From the hubbub of Anchorage, Juneau is always in the back of our minds as an escape from the big city. About once a year we notice that the weather is drier in Southeast than Southcentral and rush to put together last second plans to get down there.
On a Friday night in March, we looked into the crystal forecast ball to see a sunny weekend in the coastal rainforest while our northern mountains were cloaked in clouds, wind, and snowfall. We rushed to jam our gear into our bags and jump on the first flight south the next morning.
In Juneau, we stepped out of the airport into a chilly and crisp spring morning. An hour and a cup of coffee later, and we were parked out the Thane Road and hiking into the mossy old growth forest of sheep creek.
Hawthorne Peak, the second objective of the day.
Wearing our running shoes, we followed the dirt trail up the valley until we were standing right under the big steep south face of Sheep Mountain.
We jotted down mental notes and snapped photos of the complicated 3,000 vertical foot face, shoved on our ski boots, and started climbing the frozen snow towards the west ridge of the peak.
From the wide ridge, views of the deep blue inside channels and the coastal mountains spilled away from us. What a magical place.
Thirty minutes on the ridge brought us to the 360 degree views from the top. To the south, our intended line dropped out of sight, reappearing as the valley floor way below.
We reviewed our mental notes and photos of the route, clicked into our bindings, and slid over the edge.
Within a few turns, we were swallowed by the terrain, and felt just how big and involved this face was.
It's hard to think of a comparison around Anchorage, but what first came to mind was a bigger version of Torreys East Face. Nyssa is visible as a dot in the upper right:
Because it requires conditions to align perfectly, it's very rare that we ski terrain this complex. It took complete focus from both of us to find the snaking path of continuous snow past one dead end after the next.
At the bottom we stopped to admire our handiwork and slap our skins on our skis for the ascent up our next objective: Hawthorne.
We've been turned around twice in our running shoes by hard summer snow over exposure near the summit of Hawthorne and hoped that the third time would be the charm. The skin through rolling terrain back to the ridge was pretty straightforward - it was funny thinking about the impenetrable bramble of salmonberries buried in 20 feet of snow below our feet.
Approaching Hawthorne's summit, we again found icy, hard snow. But, this time we had our crampons. Like they usually do, the little metal spikes made everything so much easier.
Soon we were to the gendarme which had stopped us on our second unprepared attempt. Like the salmonberries before, the fat caking of maritime snow had buried the gendarme and made our lives so much easier. All that was left was 100 feet of a sharp ridge glued with warty rime and we were finally on top of Hawthorne.
Looking back at our descent on Sheep:
The shadows were getting longer as the evening sun dipped west towards the Pacific Ocean, and we hustled to stuff our wet skins and crampons into our packs to start the ski down before the sunbaked snow started it's nightly transition to punchy glop covered in a grabby crust of ice.
Photo: Nyssa
This time we skied southwest towards the summer trail. I didn't know what to expect and was impressed with the pitch and ambience of the summit cone - it felt like we were hanging over the salt water of the channel below.
As we descended out of the sun and into the shady reaches of the upper Sheep Creek basin, we found the terrible evening snow we'd worried about. Clinging to the glazed ice with our little edges, we did a skittering traverse until we were under the saddle of the summer trail. With ears ringing from our skis scrapping across the icy surface, we booted the last short climb to the summer trail.
The conditions and brush situation on the descent down the summer trail was another unknown for us. We knew this was just part of the adventure, but were pleasantly surprised to find overcooked, but skiable corn into the woods. We surfed the sloppy snow covered in leaf litter until it was just mossy forest floor covered in leaf litter.
Then, with our skis strapped back on our packs we tromped thru the jungle to the road.
Trading our muddy ski boots for our muddy running shoes, we jogged the road back to retrieve the car.
What a great day - I think this one is worthy of the Best Of Page.
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