Calliope Mountain

4/4/26

My not-so-secret favorite place to ski in Anchorage is the South Fork of the Eagle River. Generally this zone sees less traffic than the heavy hitters of the Front Range, and this year it also saw better snow conditions than its more popular neighbors. Given this setup, I frequently found myself heading up Hiland Road after work to score untracked powder. Regardless of what slope I found myself on, I never could shake the magnetic attraction of Calliope Mountain. The crown of the valley is visible from nearly everywhere within the area, making it one of the most obvious objectives around. Additionally, a failed mission 11 months prior kept the goal of skiing the north west face at the top of my hit-list. 

After nearly a year of the peak towering over me during dozens of days spent recreating in the South Fork valley, the opportunity to fulfill my goals finally presented itself. Over the course of weeks, my partners and I continued to find stable conditions in the South Fork Valley. These observations led to our decision to attempt the objective. In an attempt to up the adventure factor, Aaron Maves and I decided to camp on Eagle Lake after work on Friday. Given our 8pm departure from Anchorage, we found ourselves approaching the lake around 11pm. To our surprise, we watched two headlamps crest over the medial moraine from Symphony Lake. We met the other party in the middle of Eagle Lake, and discovered one of the members was a friend. We briefly chatted about their day climbing the Prism on Triangle Peak before we went our separate ways.

Aaron and I built camp on the shore of the lake. We enjoyed sleeping in before a hot breakfast in a beautiful place. As we wrapped up our breakfast, Kurtis Brumbaugh and Azriel Sellers crested over the horizon. Our team was assembled, and the four of us were off towards our objective. We crossed the medial moraine, Symphony Lake, and eventually Mirror Lake all before I managed to fully wake up. During a short break at the base of Calliope, I finally wiped the crust from my eyes and became aware that we were preparing to enter the maze of cliffs that is the northwest face of Calliope.

Kurtis, on his mission to complete the Chugach 120, led us on skis up the lower portion of the face. It wasn’t long until the skinner transitioned to a booter which Kurtis continued to put in for us. He chose to leave his skis when we transitioned to booting in a beautiful display of self-awareness. In the deep snow and without verts, it looked as though Kurtis was swimming his way up the face. Even for those of us with verts, we were often finding shallow rocks beneath our feet. While all of the days spent in South Fork hinted at stable snow, the continental nature of the snowpack on such a committing line struck fear into me.

We traversed over a large cliff band, and put all of our trust in the snowpack. Since I was towards the back of the pack for most of the climb, I took the extra steps to evaluate the snowpack deeper. I was secretly hoping to find a reason to turn around, but the snow continued to be as predicted. Barring basal facets that had proved unresponsive all season thus far, there were no unexpected layers. All we had to do was hope today wasn’t the day those facets decided to wake up.

We traversed over a second band of cliffs, leaving any hopes of a clean fall behind us. From here, it was a relatively straight shot to the col that marks the top of the ski line. Kurtis muscled forwards, hardly giving us a chance to catch up. In the final 100 feet of the bootpack, the snow quickly turned from deep, faceting powder into bulletproof snow which required crampons. Once on the col, we shared a moment of gratitude before making a plan for moving forward. I did not feel the need to summit; I was just there to ski the king line. The other three however were there to stand on top of the peak. Seeing how firm the upper portion was, I elected to stay behind and work on opening up the line while the rest of the group continued down the ridge to gain the summit.

Initially, I tried to ski off the col, but one turn in I found myself in slide-for-life conditions. I caught myself on my whippet and one ski edge, but decided to ask for help as the other three had crampons on and could easily come to my aid. Aaron ran over, and helped secure my gear as I took my skis off and transitioned into crampons to begin downclimbing into better snow. The downclimb took longer than I care to admit, but I wanted to be sure the rest of the group was set up for success when they returned from the summit. As I was working my way into the line, I witnessed Kurtis crest onto the summit, closely followed by Aaron and Az. As I transitioned, I watched them descend back over the south side of the summit out of view. I waited a moment for them to crest back over the ridge, and upon seeing Kurtis, I began my descent.

Nervous of avalanches, I took one turn and came to a stop. I found myself near hip-deep in the snow, with sluff pouring on either side of me. I committed to three turns, then let my sluff dump. I continued this cadence until reaching the first traverse where my skis found plenty of shallow rocks. I held my breath until I found myself on the next panel of snow. Three turns, let sluff dump. I pieced together the hanging panel before traversing over more cliffs. This time, fewer rocks than the last. From here I was below all of the major cliffs, and I was able to connect my turns more comfortably. I skied the lower face continuously, struggling to find the center of my skis as each turn provided something different. Deep and untouched powder followed by bed surface that had slid since the last storm followed by my freshly deposited sluff. Finally, the slope angle let up and I was able to take some high-speed turns all the way down to the ice cave we had taken a break near earlier in the morning. 

I saw my partners on the col and knew I had time to burn before they skied, so I ran to the ice cave and explored a bit before emerging to Kurtis nearly running down the face. He chose to leave his skis at the base since he wasn’t sure of his ability to ski the line safely. Even without skis, he managed to descend as fast as any of us skiers. Behind him Aaron and Az leapfrogged each other down the line before we all converged and headed to the ice cave together. The deep grey striations on the permanent ice provided a different sense of adventure than our skiing provided, and we all enjoyed the moment of serenity that stood in juxtaposition to the objective we had just tackled.

Our long break in the cave gave us the energy to party ski out back to Symphony Lake, up and over the moraine, and back to our camp. Azriel and Kurtis continued back to the trailhead while Aaron and I began boiling water for dinner. As we ate, we discussed our options and agreed to break down camp and hike out only after we skied one of the Eagle Lake couloirs. The weather deteriorated as we progressed towards the chute, and by the time we entered the chute conditions had taken a turn for the worse. We reached our turnaround time nearly halfway up the chute, but given our energy levels, snow conditions, and weather, we were okay with packing it up. We skied what we could before heading back to our camp and grabbing our gear for the long walk out. 

Aaron and I were jealous that the other two had such a light walk back, but dumb ideas build strong legs. Would it have made more sense to camp on the lake another night? Probably. Did it make for a good story arriving back to Anchorage after midnight with our heavy packs? Absolutely.