After an epic first day out on Tincan, I was inching for more! After recovering from the turky hangover it was back to google earth and the avi center for some research. After seeing how many people go to ski Tincan I was looking to get away from the crowds. My first idea was to go to a ridge called Lipps. It was the same aspect and and some similair looking terrain. After looking at the avi center though, my mind was changed. There was a new report out and they were taken from the south west face of Sunburst. They made it sound steep, deep, and stable. I did more research on the mountain and found out that there was no safe zones except for your car or the ridge, welcome to AK, home of the extremes. We made the call to go check it |
out, if it was safe than we would ski the south west face. if not we would ski the ridge. Miranda, Sean, new comer Curtis and I took off for the pass at 7. We were the first ones in the parking lot and on the trail at 8:30. We got a little lost but after a little bush waking we found the trail, right in time to get lost in the fog. It was so bad at times that I had to tie a 10 foot green rope on my pole and cast it like a fly rod, this gave us some depth perception. After a while we found the ridge and broke through the fog. It was a beautiful blue bird day and the slopes were painted with 5 inches of fresh. A group of two local gentlemen caught up to us and took over breaking trail. They showed us what was up, by running up the ridge and sendong it down the south west face in a matter of minutes. We took our time to get to the top, take some pictures, and got ready to drop. Looking over a 5 foot cornice onto 2,000 vertical of 40 degree skiing is the coolest but sorta scariest feeling ever, this ain't colorado anymore. I entered where our buddies went and checked how the new snow was bonding to the old layers, it felt and looked pretty solid. I did a few ski cuts and nothing moved so I took the drop. EPIC, I skied half of the face and traversed out onto a spire where I was out of the way , not a safe zone but out of the way. I cleared it for the others and watched my friends send this epic line. We all met at the bottom and we where all in awe. Epic line, epic adventure, couldn't have been any better.