting the tent, and snowmobiles doing drag races in the street. What the fuck is happening? It’s the beginning of April and we’ve been on the road since March 12. We’ve been sleeping in a tent while trying to splitboard lines for the past month. Around a week ago, we finally made it to Haines Pass, which lies on the Canadian side of the border from Alaska. Yesterday we were able to splitboard up to Caffeine, we scored, and it was our first big line of the trip. We returned to the pass to find our tent had been parked in by a myriad of campers, generators, sled necks and whatever else you could think of. We were the only tenters up on the pass, the last of a dying breed that would do anything for a chance to ride what Alaska has to offer.”
I’m genuinely impressed with their program: riding by day, editing footage in the tent by night. They just finished their latest YouTube episode and give me the leak. This two-man crew is running like a well-oiled machine, riding and capturing classic Haines lines on an extremely tight budget, without ever going near a helicopter. I’m thankful to be part of it.
Three is certainly company, however three is a little light for an extended glacier campout. We’re looking for a fourth, and maybe even a fifth. Worm gets to talking with Carver Culbeck, a local Haines ripper. Just like that we become four. At 22 years old, on top of his youthful stoke, Carver brings a lot of climbing and rope experience to the table—something that Inyo has, but that Worm and I are relatively green with. We’ve got our crew locked in and our snowboard gear, tents and sleeping bags packed—all the stuff to do the thing. I can’t forget that massive duffle bag full of dry food and a multi-gallon tub of peanut M&M’s, our food source for up to 20 days. Now, we wait on the weather and whether our airplane pilot, Drake, will put us toward the top of his long queue of crews looking for an extended stay in the Chilkat.
Drake calls. He’s ready for us. I’m stoked, but also damn scared. The feeling reminds me of my heli days, when we’d get a midday call from SeanDog at Alaska Heliskiing telling us it was breaking blue out the road, and we’d drop everything to rush out to fly. That was something I hadn’t anticipated going through on this trip. Yet my nervous system settles back down when I begin to realize how much slower everything moves with this group’s approach to riding.
At the airport, Drake looks at how massive our pile of gear is and shakes his head. He flies Inyo out with the first load, including his personal camp gear, the camp stove and satellite phone. That’s in case the weather doesn’t allow us to get everything flown in and Inyo is forced to wait it out alone for a few days. Worm goes with the second load, and I with the third. I step out of the plane and there are over 2 feet of blower powder. Carver arrives with the fourth and final load, we empty the plane, and Drake bids us farewell and motors off. Now it’s just our crew and a big pile of gear in what feels like the middle of nowhere.
We’re surrounded by peaks on three sides with a glacier on the fourth. Everyone is eager to explore, but first we set up camp. We stomp down the fresh snow to create a relatively uniform surface. Inyo, Worm and I erect their big tent while Carver puts up his smaller one before venturing off toward what we’ve already dubbed the “Camp Wall,” a face offering well over 1,000 vertical feet of fall line, prominent spines, several cliffs, open panels and plenty of entry points between its super fat cornices. Best of all, it takes us just over an hour to get on top of Camp Wall, with no real bergschrund crossing necessary. The snow quality is excellent, and all four of us thoroughly enjoy two runs apiece. The face offers enough to really feel like you’re riding in AK without anything too over-the-top, technical or hazardous—a great introduction to what will be our home for the near future.
Inyo and Worm have been building up to this trip all season. The way they work together to film one another—with Carver and I on the drone—without slowing the flow of the day is seamless. After the second run, as the sun begins to set, we regroup well below the face and wiggle our way down over a couple low-angle rolls, hooting and hollering as we near camp, unstrapping a few feet shy of the tents.
Camp life isn’t all too different on the glacier from what it was down by the river. Aside from having swapped the woodstove for a Little Buddy propane heater, only eating dehydrated food and having to boil snow for water, the morning and evening routines are familiar enough. We hatch a plan for the following day over some rehydrated chili mac before cozying back up for chocolate and movie time.
Day two, our first full day on the glacier, we dial in camp a bit more, do a few crevasse rescue drills, then head straight back up Camp Wall. We pick up some quality scraps on the side of what we’d ridden the previous day, opening some new lines further down the ridgeline. I feel solid on my board, nailing a technical little spine entrance and navigating the lower crux with relative ease. The rest of the boys are right in their element too, riding creative, technical lines with power and control. We’re all building confidence in the snowpack, our abilities and the crew dynamic. Everyone feels confident about the plan to venture further from camp the following day.
Carver and I have been eying these steeper, more technical spine walls adjacent to the Camp Wall. Accessing this face would require crossing a bergschrund before climbing up to the line. I’ve crossed dozens of bergschrunds in the past, yet usually at 40 mph, jacket flapping, flying out the bottom of a line to a waiting helicopter. This is going to be a bit different.
