Steelhead and Spines - Volume Two

"In the spring of 2015, we began another pursuit for big lines and wild fish. Once again, our direction was north to Alaska, just as it was 3 years ago on our first trip to capture steelhead and spines. Since then, our burning desire to explore around the next bend, to see what's on the other side of the mountain, has grown to an inextinguishable level. We found ourselves back in a corner of southeast Alaska where for a few months of the year, some of the steepest, fluted lines in the world can be ridden, while chromed out steelhead run up and down the coastal rivers. This is the place for us to step outside the bubble of modern society, and into a world of our own making, where skiing and fishing and camping is everything. We returned home with these images, and memories of battling storms and mountains on the glacier and of an island where pure fish swim beneath the old growth hemlocks."

             

              (click images for full size)

           

       

 

Roadside runs in Alaska

For half the price of one day of heli-skiing, my brother Neil and I rented a little front wheel drive compact sedan and made it our mobile base camp for two weeks. We bounced around between Girdwood and Turnagain Pass, camping at trailheads and parking lots, and skiing anything that looked fun. I might add that a snowmobile or a helicopter would have been a tremendous help, but on this trip we intended to spend as little money as possible to see what we could manage. It worked out quite well, but really it was the spectacular weather and absolutely bomber snowpack that allowed us to do it. Neil dropped the line at the end of the video at 7:15pm on April 18th, our last day in Alaska for the season, a picture perfect ending to sickest month of skiing I've ever had