VALDEZ

Valdez, Alaska-THE VALDEZ EXPERIENCE- This is an unusual article on the much written topic of Valdez. In this story, a skier’s death forces me to reassess skiing’s direction toward the ever more extreme. In 1991, Alaska Backcountry Adventures (ABA) started a helicopter service that began dropping a handful of extreme skiers literally anywhere they wanted to ski in the Chugach Mountains around Thompson Pass, 26 miles inland from Valdez, Alaska. The ski world has never been the same since then. Soon after, Valdez became the venue for the World Extreme Skiing Championships. Nowadays, the ABA parking lot is the gathering point of a motley crew of the gnarliest ski bums and boarders who have already out drawn all the “gunslingers” in and around their local mountain. All spring, they swap stories, swill beers, and lock horns with the most radical lines Alaska has to offer. Here, the hardcore ski bums camp out in tents, dig snow caves, and cram themselves into the limited sleeping quarters of RVs and vans. They live on beef jerky and beer, and save money every which way they can, so that they can get an adrenaline rush from ABA at $65 a pop. This gang of adrenaline junkies seem to have injected overdose levels of testosterone, and now they are going to prove their manhood against mother nature and all comers in extreme ski nirvana. This article describes and evaluates the Valdez scene. It also includes a side bar of special terminology and definitions (like “sucker hole”, “bluebird”, “road hits”, etc.) helpful in making the Valdez experience come to life.

Start >> North America >> Valdez