Canwell Glacier Ski Traverse

4/25/24-5/1/24

After calling McCarthy home for a few days, I found myself heading to Anchorage to pick up a group of my coworkers in preparation for a trip into the Delta Range. My feet still recovering from a recent trip in the Wrangells had me second guessing my plans to go on another mountaineering trip, but after reconnecting with many of my summer coworkers and remembering how fun of a group they can be, all questions of not going quickly evacuated my head. 

We were heading out on St Elias Alpine Guide’s “Pre-pre” trip. The verbiage is confusing, but the explanation is straightforward. My employer will hold a preseason trip for guides to get out into the big mountains they may be guiding in before the season starts. This trip is typically objective based, often inside the bounds of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. A recent addition to this preseason trip is a ski based trip that is more focused on training and having fun than a big objective. This ski trip happens before the preseason trip, so it has been titled the prepreseason trip (no typo there). It is mostly referred to as the “pre-pre” by guides; I’m just waiting for the introduction of the pre-pre-pre.

After a night in Anchorage, I begin picking everyone up at the ripe hour of 4am. This was in order to reach Paxson by a reasonable time in case we could fly on that day. A quiet car ride grew more and more lively as people slowly woke up. We made fast progress and before we knew it the Hub of Alaska was behind us and we were on our way down the Richardson. It was here we got the call from our pilot that he’d be flying another party in and he would get us the next day. We made the call to camp at the Sourdough campground and treat the day as a classroom day. 

At the campground, everyone brushed up on their rope skills and double checked everyone else’s competency. After feeling confident that the group was going to do just fine on the glaciated terrain we’d be on, we made dinner and had a comfortable night of cowboy camping underneath a faint aurora borealis dancing overhead.

The next day we began our numerous shuttles to the upper Canwell Glacier. Flying in a Super Cub is always a joy; however, our group of 13 people took nearly all day to get into our zone. I didn’t know what I was signing up for when I elected to go on one of the last flights, but when the skis on the plane touched down at 7pm, I was thinking maybe I chose wrong.

I hopped on a rope with two others who were waiting for me to arrive, and hastily started up the skintrack put in by those ahead of us. We were heading to the MacKeith Hut, one of the Alaska Alpine Club’s many huts in the area. Our plans involved base camping at this hut for a few days before we walked our way out to the road via the Canwell Glacier. After a quick hike, we reached our camp. Once I saw that all the work at camp had already been completed, I decided that waiting to fly in might have paid off. By my arrival, the rest of the crew was already working on dinner.

As I waited for dinner to be ready, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I still had ski boots on. I talked a couple other members to join me on a quick ski above camp, and after a few minutes of walking uphill we reached a satisfying spot to lay our lines down. The snow was pretty soft given the hour of day, but I was glad to connect a few turns for the first time in a long time. After our ski, I settled into camp, ate dinner, and then made my way to bed.

I woke up early the next morning and watched a stunning sunrise all alone; at this time I was having a hard time adjusting to being around so many people for the first time in a while, so I enjoyed this moment of solitude. Our agenda for the day was to practice with anchors and go over crevasse rescue techniques. We started our day by pulling on anchors and testing different pieces of gear as snow anchors. After building our confidence in anchors, we got a delightful ski down to the glacier where we would practice crevasse skills. We went over what to do as the rescuer and the rescuee in a crevasse fall situation. Cody was leading the training, and seeing how he used recent experiences from our Wrangell Mountains trip to teach was interesting to watch.

After concluding our crevasse work, we made our way back up to camp. We made dinner and hung out in the scenic evening with the never ending sunlight of Alaska in the spring. The next day we were heading up over a pass to go look at a different lobe of the Canwell Glacier. 

Another beautiful morning led to high energy as we started off in one big group. We found ourselves at the pass in fast time, and soon were descending onto this unnamed lobe of the Canwell. At the top of the lobe lives Snow White, an aesthetic peak at just over 9,000 feet. We headed up glacier towards the peak, hoping to spot a pass that would allow us views onto the Johnson Glacier. We failed to find such a pass, but we did find a beauty of a ski line on the way out. 

