HatchYourTrax

Happy New Year from HYT! It’s been a crazy month. The site has been down for a few weeks, and I’ve been getting texts, calls and emails asking about what’s going on, especially from my lower 48 friends with no snow. Thanks as always for supporting HatchYourTrax. I’ll clue you in on what’s going on in the HYT world (my world), and why the site has been lacking content this season.  Firstly, I’m so close now to finishing my master’s degree…this has little to nothing to do with skiing epic Alaskan lines, except that grad school is what brought me to Alaska, and dammit, I need to finish…I’m 5 years deep on a 2 year program.  I’m getting lost in Alaska, and it’s not helping my academic career…I can stomach this though.  I will finish this spring, and, while I have absolutely no room to complain, juggling my time has been, well, a bit tough this winter.  Not tough for skiing of course, I’ve got plenty of that…but certainly tough for staying motivated on graduate work.  I mean, jeeze, it’s the best winter in years! I’ll also let you in on the fact that, my masters thesis revolves around Hatcher Pass and the often overblown and hyped non-motorized/motorized user conflict within the boundaries of the management area, and in regard to the new plan.  I’ve been working on a documentary over the past two winters, and hopefully some of you will make it to the few showings I have in Palmer this spring.  I mean…I’m no Ken Burns, but it’s been amazing to learn about the history, ideologies, and characters of Hatcher Pass.  We’re all a lot more alike than you’d think.

Jared finds the light to open’er up on Presidents

Secondly, my other ventures include starting up a business with my friend B Vaughan.  Our company’s name is Ptarmigan Ptrails, and we hope to be bringing some amazing mountain biking and hiking trails to the region over the next few years.  In conjunction with PTrails; myself and a working group in Palmer has been feverishly slaving away to get funding and construction of a Palmer Bike Park under way in summer 2012!  So, why am I telling you all this?  Does it really matter whether I update or not, or what I do?  Well, to me it does, and I don’t want to let down the people that actively visit the site.  So with that said, bare with me, enjoy the photos in this update and keep checking back for more!  I promise we won’t disappoint.

Steeze-Master 5000                                        Rolling over the blower

After coming off a four day trip on Resurrection Pass (brutal), I gave my toes a few days to recover and was getting antsy to make some turns in the high country.  There’s a rag-tag crew of the usual folks hanging around during the holidays, and we managed to put together a pretty fun pickup crew of ski partners three days in a row.  I always sound off on here about how much I love Hatcher, how great the community is, and so on and so on, but the past few days have been downright epic.  Mitch came up from Anchorage for the first time in month, and along with Jared, Logan and Jon, we headed up to ski Microdot.  The south face was looking less than appealing, so we dropped in to deep deep Nosebleed, finding untracked snow, and blower, although grabby, pow!  The light was in and out, but the best part of the day was trading off hooting sessions with Jeff Kase and his bud Mark, who were yo-yoing runs with us all afternoon.  What a great place to live, where you can head up in to the mountains, ski with new partners, see two cars in the lot, and have a great comraderie with everyone you see in the pass.  That’s what I’m all about, that’s the reason I started HatchYourTrax.  I love seeing people hoot and holler for each other, especially from across the valley or watching from the skin track.

Friday, Jeff, Jared, Mark and I toured up President’s…what has seemingly become our new holdover. President’s, no, all of Marmot Mt, has taken on a new face this year.  We’re exploring new zones, finding stashes of spines, drops and ridges we’d never even thought to explore. I’m truly in ski bum heaven; wait…did I pay my mortgage? Yeah…ok back to it.  We lapped up the SE face of president’s and were treated to ever improving light.  Besides the cold weather, we couldn’t have asked for a better session.  We just keep lucking out on these holes in the fog layer.

The same goes for today….Erin, Jared, Nick and I pulled it together for what we thought would be a mundane morning of tree skiing in low angle meadows, but as we drove higher up the pass, the layer of clouds began to, not necessarily burn off, but, simply end.  The clouds just sat between an upper atmosphere inversion and the shit-soup that has socked in Ptown for the past two days.  We opted to ditch the meadow plan and toured up Marmot proper, bypassing the decent light on the main gut of the peak and dropping first tracks into Rae Wallace.  Erin’s been craving a line in Rae Wallace all season, and she got first turns.  What a morning.  we capped it off with a hot chocolate and warm toes inside the A-Frame.  I’m sorry, but you just can’t beat that and no…I’m not driving to Turnagin.

Jeff killin it – slashing curtains at the White House!

Before I go, in rad, hot style, I wanted to let everyone know that HYT and Backcountry Bike and Ski will be showing one of Greg Stump’s classic ski films on Saturday January 28th, at the shop in downtown Palmer.  This event is just for fun and for folks to come hang out, so don’t expect a movie screening/premier type of atmosphere.  The cost is $2 at the door, and you have to dress in some type of 80′s ski gear.  Don’t be a gaper, you know, too cool to get into the hot style of the 80′s.  It’s all in fun. Show up in your North Face one-sy, Rear Entry boots, Ray Ban’s, Vaurnet Goggles, and bring your 210′s!

What: 80′s Ski Movie Night

Where: Backcountry Bike & Ski

When: Saturday, January 28th…7pm

Cost: $2 at the door

Erin and I head to Florida for 10 days, so, ski some deep, look for that break in the clouds, and enjoy the best Talkeetna Winter in years!

