Palmer Creek Ski

10/18/24, 10/26/24

An early season hike up in Arctic Valley marked my first day on skis for the 24/25 season, but an outcome of ten or less turns and 3 miles of hiking made it obvious that scoring early season was going to take more effort. Throughout the following week, I kept an ear to the ground in hopes of finding where the good skiing was. This paid off when I came about footage some friends captured while flying around Palmer Creek, located on the outskirts of the small town of Hope.

I reached out to see if they wanted to ski the bowl they had flown the day before, and promptly caught an invite to join them the next day. I cleared out my day and packed my ski gear up, ready for whatever the early season snow was going to deliver.

Palmer Creek is a drainage just outside of Hope, a town that is about 20 miles from Anchorage as the crow flies but closer to 100 miles away for us lowly land based travelers. Historic mining operations developed a road up the valley which remains today as access to a breathtakingly beautiful glacial valley. This season brought early snow above 2,000 feet in elevation, but anything beneath those reaches were left dry and unskiable. This was the main issue with finding decent snow closer to town, but lucky for us the Palmer Creek road terminates right at 2,000 feet which meant mid-October skiing from the car. 

After nearly two hours of traveling from Anchorage, we arrived at our destination. The snow looked sun baked near the car, but at least we could skip carrying our skis through the endless alders that mark the Alaskan lowlands. We strapped our skis to our feet and began the tour to the shaded north facing bowl that protected the last of the glacial ice remaining within the valley. Our hopes were that the shaded and protected nature of the bowl would provide us with winter-like skiing conditions, and as we transitioned from touring on sun baked snow to the shaded snow, our stoke began to build.

We were standing in powder snow looking at steep and shady couloirs, spine covered faces, and blue glacier ice. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming; somehow I had traveled from autumn all the way into the heart of winter in a few quick hours. 

One partner, Jordan, had bootpacked the whole day and needed a break to warm his feet up. This provided the other partner, Raven, and I the opportunity to ski one of the many couloirs that surrounded us. As Raven and I started up the couloir, Jordan pulled his drone out and began doing some flying. Hearing a drone whizz past your ear as you are bootpacking a couloir not only makes you feel really cool, but also pushes you to move a little quicker; you’d never want the drone to capture a moment of weakness in the mountains! Those never happen…

In no time, we were nearing the top of the couloir. The top was the steepest of the whole line and featured a left-footed dogleg over a consequential cliff. After booting the 50°+ dogleg, we found that the snowpack was thinning quickly. We chose to ditch our skis, but curiosity took us up the last 50 feet to the ridge top. Here, we got our first taste of sunlight for the day, and after a quick lunch, we were climbing back down to our skis.

We were careful to not drop anything as we transitioned on the steep terrain, and after double checking our gear we were ready to ride. Raven was the one who invited me out for the day, so I offered the first ski to him. He hopped on the opportunity and started down the upper half of the couloir seamlessly going from toe-side to heel-side. He chose a safe stopping point and radioed for me to begin skiing. I released my skis from their edges and immediately the rush of skiing returned to me. After months without skiing, finding myself on something so steep, committing, and aesthetic felt earned; my patience had paid off. Pure focus was demanded through the top section, but after stopping with Raven halfway down the couloir, he offered me the bottom half first. I let my skis go fall line and quickly found a rhythm, this time without the hazard of cliffs beneath me. This allowed me to open my skiing up and have a little more fun than the top half.

The 900 foot couloir over-delivered both on the way up and down, and will stand in my mind for a long time. To open a season with such a fascinating line has given me a reference point to the progress I’ve made over the past few years of taking skiing more seriously. 

As the next weekend rolled around, stable and clear weather pushed us to return to our secret spot. Knowing lightning doesn’t strike twice, Raven and I decided to head into the bowl over and chase mellower terrain. A harrowing traverse into a hanging valley had us walking across many new avalanche paths, all seemingly wet point releases. We moved in the morning light and talked about our considerations for skiing the face later in the day. We both agreed that with a clean runout we felt okay with the ski out.

As we entered the bowl, we were met with similarly grand terrain, but this time most everything was in the light. On our way up as we passed over Palmer Creek, we saw a few Dolly Varden in the high and thin headwaters of the creek. It’s a local joke that we go fishing and talk about skiing all summer just to go skiing and talk about fishing all winter, so to have an overlap in Raven and my favorite sports brought plenty of joy to the two of us. 

Signs of wind and sun exposure turned us away from any steep skiing, but the firm conditions made for a lovely backcountry groomer. We climbed to a ridge that separated the bowl from the previous week and the bowl we were in, and skied the ramp back down to the lake at the bottom of the bowl. The ski was on mellow terrain and fast snow which can make for a fun mindless time. After reaching the lake, we evaluated our ski out and rolled over the face. It was steep and sluffing, but the recent wind had buffed off so much of the loose snow that there was not enough sluff to impact us riding. 

By the time we reached the car, the sun was providing beautiful lighting that we got to enjoy for the long sunset that autumn days provide. Our drive home through turnagain pass was stunning as usual, and after seeing the fish in Palmer Creek, we chose to stop and fish the stocked lakes in the pass. After we both touched a fish, we called our day and headed back towards Anchorage.

There was a special feeling in the air that day, something I could not identify at the moment. Looking back and writing about the day, it is apparent that this was one of our last days of fall in Alaska as just a few days later we received nearly two feet in town, equating to easily 5+ feet in the mountains.