Little Swiss

In an effort to round out our snow, ice, and rock skills, the team decided to take a trip out to the Pika Glacier, an area of the Alaska Range known as Little Switzerland.  I'd flown by but never spent time in the area.  As I discovered, it's a worthwhile nickname.

 General glacier travel was one of the objectives of the trip.  In addition to traveling on wide-open glaciers, we spent some time traversing through heavily-cracked areas - great training for the environments we could find ourselves in.

We flew in on these planes from Anchorage to set up a base camp, then took day trips from base camp out to different training areas.

 The Pika descending to the Kahiltna.  The Alaska Range is awesome.

Skinning out for some skiing.  In addition to skiing and glacier travel, we did a good bit of trad rock climbing on the rock in the area.  All around, it was a great spot to do a variety of training all at once.

 Booting up for a steeper section of skiing.  We were a bit late in the season for great pow, but there was plenty of fun corn to harvest.

 Sweet steeper spot.

 The harvest.

 Denali watching us from our base camp.  We had great weather, and the trip was amazing.  As usual, photos do staggering little justice when attempting to convey just how big and beautiful the mountains are.