Women Ski Alaska Big Mountain Camp
The ultimate chance for women to take over the Chugach! The love, commitment, and skill that women are bringing to the sport of skiing and snowboarding are bringing this sport to a whole new level. This fact, combined with expressed demand from clients-- referred to at H2O more appropriately as visiting friends-- has driven H2O to create the Women's Ski Alaska Big Mountain Camp.
This camp utilizes the best, most committed, and most enthusiastic talent of the women's extreme skiing scene. H2O guide Hilaree Nelson joins them at the North Shore of Big Mountain skiing and boarding for a week of deep in April. Hilaree works together with you, the H2O Guide Team and other women ready to bring their skiing and riding to the next level and provide confidence, skills, education, and friendships you can take into your future backcountry travel and all-mountain skiing endeavors.
The Women's Ski Alaska Big Mountain Camp will use the vertical gain educational approach: the more vertical you ski, the better your education! You will benefit not only from the skills of professional female skiers, but also from the 100 years combined experience that the Dean Cummings' H2O Guide Team brings to the table. The camp is geared for advanced to expert skiers and riders, and groups will be formed based on ability levels.
A day in your life as a Big Mountain Camp participant will begin with a team meeting over breakfast going over the day's itinerary. Everything will be done as group, emphasizing the teamwork that big mountain travel demands. Once the gear has been checked, the helicopter blades will start turning, and you will load up for the day's first summit. Once you land on your first peak, the sprawling Chugach Range will open your eyes, but there is still work to do; your guides will instruct you on summit protocol, route selection, snow pack assessment, digging snow pits, and evaluating snow stability and proper slope cutting techniques, then use this information to form a game plan for the descent.
This is what you have been waiting for, to drop in and spoil yourself with roughly 2,000-5,000 vertical feet of the best skiing and snowboarding in the world. At the bottom the exhilaration and gratification will show as a grin, snow blasted to your face. Then you will wipe the snow from your goggles, share the excitement with your teammates, take in the scenery, and prepare for the Heli pick up; five more heli drops to go. Five more runs with which to sharpen your big mountain tools, gain glacier travel skills, and watch and learn from the technique of the best guides and female skiers on the planet. They average six runs, and 20,000 vertical feet a day.
Education and fun are the main objectives of this camp. You will learn backcountry ethics, big mountain descent techniques, group dynamics, mountain terminology, avalanche transceiver use, snow stability forecasting, slope cutting, route selection, slough management skills, weather interpretation, glacier travel, ski and snowboard anchor systems, crevasse rescue, rappelling and rope skills. But most importantly, you'll gain experience while sharing a great adventure with women with similar interests. Although it sounds like a lot, the professional guides know how to integrate all of these skills into a hands-on, exciting, educational day of skiing and snow boarding.
All packages include a personal greeting at the Valdez Airport by H2O Guide staff, ground transportation, six runs a day for an average of 20,000 vertical feet, and the best big mountain equipment available: Solomon AK Rocket and Pocket Rocket fat skis, snowboards, Smith poles, Arc Teryx heli-packs, Black Diamond harness, Back Country Access Tracker digital transceiver, probes, shovels and shared knowledge of the latest advancements in backcountry techniques and etiquette.
Packages include a room at the newly remodeled Valdez Harbor Inn, together with breakfast and lunch from Alaska's Bistro. There are 12 restaurants to choose from for dinner in Valdez after the day's epic powder. Once a week, Dean personally fires up the barbeque and serves-up locally caught salmon, halibut and shrimp - you bring the salad and beer!
Package Details
|
Featured Adventures
