Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25040
HE Ll It's after 10pm and the late April sunset is turning the steep, snowy face below us into a surreal hue of goldish pink. No one, except four other riders and a guide, is within miles. Some 4,000 vertical feet below, a helicopter waits for us on the glacial floor. A pair of wolverines wander up the massive, heavily crevassed glacier to see if they can find food near the chopper. The pilot keeps an eye on these " crossbreeds of a grizzly bear and a wild boar" as he fingers the trigger of his 9mm pistol. He radios us to hurry up. The untracked snow below is one-foot-deep cold smoke with an average slope declivity of at least 45 degrees. It should take but a few min utes to flash the pristine mountain. Jake Kilgrow is a freerider from West Alta, Utah. He has honed his powder skills and saved his cash for years to make this pilgrimage to Alaska, to see if it's as steep and deep as everyone claims. "When the copter took off and the silence began to ring in my ears, all I could see was the glacier way down below. I felt like a king at a feast, and all this mine. Now, everything seems meager in comparison The Chugach Mountains of Southern Alaska are a wonderful aberration of geology. Only miles from the icy coast of the Gulf of Alaska, this range of fluted faces and cockscomb ridges stands only 6,000 to 7,000 feet above sea level. But with storms rolling in from the gulf and layering the Chugach with about 600 inches of snow a year, the region's moisture aids in bonding the powder to slopes that anywhere else on the planet would be lethally avalanche prone.