Handplants in Hyder. Photo Ryan Anderson
After talking about it for way to long, finally we were on the road to explore northern BC and Alaska. The crew was Ryan Anderson, Jye Kerney and myself. Two days of trying to sort truck, sleds and rusty seized trailer wheels but it had come together and now I had just locked the keys and my McDonalds in the truck while we were filling it with gas. Shitty start since it was 4pm already and we wanted to knock out 8 hours driving that day.
Two evenings later we drove into Stewart, we had just driven over the range, it was snowing the whole way. We found some accommodation(Ripley's is the best place to stay there as we found), got fish n chips and found a spot on the sound with an amazing view of the sun going down. After dinner, a couple of beers and a fire we went to drive back only to be waved down at the Canadian border for trying to drive though it with out stopping. To be fair it doesn't really look like a border more of a truck stop, anyway the lady was pissed, we didn't have our passports either so that made it worse. Eventually after some smooth talking kiwi conversation about how awesome Canada was and how many Canadian friends we had they flagged the $1000 fine and we got to leave.
The next morning we were up early ready to sled, but found the border didn't open until 8.30. There was a couple of other crews around town and speaking to them they thought it was going to be bad weather but the next few days were looking good. The first good weather and snow in a few weeks. We headed up anyway. To get to the spot to sled from you drive across the border into Alaska then drive until road has to much snow on it and sled from there. There was some other people sledding so we just followed them because it was cloudy still and we didn't know where we were going. After a while we caught up to them and found out they had never been there either. Blind leading the blind through the cloud. We parked up and started building an igloo while we waited for it to clear. It never did clear so we ended up with a real sweet igloo, it had seats a table, a pretty good entranceway. The next three days were good, mostly sunny a little cloud sometimes. The sled zone was massive, it was scary to me how far out we sledded. There were glaciers everywhere, lots of open flats, cravasses and cornices surrounded by mountains just carrying on forever. We had planned to only stick around a couple of days and then carry on but its hard to pass up a sunny day with good snow in Alaska so we stayed on. The days were super long so every night when we got back town was shut down and we could only eat the microwave food we had, that wasn't to epic after a long day. By the time a bad weather day came we were looking forward to getting out. We planned to carry on to Haines but the weather was looking bad for the whole long term forecast so we flagged the drive(a further 18 hours) and drove the 18 hours back to Whistler. Was such a good trip, such good terrain up there and can't wait to go back and explore further next time!! Look out for an article from the trip in aus/nz snowboarding issue #62
Two evenings later we drove into Stewart, we had just driven over the range, it was snowing the whole way. We found some accommodation(Ripley's is the best place to stay there as we found), got fish n chips and found a spot on the sound with an amazing view of the sun going down. After dinner, a couple of beers and a fire we went to drive back only to be waved down at the Canadian border for trying to drive though it with out stopping. To be fair it doesn't really look like a border more of a truck stop, anyway the lady was pissed, we didn't have our passports either so that made it worse. Eventually after some smooth talking kiwi conversation about how awesome Canada was and how many Canadian friends we had they flagged the $1000 fine and we got to leave.
The next morning we were up early ready to sled, but found the border didn't open until 8.30. There was a couple of other crews around town and speaking to them they thought it was going to be bad weather but the next few days were looking good. The first good weather and snow in a few weeks. We headed up anyway. To get to the spot to sled from you drive across the border into Alaska then drive until road has to much snow on it and sled from there. There was some other people sledding so we just followed them because it was cloudy still and we didn't know where we were going. After a while we caught up to them and found out they had never been there either. Blind leading the blind through the cloud. We parked up and started building an igloo while we waited for it to clear. It never did clear so we ended up with a real sweet igloo, it had seats a table, a pretty good entranceway. The next three days were good, mostly sunny a little cloud sometimes. The sled zone was massive, it was scary to me how far out we sledded. There were glaciers everywhere, lots of open flats, cravasses and cornices surrounded by mountains just carrying on forever. We had planned to only stick around a couple of days and then carry on but its hard to pass up a sunny day with good snow in Alaska so we stayed on. The days were super long so every night when we got back town was shut down and we could only eat the microwave food we had, that wasn't to epic after a long day. By the time a bad weather day came we were looking forward to getting out. We planned to carry on to Haines but the weather was looking bad for the whole long term forecast so we flagged the drive(a further 18 hours) and drove the 18 hours back to Whistler. Was such a good trip, such good terrain up there and can't wait to go back and explore further next time!! Look out for an article from the trip in aus/nz snowboarding issue #62
This place is so big, this is maybe 30 km from the carpark. Such cool terrain in this zone.
Random fire pit to lure people over the border without there passports
This was our base, perfect for a couple of whiskeys.
Dropping
On the other side of Stewart there is lots of good looking terrain the heli company use, we couldn't find how to get up to that range on the sleds. While we were looking for a way up we found this abandoned mine a few kms up some old sketchy dirt road. It was a cool area to explore, there were bear prints everywhere and we were just in the middle of no where. We went to leave and couldn't find the keys to the truck. After a hour of searching we found they were in Jyes pocket.
Rad little zone
A couple of scenics from the drive
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