After enjoying lunch, we began our way back to camp, with the plan of stopping and skiing the line we had spotted. We skied down quickly covering the slight gradient we had just climbed. This led us to the base of our ski, and after a timely climb, we each enjoyed a few turns in the steeps before it mellowed out into more moderate terrain. From the top of our line, we could see over into the drainage next to the one we had been in all day. It was here I saw a line that caught my eye; a line I’d circle back to that evening.

One by one, we skied the face and enjoyed somewhere close to 1,500 feet of skiing. I skied last, and found that everyone had skied off the good snow before me (one day others will be into spooning turns as much as I am). Delighted with the pitch of the slope, I skied down to the group with a big smile on my face; a smile that grew bigger when I realized we had another couple hundred feet of skiing ahead of us.

After finally reaching the glacier, we started back to camp. At the top of the pass we started the day with, we got one last good ski. The larger group split up into a few teams here and each team picked their own way down back to camp. It was here I got out in front of my team and got back some of the fresh turns I was shorted from our first ski. We made turns all the way into our tents where we changed and began cooking dinner.

At dinner we went over plans for the next day. We would have a free day to go explore wherever we wanted. Obviously we needed to stay in groups in order to travel safely in the terrain we were in, so I made it my goal to pitch people on the line I had spotted earlier in the day. A mellow but long climb led to a ski run that would feel neverending off the top. I had no desire to push my limits, and this ski seemed like a fun and low stress ski. I pitched my plan to everyone, and ended up bringing along many more bodies than I thought would be interested.

We woke the next morning and started to our objective. After we crossed the glacier, we started our climb with an east facing bowl that proved to be scary in the morning sun. We boot packed the bowl, and at the top people’s motivations were low. It was here most of the group decided they did not need to have a big day and would rather ski what we had climbed and head to mellower objectives. I skied two laps in the bowl, and enjoyed the corn that we had nearly timed perfectly.

At the bottom of the bowl, one group decided to stay down low at the glacier, and another group started back towards camp. I joined the group heading to camp. It was here I got a quick lunch lap in above camp, then after eating headed out for a bigger lap with 3 others. We climbed the line we skied the first night all the way to the top of the ridge. I had seen what the face of the ridge looked like, and knew if we kept pushing further it would only get better. Upon reaching a false summit we were happy with, we got undoubtedly the best skiing of the whole trip.

We started by navigating a small cornice that led to a perfect pitched bowl. At the bottom of the bowl, we dog legged left and began down the face I had seen from next door. It was engagingly steep without being scary, leading to a very enjoyable ski that took us all the way back to camp. At the point I was so stoked, I convinced one other from that group to go for a quick extra credit lap where we spooned our turns beautifully.

As we reached camp, we were met with a hot dinner that was scarfed down; I knew what the next day entailed and wanted to have a full gas tank in preparation for it. We were going to spend the next day or two walking off the glacier to the road. This was a total of about 14 miles, and knowing how Cody functions had me pretty certain we’d be reaching the road in one day.

We woke early in the morning and after a timely breakfast we found ourselves skiing from camp down to the Canwell. We made fast progress down the flat section of glacier, and by the time we took our first break I knew we were making great time. As we continued down glacier, we were pleasantly surprised to find terrain that could be skied. While there were no glory turns made in this stretch, the speed that came with skiing progressed us at an unbelievable pace. In no time, we were reaching the end of the glacier which unfortunately meant putting the skins back on. From the end of the glacier, we only had 2 miles to hike to the road. Even though we were slower than we had been all day, the vibes were high and we reached the road by a reasonable time.

After a bit of car moving, two company vans arrived where we hit the road near 5pm. It was at that point we decided to drive back to the Sourdough campground and spend the night there. Little did we know that our trip was going to end right where it started. This last night of relaxed camping proved to be another comfortable night filled with good laughs. 

This trip ended up being exactly what I needed between two bigger trips. The combination of doing none of the logistics and having access to a hut made for a lower stress setting than my trips into the Wrangell Mountains and Peter’s Creek.