When you get as lucky as we did up here, it's a little hard to remember all the worries and tales of bad weather we'd heard so much about. For years, I've heard of crew after crew coming up to Alaska for weeks only to get skunked by bad weather. In fact, just before we left on this trip a good photographer friend of mine told me about coming up for two weeks to only get one good day of weather, and of course it was the first day before his riders had even showed up. But our story is a bit different, it's one of nothing but good luck, with sleds running on every single day we were on the Thompson Pass, and weather ranging from perfect bluebird to nothing worse than half-days of sun, easy to deal with when camp and a hot lunch are right at the bottom of the alpine.

This blog is coming at you from the road. It was hard to leave but it had to be done and after eleven full days on the pass, we packed up and embarked for home after what can only be considered the perfect ending to the trip. With a fistfull of free helidrops won from the Queen of the Hill contest, Vera decided to get down to some serious business and the four of us headed up a chopper to bag some shots for her video part. With no one else in our group but the four of us, and a guide who was more than willing to bend a few rules to help reach our goal, it was as good as it gets oon a ghetto heli budget. There were no private ships flying for hours with the doors off on this day, we were on the "public ship" program which means we would get dropped off and then the heli would take off to shuttle the other crews in the region, before coming back an hour later to shuttle us on our next run. But this gave us lots of time to pick our lines, shooting angles and of course, the best snow. Like I said, as good as it gets when you don't have $25,000 to spend in a day (which is exactly what the "private ship" film crew spent that day!).

After a few hours of waiting around for the chopper which "is gonna be here any minute, i swear", the ABA public ship comes back to bump us into the Chugach alpine.

We only had one photographer and still managed to pack the basket to it's limits. I'm not sure what a bigger film crew would do. Who cares, we're heading up!

Bye, Bye camp…

The crew on our way up.

Too much terrain to process.

Our first look at our first lines. Vera rode the second chute from the right. No big deal.

Chris, our guide, explains the line a bit better as we get a closer look at the peak. Everything happens so damn fast in that chopper it's sometimes a bit hard to get all the information, especially when you're trying to shoot photos and video at the same time, but no worries, we got 'er done no probskies.

There is no other feeling that can beat when that chopper takes off and all of sudden you are left alone on top of an Alaskan peak with no one around for miles but you and your crew. It's a situation I'm getting used to being in at this point but without the sleds around it really makes you feel a lot more vulnerable and at the mercy of the mountains.

Vera checks out her line before dropping in.

The Queen getting Alaskan.

Crew shot on top of our second batch of lines of the day.

A look across the valley to the Valley of the Tusk

Dave rips a sweet couple of turns looking down on the glaciers. The line from the guide on this one was "alright guys, I'm gonna let you ride the line you picked without ski cutting it first but just let it be known I'm treating you more like professional snowboarders here instead of tourists". 

Just a tiny section of the mountains off the Thompson Pass, which can be seen on the left. The amount of access off that road is just messed up, I might just be a big-mountain rookie but it just seems like you could get shit done for years on end with just a few sleds and a bit of exploration.

The mighty Hoodoo Glacier.

Every run would start with us being dropped off on top of some gnarly peak with some dope chutes and lines to pick from. After shooting those, we would decend onto the glaciers, which provided silky-smooth turns for miles as we made our way down to the pickup zones. Joshy rides down to the group.

Look ma, I'm shredding AK!!

An aerial view of camp and the gullies that we spent much of our week exploring. Camp is right in the middle of the photo, you can see the potential of staying on the pass pretty easily here.

Like I said, pretty much the perfect ending to the trip. Oh yeah, did I mention that everything above happened after 3pm and I had already bagged heritage interviews with Basich, Perata, Sullivan and Terry Kidwell? Haha, only in Alaska. 

Check back tomorrow for more postings about the wrap-up party and all week for all the rest of the goodness that went all week at Tailgate. I had planned on more postings from the pass but with the weather we got it was hard to do anything but shred, but that just means I got a whack-load of stuff to share of the next week.