Back on the road again. this time it's to Hatcher Pass and Turnagain Pass in Alaska to take the (hopefully) last of my AMGA exams, the Ski Mountaineering Guides Exam. It's a grueling process and a tough exam not only to take, but also to prepare for. Up to this point I've invested thousands of hours to getting to this point, where I'm feeling like I meet the international guiding standard.
I've been previewing the areas and have been fortunate enough to ski with Ed and Erin at Hatcher Pass. Ed runs Hatch Your Trax web site and has posted one of my videos to show how brutal the conditions can be for some, but also how good it can be !
The stability of the snowpack is in general Poor at Hatcher, so I went to Girdwood to check out Turnagain Pass. Unfortunately, it's been raining for 4 days now...snow in the highlands, but you have to get there starting from about 1000' where the stability is mostly Good.
Sitting around the coffee house perfecting my bookwork for the exam, I've had a chance to work with Tyler Jones, another exam candidate. It's been a good time and we are pretty much ready for everything except poor visibility. Someone please invent goggles that pierce the fog so we can see where we're going ! Better yet, make a set that also picks out where the avalanche trigger points are so we can ski around them !
Hope to have a "happy ending" out here in AK ! I'm sure I'll learn more from our instructors/evaluators than they will form any of us. Still, we are trying to impress them with all of our best skills and guiding techniques.
