The rest of our Haines adventure

If someone asked me to describe Alaska in one word, it would be contrast. Everything about the place is so different and so extreme. Either in comparison to other places like it, and even to itself. One day we found our self’s skiing huge Alaskan peaks from a helicopter, the next struggling to find things to do to fill up a day.

In total we skied for 3 days while in Haines. 2 from the heli, and 1 ski touring. The other days were tough. We saw all the sights that Haines had to offer. In a way I’m glad we only had a week there. Because we were running out of things to do. On the other hand, we did get very lucky with the weather. Getting to go skiing 3 times in a week doesn’t always happen.

Day 2 in the Heli: Sam and Nick decided to sit this one out. I showed up not knowing who or what I would be skiing with. Once again I got pretty lucky here, there weren’t that many skiers, there were only 2 groups in total. One group had a couple of older guys from Australia. One who used to work for Scott in the US and we had a few mutual friends. And his mate who just happened to be Nat Young, the very famous surfer from back in the day. (The people you meet in Haines…) My group was mostly made up of Guides in training, and a couple from Switzerland. When I asked the 30 something guys what he did for work, his reply was, “I’m in the oil business.” Enough said, just another day heli skiing for this couple…

We did 4 runs that day. The snow was not as good as it was earlier in the week. But we did have some very good runs. We actually got really lucky with one of them finding probably some of the best snow of the whole trip.

Here’s some photos from the day.

Jumping over a crevasse

The next day the weather was still too nice to sit inside and watch dvd’s so we drove to the pass just outside of Haines and went for a little ski tour. The weather was really warm. So I decided to wear my board shorts on the hour drive to the pass. Unfortunately when we arrived I realised I forgot my ski pants. Which left 2 options: ski in board shorts, or sit in the car. So I skied in board shorts. Which was actually not as bad as it sounds. I actually got more snow in my boots on the skin up than on the ski down.

We spent our final day in Haines packing and getting ready to leave. Nick and Sam were leaving early on Sunday morning and driving to Valdez. And I was catching a ferry back to Juneau in the afternoon. We did manage to make a trip out the Haines brewery in the afternoon, which I would recommend to anyone who if they ever make it to Haines. Some pretty tasty and heavy beers such as: The DMMDI IPA. Meaning, the devil made me do it IPA, the alcohol content just happening to be 6.66% exactly. Also the Black Fang which was a huge 10% beer. Heavy!

http://hainesbrewing.com/