Carver waits for me below the bergie. We transition from split to solid mode and slap Verts on our feet. We rope up to each other. Carver helps me keep from completely tangling myself in all the excess rope I’ve got draped across my shoulders. He crosses. I’m silently repeating to myself, “Please don’t fall, please don’t fall.” The bridge looks sketchy and I’m relieved when Carver is across on solid snow. We switch roles. I’m less scared to cross myself than I was watching him, even though I’m now looking directly down at what appears to be a bottomless pit. We disconnect from each other; Carver takes the rope, and we start climbing. Carver is kicking down sluff and it becomes apparent that I should wait for Carver to top out before I start. Carver makes it; I continue with the ascent. The climb is steep, but manageable. The big wall to my left has been baking in the sun and every few minutes a small chunk of snow peels off, sending sluff my way. I imagine a big chunk breaking loose, or worse yet, the entire cornice above failing, but I keep plugging away, one foot in front of the other.
I make it to my drop-in point, relieved to be done climbing. Carver has already traversed a steep, icy runnel and continued upward to the start of his line. Below me are steep spines with deep runnels on both sides and, above, a vertical rime wall. There is nowhere to move. I stand, paralyzed for a few minutes, wondering how I’m going to get the pack off my back, the board off my pack, the Verts off my feet, and ultimately the board on my feet. I contemplate riding the bootpack back down, because standing up here has me gripped. Calming down, I gently pack out a little ledge with my feet to give myself enough space to get the pack off my back. Everything else happens automatically, and the next thing I know I’m strapped into my snowboard feeling comfortable and confident.
Carver is about 100 feet above me, and 50 feet rider’s left. He drops first. I have the perfect perch to watch as he cuts heelside across big spines, disappearing for a split second each time he traverses the deep runnels. He trends left through four spines before airing into a chute and connecting with more spines on his toeside, then jumps off the end into an open panel. He bobbles the landing but pops up and gains control just in time to cross the bergschrund. He makes it look super fun.
The snow over there seems decent. My line has been a little more protected from wind and sun, so I figure the snow over here will be even better. I’m excited now. I drop in, starting with a toe turn on the left side of the spine before transferring over to the other side for a heel turn. It’s steep and blower and weightless at times, bouncing between spines, hovering over sluff, flying across the bergschrund. Worm says something like, “Jeremy would be proud,” over the radio, a pleasant reminder that I can still ride well up here. Probably not the most impressive line of my life, but definitely the best line I’ve ever ridden on my splitboard.
We’re optimistic for a reset, but the sun continues to shine bright day after day. This has turned into one of the longest high-pressure systems any of us has ever seen in Haines this time of year. Snow quality deteriorates with the passing days. It gets harder to find quality conditions on the steeper faces, but that doesn’t stop us from looking. We scour the surrounding area, crossing numerous bergschrunds to access lines with varying degrees of sun and wind effect. Many times, we deem the bergies unpassable and turn back. It never feels like a failure, since the snow quality on the lower angle, glaciated snow fields is still holding, making for wide open party cruisers that we ride all the way back to camp, from any direction we go, without ever having to walk.
Our focus shifts from powder hunting to corn harvesting. There’s a south-facing peak a few hours walk from camp that stands at nearly 2,000 vertical feet and offers four distinct couloirs—one for each of us. That afternoon, we all get to feast on something other than dry food.
With no significant snowfall in the forecast and an empty tub of peanut M&M’s, we decide to pull out. Inyo, Worm and I are all content and lean into a mellow final day. Carver, however, isn’t on the same page. The whole trip he’d been staring at a large, complex face of spines that extend beyond lines he and I rode earlier in the trip. In this snow, it doesn’t look like you can flow down them. We’re all shocked and equally concerned when Carver tells us that he still wants a go at it. We certainly aren’t going to tell him not to, but secretly hope that somewhere along the climb he’ll realize how firm the snow is and back off. That doesn’t happen.
The top and bottom halves of the line are both straightforward enough. But the crux, a very exposed, nearly vertical spine that connects those halves, looks unrideable. Carver demonstrates that, although it could still be described as unrideable, the line is technically doable. We watch from the drone’s point of view as it films Carver working his way through the crux. He’s stuck there for minutes, ice and rock all around him, as we all hold our breath. We can see that he has both ice axes spiked into the steep, firm spine. Both arms are fully extending and he’s hanging there, attempting to kick his toe edge into the snow. It’s tense watching as he essentially downclimbs, with no rope, using the axes and his toe edge. Finally, he’s in the clear and casually rides toeside across a wall of big spines. We’re all over the moon as he slides back into camp unscathed.
All there is left to do now is break down camp in anticipation of Drake’s 9 a.m. arrival.
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