Haven’t been out skiing too much this past week, but the crew did roll out en masse on Saturday am during the height of the storm.  I don’t have good mid storm shots as the light was total crap, but the bottom line is…the snow is deep and according to HPAC, the avy danger is High.  As the clouds burned off this morning and the temperatures began to fall again, I tried to hurry up to the pass and get a look at the snowpack.  Jed had informed me of a slide crossing the road below Marmot, but didn’t have much more info. The Indy snotel is holding at around 12-15 inches of new, but I would bet it’s easily much more in many places.

Archangel Road…President’s Day Run and Lookers right gully

As I drove up the road, the evidence of strong, gusty winds and heavy wet snow was immediately apparent.  Leeward slopes were fat and loaded with new snow, while windward ridges were exposed from snow transport, wind loading, and showed recent avalanche activity.  A couple of DOT employees were sitting at the hairpin by the motherlode, and the road to the top was closed.  DOT was removing avy debris from somewhere around mile 17….that’s all the info they had.  Besides the usual culprits creating avy’s that cross the road, literally every drainage and gully on SE facing Presidents Ridge (or Marmot Mountain, whatever you call it) had natural avalanche activity.   Some slides were new snow failing in soft slabs, while others ripped out to the ground.  Even lower angle slopes in the lower sections of the drainages slid. As stable as our snow was, it was comprised almost entirely of light density fluff and faceting snow.  This storm came in hot, heavy and wet…could be good for our snowpack in the long run. Let’s see what this avy cycle flushes out. Be careful out there, and check the Hatcher Pass Avy Center for more detailed info.  The link is in the right hand sidebar under Snow Observations (HPAC).

Marmot Peak is the black & white shot on the right

According to the NWS, our weather pattern is holding strong, with a day or so of clear weather and another round of triple point lows slamming into the region.  Praise Ullr and get some!  The next storm will be warmer than today, but nowhere near as balmy as this weekend’s event.  The consistent pattern of snow and blow looks to continue for Anchorage and Turnagin Arm as the Talkeetnas set up for a decent storm and slightly lower temps.  Check the marmot cam and Independence Snotel as the storm develops.

December 7th, 2011 – A day of infamy…and heavy, DUMPING SNOW!

In other news…super huge thanks to everyone who came out to watch Attack of La Nina! Rob delivered on the suds, MSP delivered on the sick skiing, and valley skiers showed up to support the local scene!  We had a blast and hope you all did too!  Keep checking back for more updates and info on our show in January!

  
Clenching for Quarters!  Those stickers were worth it right?

Ski partners…they are hard to come by.  Or, maybe I’m wrong.  There’s plenty of ski partners out there.  Mellow mood ski partners, go big ski partners, big group ski partners, and bad ski partners.  I guess, there’s a plethora of skiing buddies in South Central Alaska.  Maybe what I’m talking about are those go to people, your core crew of riders who, when the time comes, know exactly what you are thinking; who at the nod of a head understand when it’s a go, or time to high tail it out of there.  Most of all, it’s the people you trust with your life, because at times, skiing can literally be more life and death than pow turns and PBR’s.

I’ve been skiing with a lot of different people lately.  And, while it’s actually been quite fun and energizing, keeping the dedicated Hatcher crew has been difficult.  It’s windy, the snow is thin, there’s minimal storm skiing (that you know of)  and well, people have jobs.  I guess that’s the difference between skiing professionally, and being a professional that skis.  For most of us, skiing isn’t the sweet life portrayed in lifestyle shots and endless sections of ski porn and patagucci ads.  The reality is a lot different, and for those of you reading this, I probably don’t need to write it, because you know.  Being a professional that skis (the only kind of pro skiers that I know) means accepting shitty light and thin snow, understanding that some skiing is better than no skiing, and waking your happy ass up at 6:30 AM to get out and beat all the other warriors to the leftover fresh from the mid week storm.  These are good ski partners…don’t take them for granted.  I skied 4 0f the 5 last days, everyday with different partners.  Today held good snow with horrible light and I actually began bitching about it.  Shame on me. SHAME.  Here’s to the professional working skiers, and to me keeping my spoiled rotten, powder filled, ski bum mouth shut.  Here’s to skiing!

As for snow conditions, there’s a myriad of conditions out there, but decent to excellent skiing as well. Friday we storm skied lower gov and ran into a whole crew of local folks.  It was puking snow, but with temps around 5-10 degrees, the snow density was extremely light.  Saturday and Sunday saw us skiing off the peak of Marmot, down the western gullies above the A Frame.  Great snow.

The windslab is still obvious in many windward locations, but on the west and southwest slopes, there seemed to be significant leeward loading, and the skiing was bottomless and blower (except for a few rocks).  I only dug a small hand pit on saturday morning.  The windslab seems to be bonding pretty well to the layer of lighter snow below it.  It took a lot of strength to get the slab and column to shear off, and when it did, the failure was still of q3 quality. The lingering windslab from last weak is pretty unreactive, but could still be a problem if we get heavier snow.  The snow below the 11/17 windslab is showing signs of faceting, so as the storm snow piles up this week, keep in eye out.

A temperature inversion on Saturday brought calm winds, clear skies above 1000′ and temps in the 10-15 range. No obvious signs of natural avalanches occurring during or after the storm, but there were a few cornice breaks above gullies on the upper western face of marmot (probably my biggest concern). The new snow was extremely light, and considering the rate of precipitation, the snowpack seems to be adjusting well.  There’s a huge storm system moving in from the South and tracking to the west over the next few days.  NWS issued a special weather statement for the South Central Area.  The temps are supposed to rise Wednesday night, but hopefully we stay cold enough to keep it all snow.  Hope everyone had an amazing thanksgiving, and hope to see you at Attack of La Nina this Friday!