Well, there are always those days you’ll remember for a long time . . . they’re fun, inspiring, exhausting, and memorable for the beauty as much for the challenge. Our exploration up into the Raggedtop valley and down California Creek was definitely one of those days. 14 hours, start to finish, we had intended to go back and ski Fish’s Breath, but were inspired by what we found along the way, and decided to stay and explore instead of heading back to the windhammered objective of earlier . . .

Me and Chris Page . . . the boys undertaking some cornice-cutting extravaganza to “safe-out” our run

From there, it was alder-bashing, skin-failing, creek-navegating in the darkness on legs that had been climbing and skiing all day . . . perhaps not the most graceful end to a ski day I’ve ever had, but all’s well that ends well and it was a truly remarkable and memorable day overall . . . I am so amazed sometimes by how much insanely cool skiing exists in the Girdwood valley and how a lot of it really isn’t that far away . . . I learned some lessons about skiing in this area though, and am super psyched to go back and explore more this season . . . yeah skiing!!!!