Enjoy every brilliant moment!

Alaska seems a long way off when you’re watching ski movies at home in NZ, but for every true snow searcher it is near the top of the list of must ski places, as the pinnacle of steep, deep skiing.

The ’08 Telepalooza party in Alyeska was our goal for getting to AK. So with our trusty wheels running sweetly we hit the road from Seattle and headed north on the epic roadie that would eventually get us there.

With the World Tele Extremes event for Rory to have a crack at and a bunch of guys from Colorado to catch up with, there was some serious fitness to catch up on too. So for our first stop on the trip, we hit up Smithers for a bit of training on the way. Smithers is a groovy hippy town about 1000km’s North of Vancouver. Right away we were served some frighteningly steep skiing just outside the ski area thanks to some essential guidance from the ski patrol crew. The town’s got a great vibe, good powder, amazing backcountry access and will soon feature a new lift for the ‘new reality’ zone as it’s called. Even better they are also looking for Kiwis to hire on the hill. Apparently they like us! We had to politely decline on that one but still had a bit of trouble leaving there. But after 3 days blowing out the cobwebs from a lazy NZ summer we were somewhat ready for the Alaska mission and D-day was approaching fast.

Another 2 days driving saw us pulling into Girdwood to see the clouds disappearing, which doesn’t happen often there. We lucked straight into a four day window of bluebird allowing us to check the place out, and more importantly scope out possible venues for the comp. We soon realized that not only was it seldom sunny, but that all sorts of terrain had just been opened which even the hardest core locals have seldom ridden. The tram accessed North-facing lines offering up some mad vertical and consistent steepness. Then on the other side of the bowl the Headwall is just like a NZ clubby scene, steep bootpack to the ridge then pick your line. The ‘shadows headwall’ area was the prime comp venue and it was pretty epic in there with some serious no fall zones sprinkled through the steep rugged terrain.

As luck would have it the weather held out and the main event headed right on up there to make the most of it.

The Telepalooza thing is a Tele festival started off by the locals 5 years back in tribute to Jeff Nissman. Jeff was well known for his mean straight lines and enthusing others with a love of the outdoors. True to form it’s a grass roots gig which now draws a big following from telemarkers from around the world. There is also some serious sponsorship money and media coverage thrown into the mix, largely through the efforts of Brooke and the crew who’ve been behind it all along. Parties and pirate costumes were the main themes this year, and then there was the inaugural extremes event thrown in to complete the mix.

Day one saw a sick day of skiing go down, only ending up a little on the sober side as we had a big crash happen late in the day, which highlighted the serious side of it all. The no inspection run format made for a real free-riding vibe and an interesting mix of approaches and styles, hucking, billy goating and even a few fast lines amongst the choices of the all Tele field. Our man Rory put together a nice technical line to come in 9th and move through to the finals day.

This was in a different zone in ‘The Knuckles’ the next day due to worse visibility and an approaching front. After a sweet line first up Rory was into the top 10 super-final and a run later had held onto his place to come in 9th overall, even despite a small crash in the final run, great result for the Kiwi boy. It was a pretty good start to our trip. Another bonus was that by now we were well sorted for our next mission to Valdez, having met the whole of Girdwood by about day four. After a week of late nights and hard skiing a punishing aspect did start to become obvious, but hey, welcome to AK! Check it out … for good times and good company, Telepalooza is hard to beat.

Big Mountains

Methven

03 302 8108Mount Cook

03 435 1834

www.heliskiing.co.nzwww.skithetasman.co.nz

Image © Chris McLennan. Burnett Glacier, Wilderness Heliskiing.

Words and Photos by Shane Orchard

Rory gets in a few turns before taking 9th at the Tele worlds

Après ski, AK styles

Kiwi ingenuity

54