After setting a new record for hiking/skiing ratio in Tuckerman's Ravine in July, I decided to go somewhere where it was possible to ski more than 20 feet without sailing off into the scree- AK.

As my glacier skiing skills were subpar, I decided to go with Eli Potter of St Elias Alpine guides in McCarthy. Good guy who taught me a lot of new skills and handled most trip logistics including food (which was much better than the freeze dried stuff I would have brought- ever see anyone make decent pizza on an MSR stove?)

Eli Potter

Flying in, we located a promising campsite on the bench middle right of the photo, elevation 7950 feet. That's Mt St Elias rising 10,058 feet above our campsite in the background. Massive rockfalls came down the face on a regular basis, which is probaby why this face hasn't been climbed.

Paul Claus of Ultima Thule dropped us off. We had intended to go to the Baldwin Glacier, but Paul said he had skied the The Hump a few weeks earlier and it was great, so we went there instead. Unfortunately, this meant we were lacking the correct maps.

Prior to setting out for skiing, we reviewed crevasse rescue skills in a safe spot. After hopping in this one, the importance of preparing the lip prior to trying to prussik out became apparent.

As the rope was under tension, I didn't really want to hack away the lip with my ice axe. Instead, I hooked my heels over the lip and Eli hauled me up on a 6:1 Canadian drop loop system.

Since I was using my Lowa Struktura's for the first time, I thought it would be good to take a run on a moderate slope to get dialed into them prior to hitting the hump. There appeared to be some suitable runs near Mt Logan just across the Columbus Glacier, which I estimated to be a two mile ski.

We descended 1500 feet from camp to the Columbus Glacier.

The slopes betwen the ski poles looked perfect.

After about an hour of skiing across the Columbus (camp is just over Eli's left shoulder), it was clear that my distance estimate had been wrong. GPS later revealed that our destination was 9 miles away, making for a 19.3 mile day. We also learned that we had encroached 4 miles into Canadian territory.

We finally made it to our destination and did our first real skiing of the trip.

By late afternoon, we were climbing from the Columbus back to camp.

After the Columbus crossing debacle, Eli gave me some tips on covering flat ground quickly.

The following day saw poor visibility due to a mixture of rain and snow, so we were restricted to a few runs at the base of the hump.

We also used the down time to rebuild the latrine, sans seat which had collapsed while I was using it the day before. (Luckily, no photos of that episode.)

When the weather cleared, we set out on the 4300 foot climb to the top of the hump. Partway up, we were stymied by a large crevasse. Rather than descend to find another route, we decided just to ski.

Hard to tell from this photo, but camp is 2500 feet below. There was about 800 feet of powder before the the first crevasse necessitated roping up to cross a snow bridge. Below that, the snow became wet and heavy.

Our final day smoke from the interior Alaska forest fires moved into the Columbus Glacier valley (note that Mt Logan is barely visible). We were hoping that poor visibility would prevent our pickup and allow another day of skiing, but this wasn't the case. One week is really not enough time to explore this area.