It’s always nice to do around trip instead of backtracking your way home. Alaska Marine Highways was kind enough to hook us up with passage home from Haines. The 975mile cruise from Haines to Bellingham is amazing. The route follows the inside passage the entire way with stops in Juneau, Sitka,Petersbourg and Ketchikan. There is nothing but vast wilderness with views of whales, porpous, bears and every other animal that lives on the west coast. It’s hard to imagine how wild it would have been to be here in the early 1800’s when europeans were first expploring these waters. The ride down was super comfortable and was nice to relax after shredding hard for over 2 weeks.

I’ve never been to Haines but have heard nothing but good things. I can see why, as I drive in the sun is setting and there are alpine glow lit spines stretching as far as the eye can see. Like the rest of the chugach the mountains stick straight up from glaciers and the ocean shores. I had no idea where to ride, so the plan was to just ask around. We cleared Us customs and after answering 30 mins of ?? about how good the snow was in Valdez, where we skied and sledded, how sick Travis Rices run was at King of the hill, etc? The customs guard gave me the full run down of where to ride in town, which turned out to be some amazing beta. When I got to town I went to the bar to get a second opinion on riding zones. The place was on fire with people pounding drinks and celebrating some of the best skiing of all time. It was apparent that we needed to get in the heli. Tom Wayes hooked me up with SEABA heli. I spent a morning flying to some of the coolest terain I’ve ever seen. After a few days of sled and ski in the craziest place in the world I needed to get on the ferry. Tom convinced me to risk missing it and going out to the range and blasting off over 300 rounds thru his AR15. I think I’m moving here next year!!!

White in tru AK style

typical driving conditions on the alcan

To get the full experiance of Alaska you really need to drive there. When you fly in you feel like you’re in the wliderness but you have no idea of how far from the civilized world you really are. As an example there are something like 33 000 people that live in all of the Yukon. Of that there are 28000 that live in whitehorse, so the entire rest of the province only has something like 7000 people. Gas stations are spaced out so that you can barely make it from one to the next. A good rule of thumb is that if you have less than 3/4 tank of gas and see a service station you stop and get gas. Of course we ran out of gas and had to tip sleds over to get enough fuel to make the next town.

Haines summit

 They call them towns but all most of them are, is a gas station, couple houses and maybe a motel. The scenery is amazing with open country surrounded by huge mountains. The road is paved all the way but the frost heaves make it interesting. Truck and trailer were off the ground countless times. By the end of our tour we traveled 5483 kms.

I’m home from the best Alaska trip of my life. As far as I’m concerned a trip can be considered epic when I haven’t been online for the past 2 weeks. A lot has happened in that time so there’s a few more blogs to follow. Valdez was all time. It started with 4 days of sun and good snow followed by one down day dropping 10 inches of blower than another 6 days of bluebird. We explored all kinds of new areas on the sleds and found some of the longest ski runs off of ghost rides I’ve ever done. ABA helped me out to get an afternoon in the heli.

view of Thompson pass

 Valdez was on fire with all kinds of people around to heliski, sled and tour as part of tailgate alaska.

town of Valdez

 If you’ve never been to Valdez make sure to put it at the top of your list of places to check out. Thanks to everyone that helped make this trip happen. mountain sky hotel, ABA, SEABA, Alaska Marine HWY, Hypertech oil and all the rest of my sponsors.

We’ve been about as lucky as you can get on this trip. 6 out of 8 days have been sunny here in Valdez. The collection of people here right now is great. Tailgate is a loosely set up event. Basically it’s just brought a bit of organization to a scene that already existed. They have toilets, beer gardens, warming tents, sled rides to the peaks and a couple helis parked right next door. You can buy gambling chips that can be redeemed for whatever you want.There’s probably 200 people at the busiest times hanging out skiing, boarding and sledding on every peak accesable. We’ve had some great skiing but haven’t really gotten after it too hard yet. Looks like we’re in for a bit of a high pressure this week and have some great lines picked out. Thanks to everyone that’s put tailgate together and given reason for all mountain enthusiast to get together in one of the radist places in the world.