Day 23: Alyeska – Christmas Chute

Zachary and I woke up around 9 when the sun started coming up, and I have to admit I felt pretty tired. The top of the mountain had gotten more snow, but it was still pretty wet at the bottom, but the good news of the day was that Christmas Chute was open. After doing a warm up on Chair 6, we did the hike back to the chute and dropped in. It gets skied out pretty quick, so conditions weren’t ideal when we did it, but it was still a pretty sick run. Long and steep, it drops out into the Lower North Face, and it plenty of vertical to wear out your legs. We hit it pretty hard and fast, and by the time the snow was starting to get pretty heavy and bumped out, we were pushing 20,000ft of vert anyway. After a beer in the room, we hit the hot tub one more time before I drove Zach back to Anchorage for work. We stopped along the way to take a few pics of Turnagain Arm, and then I stopped again on the way back and took a few long exposures.

Check out my craptastic video editing skillz 🙂

Here are some pictures from Turnagain Arm – the ones where it is still light is when I was driving Zach back to Anchorage, and then night ones are my return trip to Girdwood.