Has anyone doen any skiing in Alaska? I live in Fairbanks, and am planning a trip to Alyeska with possibly a few days of Heliskiing. Anyone's comments would be appreciated.
Great skiing at Alyeska if there's been a lot of snow. Had my some of the best snowboarding days there ever. There's a huge bowl that you can traverse out for untracked snow.
The light can be bad where you can't really perceive depth, it's very wide open (without trees). Also it gets dark by 3:30 or so, but there's night skiing which is great.
I've made two trips to Alyeska this season and have two or three more left this season. The snowfall is incredible this year. They set a single month record for snow in December with 283 inches. I will second that the flat light is really bad, especially during the wierd Alaska winter dusk. However, with tons of fresh powder, you can take tumbles all day long. My most recent trip was bluebird the first day (rare according to locals) and dumping the second day. The high traverse was just opened when we got to the top and we had first tracks in three to four feet of fresh fluff. We skied there most of the day, with the occasional jaunt to the north face. The second day we skied the north face all day and enjoyed picking our untracked lines all day. I'll give you an update with the next trip, and try to have pictures. We were having so much fun I didn't take any pictures. No lift lines let us ski 20000 ft each day. We could have skied more, but our legs couldn't take it.