Every spring snowboarders come to Alaska to film the scenes they say they can’t find anywhere else in the world. Jagged peaks rising from a river of solid moving ice. Snow that sticks to the steeps and rides like velvet. Alaska’s icefields offer spectacular backdrops for filmmakers and excellent lines for riders.  Pro-riders Jay Nelson, Axel Pauporte, Craig Kelly, Ox Maloley, Tom Burt and Jim Zellers are some of the few professional riders who return annually to "work" in the icefields of southeast Alaska. They make first descents on unnamed mountains. They ride the steepest, most extreme slopes. They experience the richest conditions over miles and miles of untracked powder.

Rider, Gumby Photo by Scott Sullivan

"It’s perfect, because in the spring when the season’s over down south, everybody comes this way where there’s still powder," says Sean Dog, owner/guide with Out of Bounds Adventures in Juneau. "It extends their winter. From here they can jump right down to South America, never miss winter, and they’re always riding powder!" 

The Juneau icefield is a vast part of the Alaska Coastal Mountain Range in southeast Alaska and is the fifth largest icefield in North America, covering more than 1,500 square miles. The annual snowfall is 100 feet and the area is almost entirely covered by glacier. Peaks rise 3,000-6,000 feet above sea level and offer vertical drops up to 4,000 feet. 

"You call it an icefield when the glaciers become the dominant feature of the land; when there is so much glacier the mountains are buried with only the highest peaks sticking out," said Bill Glude, local heli-guide and director of the Southeast Alaska Avalanche Center. "It's just this huge area with nothing, no lifts, no buildings, no huts, no people, no towns in the distance. It's so quiet when the helicopter flies away and disappears behind the ridge. An occasional raven might fly over, or, in springtime, some migrant birds like a hummingbird or songbird attracted to your color against the snow. Bears roam too checking out the world when they come out of their dens." 

Icefields and glaciers form when the snowfall exceeds the snow melt, so that one year’s accumulation compacts on top of the previous year’s, turning it to solid ice. As time passes this accumulation grows and eventually reaches the tops of mountains. Scientists estimate the Juneau icefield snow and ice depth to be between 800 and 4,500 feet and has been accumulating for 3,000 years. 
Last spring when the pros were in town we asked the question, why do you come to the icefields, and what is the draw to return? Here’s what they said… 

jay nelson pro-rider/heliguide "Alaska is one of the places I feel most alive and most satisfied with what I’m doing and where I’m at. My first trip to Alaska, I mean the mindset I went into it with, was that this is the big time. This is big mountain riding and I have a lot to learn…"

"Alaska’s not for everyone," he adds. "The people that are making all the money in snowboarding are not coming to Alaska. They’re freestylers and they are concentrating on riding in parks and a lot of handrails and things like that…What I tell people is that Alaska is the epitome of why you snowboard. You just don’t know it. Whether you know it or not, and hopefully you do get a chance to know it, it’s why you are snowboarding. And people will be like, ‘oh no, that’s not the reason, I just love snowboarding, catching first chair.’ Well, that’s great and that’s fine and it’s good that you’re satisfied with where you’re at. But once you get a taste of Alaska on good conditions, everything else is judged from there down."

Jay comes to Juneau to make snowboard documentaries with filmmaker Justin Hostynek. He returns annually to ride and film and has recently taken on guiding as a means to spend more hours on the icefield. Not planning to make a living at it, he took the courses so he can guide his friends. "I wanna be able to guide them, you know, and be able to waive my guide fees for my good friends and make it cheaper for all of us and just for the sheer enjoyment of being out there with my good friends." 

While in Juneau, Jay guided me and my friend Jen on our first heli-trip into the icefield. We flew back to the Norris Glacier and rode off a peak called ‘Ski To Win.’ His manner was even, knowledgeable and confident. He found just the right slopes for our abilities and paid close attention to the details, mainly for our safety. It’s all about safety in the icefield. 

