It has been a fast and furious Spring ski mountaineering season for me, with the combination of a few far flung ski trips and the day-to-day of running Crested Butte Mountain Guides via a BlackBerry.
Quickly following the Haute Route Ski Tour across the pond in Europe, I came back through Crested Butte for a brief 4-day stint to catch up on office work, do laundry, and get in a day of work backcountry ski guiding on Whetstone Mountain. Then it was back on the plane heading farther West, and off to Valdez, Alaska…the undisputed home of helicopter skiing, birthplace of the World Extreme Ski Championships, and the site of this year’s American Mountain Guides Association Ski Mountaineering Guides Exam.
Arriving in Valdez 9-days early to train with other exam candiates, we were immediately greeted with the biggest avalanche cycle of the season, resulting in 2 deaths, 2 serious skier injuries, and many other skier triggered avalanches, all over the course of 2 days. Needless to say this upped the ante for our focus, training regime, and safety awarness.
The AMGA Exam process is an incredibly stressful and intensive process, with exam candidates taking turns guiding one another under the watchful eye of an IFMGA/UIAGM Guide/Examiner. The daily objectives are considerably longer and harder then a normal day of guiding, so as to see the guides ability to work in technical terrain with multiple clients under excessive stress and if they can handle it.
Obviously this instills confidence in a guide’s ability and a client’s feeling of safety in an AMGA Certified Guide.
The Ski Mountaineeirng program is arguably the most difficult with the largest amount of subjective decision-making and interpretation of terrain, conditions, and guiding tactics being required of a guide. Typical exam days were roughly 12-14 hours in length with 5000′-7000′ vertical on glaciated and steep technical Alaskan ski terrain.
Day 1 was the mandatory 40-minute crevasse rescue drill. A 1:1 scenario where the guide must catch a crevasse fall with skis on, build an anchor to transfer the fallen skier’s weight onto, rappell into the crevasse to attend to the fallen skier, then ascend back out, build a hauling system, and haul the fallen skier out safely…whew…..
Days 2-7 were all daily guided ski mountaineeirng tours through the vast and glaciated terrain of the Thompson Pass area of Valdez, AK. An area made famous by Doug Coombs and the last decade of extreme ski movie footage. Thankfully the weather during this stretch was complete Colorado bluebird, albeit unseasonably warm…and although whiteout navigation skills were somewhat of a non-issue, wet unconsolidated isothermic snow and bulletproof slide for life conditions more then made up for the guiding challenges and created quite alot of rope work and ski guiding trickery to keep everyone safe throughout the week.
Possibly one of my favorite days, of course….was the heli-drop day, as we got in a day of heli-skiing and I scored the lucky card of getting to on-sight down guide the first run of the day, down 2000′+ of steep and exposed pure Alaskan skiing!!!
Day 8 brought a final guiding challenge and examination sequence of dealing with a serious injury in the backcountry with a small guided ski party and no availablity for outside assistance…my client’s injury….a broken femure…ouch…glad I’m a WFR instructor.
Despite the intensity, inherent stresses, and long days (some ~20 hrs), the exam was a successful venture as I left not only with my official Ski Mountaineeirng Guide Certification, but also having made some new friends, and gotten to ski and work alongside some incredibly talented and best professional guides in the industry. And of course, all this in the original big mountain skiing mecca of Valdez, Alaska, and under an unprecedented stretch of clear and sunny weather!!!
Congrats everyone to giving it your absolute all and to earning your certification. Now I am looking forward to beginning the trip planning process of sharing this incredible venue with CBMG ski guests in the near future…..
—Jayson Simons-Jones (Owner / Lead Guide)
See more photos at: Valdez 2009
