This April I returned to Haines, Alaska with the PW crew. Last year in Haines we all knew that we had only scratched the surface of immense potential surrounding Haines. We could see many mountains far away that looked like the most amazing, yet rippable mountains I had ever seen. With the help of the talented ski plane pilot, Drake, we knew we could access just about any area as far as we could see. The potential was was awesome, yet completely overwhelming. It would take a lifetime to explore these mountains on foot or a small fortune to pay Drake to fly us around to see it all. Enter Jeremy Jones…the man. My personal big mountain riding inspiration. The style in which Jeremy tears apart very serious lines has always been a huge source of inspiration in for me. Jeremy being a huge snowboard athlete probably has ten times the budget of our whole six person crew. That is a good thing because last year while we were in Hanies, Jeremy was flying endlessly around with Drake and putting that budget to good use exploring the amazing mountains surrounding Haines. This year conditions were prime and Drake suggested that we go to the zone Jeremy was in last year partly because he was comfortable and familiar with the landing zone. We all knew that if it was good enough for Jeremy is probably a little too good for us, and by good I mean gnarly.
Will is pretty excited. It is blue and we are about to fly onto the glacier.
Home.
We set up camp and threw on our skis for a quick evening tour to get look around. We ended up skiing some nice little lines in the evening light just behind camp.
Nick ready to shred some pow back to camp this nice evening.
Back home. Little did we know but we had five blue days ahead of us…
First objective
Nick getting steep and deep on the hike up as Mt. Fairweather watches from the distance
Nice warm up
The next day we headed about a mile down glacier to one of the burliest zones I have ever seen. We headed there just to check it out, do a bit of recon. Once we were there we could not help but go ski something. So Erickson and I headed up a large rib feature, which was one of the more reasonable lines, while Nick and Will explored something a bit more gnarly.
Chris is booting up the nice rib feature we are about to ski. We wanted to get to the summit but the rock band above forced us to the left and onto an open face that we were not quite comfortable committing to. So we skied a nice big 60 degree rib for about 1300 vert. 
Nick and Will trying to put the pieces of their blown mind back together after they climbed and skied the lines of their life.
Wow! Did that really just happen? Nick and will skied some amazing spines from the far looker’s right peak, still with a bit of evening light on them. A few days later Nick and I ended up in the same spine zone and I skied this…
The wavy spine of my dreams. Definitely one of the craziest lines of my life. A few days later I found myself in a similar situation.
Hiking or climbing? Why are my arms tired? Climbing up these lines is often the crux. There were many lines that we chose not ski because they lacked a safe route up. This line was right on the border. Nick and I rested at the last safe spot before racing up this runnel to the top of the line. We took turns breaking trail to be as fast as possible. Choosing to be close together to increase the speed of group and limit time spent in the danger zone. This was a clean line, if there were any cornices above us or cliffs below it would have been a no go.
Things were going too well..
Eventually it just snowed for eight straight days and the highlight of day was…
packing out a landing strip for Drake to land his plane on when it finally clears.
After the storm
Drake comes to pick us up
Hard to leave. Amazing place, great friends, unbelievable experience.