"From what I’ve witnessed first hand," he said, "mistakes happen from not selecting the proper route, or not making enough mental notes on features and shadow lines once you’re dropped off on the top of a face and are now at a very different vantage point. That in itself takes years to learn. People are all too often mistaken that the (pro) riders have this photographic memory, like, ‘how did he know to take that route, there are five chutes he could have gone down…he’s at a 20 mph clip the whole way down and he just happens to pick the third from the left chute and that was the one he wanted?’ It really turns itself around once you’re actually riding down that face. The radio is involved in things. People are being radioed into lines all the time and that’s something most people don’t understand in the films, is that they have a radio on the left or right hand strap of their backpack and the volume is turned all the way to max and they’re being radioed into the line the whole way down, or at least when it becomes a technical route."

Jay has had close calls. In 1999 he was nearly caught in an avalanche on a slope that two weeks later killed two local Juneau snowboarders. He described his experience… 

"I was attempting to ride this line and was just two turns into it, when a piece, a slab, pulled out on this shelf. I have been involved with slides in the past so you become accustomed to what that looks like, you know, that snow cuts lose off a face and how it starts buckling down below where it’s plowing into the snow pack in front of it, and how that looks. So I saw what was happening, I knew it was happening, and I felt that if I continued to make turns down that shelf it would continue to pull out. It would pull out the whole way down and if it pulled me over the shelf with it, ultimately what was going to happen was I was going to get killed… 

"I felt the snow pack, but it was my first day here, too, so I didn’t have a good feel for what the snow pack was like. So, in a sense that was foolish on my part to try to ride that, but I felt confident about the line and I did know the risk. The worse case scenario, if I were to get down where the shelf meets the bowl and it becomes a little lower angle, if that were to pull out, where that goes, where that snow is ultimately going to end up, is off a low angle cliff. So, a few hundred feet and they’re low angle too, so you’re going to hit rock guaranteed. 
"Fortunately things worked in my favor. As that first piece pulled out on the shelf I just bee-lined it straight down, trying to keep as little snow above me as possible. I raced down the shelf and at the end of the shelf there was a pretty abrupt flute and I knew with the speed I was carrying that there was no way I could absorb the flute. There was no way. So as I hit the flute, it threw me into the backseat, into a wheelie, which I knew was gonna happen. But as I’m flying through the air I was, like, ‘oh my god, oh my god, this is going to create a real avalanche!’ 

Axel Pauporte, AK Photo Scott Sullivan

"Fortunately all of the snow off the shelf hit the lower angled bowl before I did and the crown formed about 12 feet below my impact zone and I still fell into the tail end of the slide. So, the slide started taking me and I immediately got hit, the right side of my face got hit really hard to the point where I couldn’t see out of that eye. But I knew what was happening. I was very aware that this was a situation I really needed to not be a part of….I was just doing whatever it took to get out of that slide…I knew where it was headed and if it did succeed in pulling me all the way down there, this would be the end right here. I was on my butt, on my heel edge of my board, with my hands and everything, I just did whatever it took to get out of that tail, the tail end of the slide. And fortunately I did. I got out. It pulled me maybe 50 feet down the bed surface and I was able to get out. 

"Unfortunately, on that same bed surface, after the next cycle came through and that storm did not bond to this bed surface as well, two people were killed on the identical slide." 
"I’ve had some very close calls," Jay concludes. And I feel that I have learned a lot from them and hopefully that’s what occurs after a situation like that, where you really step back and take a look at what just happened, ‘cause it’s not too far fetched that it could happen again tomorrow."

Photo by Teri Tibbett

matt "ox" maloley
pro-rider/heliguide/concrete worker

"Why am I here? The big mountains. The pristineness. The feeling of being in the middle of nowhere …Top-to-bottom pow runs. 4,000 vert. It was definitely something I wanted to see and when I got here it was everything I expected, and more." 
Ox first came to Alaska in ’91 to ride in the World Snowboarding Extreme Competition in Valdez. The next year, and in subsequent years, he returned with the Quicksilver team to ride and film in the Juneau icefield. The last couple years he returned to guide for Out of Bounds Adventures. 

Ox, Alaska Photo by John Erben

Tom has been riding in Alaska since 1989. He says he’s a professional athlete in the snowboard industry. He’s ridden all over the world–including Nepal, Mexico, France and most recently Iran. He’s ridden for Avalanche Snowboards and has made numerous snowboard videos. He’s made over 30 first descents in Alaska, including Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America, and over 40 first descents worldwide. He says the mountains are good in Alaska, especially around Juneau where there’s a huge variety and "tons of terrain." 

