Valdez, a small port at the head of Prince William Sound, is often called the snowiest city in the United States, and the Chugach Mountains behind it are where big-mountain skiing by helicopter grew up. H2O Guides’ 2011 film captures that terrain: long ridges, steep spines and runs that drop thousands of vertical feet to the valley floor.
Valdez and the Chugach Mountains
The Chugach run for roughly 250 miles along the Gulf of Alaska, from the arms of Cook Inlet near Anchorage eastward past Valdez. The highest summit is Mount Marcus Baker at about 13,100 feet. Moist air from the Gulf piles snow onto the range: average annual snowfall exceeds 800 inches in places, and Valdez itself averages close to 300 inches a year. That coastal snow is deep and dense, and it sticks to slopes that would be bare rock in drier ranges, which is why the Chugach are famous for steep, spine-covered faces.
Valdez is a town of about 4,000 people, linked to the rest of Alaska by a single road, the Richardson Highway, which climbs over Thompson Pass just north of town. It was rebuilt about four miles from its original site after the 1964 Good Friday earthquake.
The birthplace of big-mountain heli-skiing
Valdez hosted the first World Extreme Skiing Championships in 1991, and skiers such as Doug Coombs and Dean Cummings made dozens of first descents in the surrounding peaks during the 1990s. Coombs founded Valdez Heli-Ski Guides in 1993. Cummings founded H2O Guides in 1995; in 2003 the company won a U.S. Forest Service permit covering more than 200,000 acres of terrain.
H2O Guides no longer operates: its Forest Service permit was suspended and then revoked in early 2019. The film remains a good record of what a Chugach heli-ski day looked like at the time.
What the 2011 film shows
The video opens with the helicopter approach, giving a sense of the wider range before dropping riders onto ridgelines. From there skiers and snowboarders pick lines down broad faces and narrow spines towards the valleys. Watch for the moments between descents too: riders walking ridges, waiting at pick-up points and scoping the next run. A lone figure on a ridge is often the only thing that gives the mountains a sense of scale.
Video: H2O Guides 2011 - Valdez, Alaska - Helicopter Skiing and Snowboarding (published by Dean Cummings).
Planning a Valdez heli-ski trip
- When to go: March and April are the most popular months. Storms ease from late February and daylight grows quickly, adding more than five minutes a day.
- Who to fly with: Visit Valdez lists Alaska Backcountry Guides, Black Ops Valdez and Valdez Heli-Ski Guides, which is based at Tsaina Lodge near Thompson Pass.
- Getting there: Valdez is about five to six hours’ drive from Anchorage on the Glenn and Richardson highways, or a 45-minute flight. Check Alaska 511 for Thompson Pass closures in winter.
- The terrain: runs commonly drop 3,000 to 6,000 vertical feet, with no lifts or groomed slopes in the main zones. Wide, rockered skis or a powder board handle the dense coastal snow best.
Choose an operator with certified guides and full avalanche rescue gear, and expect weather days: the same storms that build the snowpack can ground helicopters for days at a time. For a real-world reminder of why the equipment matters, read Aymar Navarro’s Avalanche Incident in the Spanish Pyrenees. For another film made with helicopter and snowcat access, see The Balance of Powder: A Sherpas Cinema Film.
Related reading
- A Lake Louise Snowboard Lap with Blayne Campbell
- Colorado Snowboarding with Hofgaard, Bittner, Botner and Helgason
- Aurora from Norway, Alaska and Orbit
- We Ride: The People and Culture of Snowboarding
- Don’t Panic: A Snowboard Film Excerpt
- This Is Skiing: A Fan-Made Action Compilation
Sources
- Valdez, Alaska (Wikipedia)
- Chugach Mountains (Wikipedia)
- Visit Valdez: Heli-skiing
- Teton Gravity Research: Charging the Chugach
- Outside: Dean Cummings and H2O Guides
- Photo and video: H2O Guides / Dean Cummings (2011)
No comments