Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25040
"IF YOU EXHIBIT SOME SKI LL AND COMPETENCY ON THE MELLOWER RUNS, THEN YOU'RE READY FOR THE REAL DEAL: HELICOPTERS. home to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline terminus. Then, on 24 March 1989, a man named Hazelwood ran the Exxon Valdez aground, spilling some 11 million gallons of oil into the sound. Strategically speaking, Valdez is one of the Defense Department's top five protected spots on the globe. To operate a high-powered, first-world war-machine, the US needs lots of fuel. F-16s and M1A1s don't run on Energizer batteries. Since the spill, the big joke among locals is, "Oh, don't worry about that 11 million gallons, there's plenty more coming down the pipeline every day. " Of course, there are a few other distinguishing features tied to Valdez. In the Gulf of Alaska's deep waters, record halibuts-single fish weighing in at more than 400 pounds-are caught and proudly photographed along the docks of Valdez Harbor. During the long, 20-hour days of sum mer, the Washington ferry unloads droves of Winnebagos that come here to see the Last Frontier. Helicopters give scenic tours over Columbia Glacier, one of the largest tidewater glaciers in the world, and cozy charter boats motor off shore to watch whales breech, orcas hunt for seals and calv ing glaciers boom into the gulf. It can even be difficult to get a table at Oscar's, one of the greasy-spoon, fish-fry diners on the waterfront. But the winter, well that's another story. Cold, dark, wet, suicidal: that's pretty much what you get until mid-March rolls along. The town tries to stay busy and posi tive, getting ready for the upcoming season. Alyeska employ ees-the pipeline oilmen-stay on the payroll year-round and spend long, dark evenings making crude jokes while drinking double "Tankers on the Rocks" at the Pipeline Club. But, as the days get longer and bald eagles float above melting rivers, springtime begins in the Chugach. Towards the end of March, the sun sets six minutes later each day. Before you know it, you come stumbling out of the Sugarloaf Saloon to find surreal sunsets turning the western waters of Prince William Sound into a gleaming, blinding gold. In the 1980s, the big Alaskan fossil-fuel boom gave birth to an increase in recreational snowmobiling. Every motorhead and his Miller High Life-swilling cousin zoomed around the mountains on a Polaris or a Ski-Doo. Thompson Pass (2,300 feet) on the Richardson Highway provided the road access they sought. Before long, the Mountain Man Snowmobile Hill Climb Competition was founded. Basically, the guy with the highest-performance machine and the cojones to fire the thing up an unrealistically steep couloir was king. And from that, perhaps, came the birth of freerid ing as we now know it. In 1990, Michal Cozad talked the Valdez Chamber of Commerce into sponsoring the World Extreme Skiing Championships (WESC). The next spring, WESC held the World Extreme Snowboarding Championships. It's during this first week of April that Valdez wakes up from the hibernation. "Extreme Week" is Alaska's version of spring break, and as the best snowriders show up from all over the world, the town explodes into party-mode with live bands, free booze and some late nights at the Sugarloaf Saloon. From there, word got out: Chugach is the ultimate proving grounds. The best skiers and snow boarders in the world started coming here to challenge themselves on some of the steepest terrain ever ridden. "I've had this poster of Meteorite Mountain in room for years, " says Kilgrow. "It's a photo of this huge, steep, untracked face with two guys at the top looking down. I always seem to picture mysel up there about to drop-in for the first descent. drove me crazy a few times, knowing some of the boys were up there getting the goods and I wasn't. But now that I've gotten through my maiden age, I stare at that poster and seem to enjoy it all the more." Every other run back then was a first descent and every day was an adventure. Hard lessons were learned the mountains were by no means tamed. In 1992, then-1 year-old Richie Fowler, the gangster-boarder from Anchorage, logged 19 runs in one long day. He paid cash, about a g in small bills, and the record stands. "That was back in day, when Alaska West Air was flying the B-model (a three-seater helicopter), " he says. "We landed about the classic drops, doing each of them two or three i Everybody else ran out of cash, but I kept riding. I was nitely worked after all that." When WESC founder Cozad ran into credit lems and hightailed it to Mexico (or somewhere far from the long arm of the law), the townsfolk kept organizing the WESC, but only the ski contest. Nick Perata, the dread locked snowboard legend, jumped at the opportunity and began organizing the King and Queen of The Hill Snowboard Tournament in 1994. "The best all-around rider is the king, " he explains. "Snowboarders from each discipline (racing, freestyle and extremel have an advantage for just one day. But the rider who can do it all is the world's greatest athlete up here." Dan Coffey, from nearby Girdwood has competed in the King of the Hill three times, finishing third in 1995. "It's about three different types of riders in three different types of terrain; there are not a lot of places in the world where you can do that, " Coffey says. II