"This whole area has a lot of terrain that no one’s really been on top of or done…I like to do first descents, so around the Juneau-Skagway-Haines area there’s pretty much countless amount of runs and mountains that haven’t been skied or snowboarded. It kind of leaves the door wide open on being able to do that. New terrain is always a lot of fun for me…"

This spring Tom was in Alaska for a month and a half, both for vacation and to do some film work, a magazine story, and guiding for Out of Bounds Adventures. He says he likes coming back to Juneau not only for the mountains, but because it’s a fun town. "There’s a lot to do on the down days, and there’s the ski area for one (Eaglecrest). There’s a lot of culture, with it being the capital, there’s museums and the fish hatchery and there’s movie theatres and there’s bowling and the skate park and there’s a workout gym. It’s actually a little city compared to Valdez, which is a pretty small town. So, it’s a lot of fun to hang out in and there’s a really good crowd of people who live in Juneau."

As far as guiding goes, he likes seeing people smile after getting in some epic runs. "The only thing that really kind of sums stuff up is, like last year, I was guiding the same group for four, five or six days out on the snow and we were working our way towards steeper and little more on the edge terrain for the abilities of the riders. Then on our last day we stepped up and did a peak that everyone was really psyched about, it was on Peak 14, just a peak out by the Mendenhall Glacier, between the Mendenhall and Eagle Glaciers, with beautiful views looking right down on the Lynn Canal and it was just a beautiful view of everything from there and it was steep and a little bit on the edge for the riders and everyone had a great time with huge smiles. You know, that’s kind of the experience that is the most memorable in mountains like this, when its just kind of those magical moments, when everyone just has a grin from ear to ear. That’s why you come to places like this, and that’s what the town and the mountains produce, is that type of energy." 

Coming to the icefields around Juneau means a lot of waiting for the weather. In the spring the weather is precipitous, which is great for bringing lots of fresh powder at higher altitudes, but bad for getting to ride in it. Snowboarders can wait ten days on the ground for every one day of riding. This can get frustrating. Tom agrees.
"You gotta be prepared for sitting around waiting for the weather to get good. And its something you can’t control…Juneau definitely has its share of bad weather, it definitely can be bad or it can be good, it’s just hard to say. I’ve had great luck and I’ve had bad luck here, so I don’t know…But there’s also good in that the snow is usually good when it clears, so, it’s usually worth the wait…You can have ten days of gray, and turn around and have ten days of blue weather right behind it, so you never know. You just kind of roll with whatever goes on. And you have to pay your dues when you come to Alaska, it’s been that way everywhere in Alaska I’ve been, or anywhere in the world. You pay your dues. You’re lucky if you get good weather and good snow. You gotta expect the worst and hope for the best."

Backyard fun, Juneau, Alaska Photo by Brad Hartman

fools and playmates…
Having an icefield in your backyard is like having the Grand Canyon for a playground, without all the tourists. Many of us have lived within miles of the icefield for years without ever venturing into it. Why? Money. It costs between $200-$500 for a day’s worth of heli-riding with a guide. Whoa. Who can afford that? Some only hear about it over a beer at the Alaskan Hotel. Others save up enough cash for one heli-trip a year. Then there’s the contingent of locals who regularly gather bodies and cash for drop-offs on the tops of favorite mountains or out in the icefield. It’s cheaper that way, but you really have to know what you’re doing with avalanche safety and terrain awareness. Then there’s always the trail that starts at 5^th street and winds up Mt. Roberts along the ridgeline for an all-day hike into the icefield. People do it all the time. And it’s free. You’re just a little more whipped when you get to the powder. But for those who have stood on a granite peak surrounded by rivers of solid moving ice, and then taken the most glorious ride of your life in snow that feels like you’re riding on clouds, you probably understand the draw. It’s a little crazy, but crazy is good. Ralph Waldo Emerson came pretty close to saying it when he wrote, "Nature does not like to be observed, and likes that we should be her fools and playmates."