After all the hard times in the beginning of the trip, it is now totally paying off. Riders are hot, conditions are good, we know the zone close from our camp really well and our moves are efficient. As days pass we find a new zone full of cool features and we are blown away by the terrain, feeling like kids at Disneyland for the first time. It will be the perfect name for this face, “Disneyland.”

Down at camp the excitement is growing. We drive to Haines to fill up with gas, food and propane for the necessary heaters of our RVs. Civilization! We take showers, as we were starting to stink pretty bad. On the last day of blue in sight, we go back to Disneyland. While Victor lands engaged spins on a big double cliff that will owe him the cover of the movie, we attack “Joker Face,” a short open bowl with a big cliff in the middle. Blair lands a transfer both in ollie and backside 180, while Manuel keeps showing everybody how gnarly he is. He jumps an obvious pillow cliff on top of the run and goes for a frontside 360 off a 40-foot drop. He holds on to his legs and lands! Holy Chilean donkey! Crepel backside 180’s a spine and tries to frontside five off the big pillow with Manuel. What a last day! As we gather on the glacier at the bottom, we share our stories. This is such a good crew. Everybody has their place and the emulation is perfect.

In the tiny plane leaving Haines, alone with the pilot, I look back on my adventure – I already miss shitting in the woods, living the simple life with open-minded people, punctuated by intense madness where in a ten minute heli ride you find yourself on top of an unnamed Alaskan peak. If any single one of these mountains were somewhere in Western Europe or Colorado it would stand out as a major attraction, steep and sharp with it’s snow-packed spines rising to the sky. But out there, they were totally anonymous. Most don’t even have a name. It is a sight of pure beauty. Their aesthetic lines call for admiration, contemplation and after awhile, a challenge to ride them, an invitation.

It was pretty intense to live in this kind of wilderness – anytime you can walk right into a bear, wolf, or even worse, a wolverine. This perspective, if you add it to the giant scale of the mountains, make you feel small and vulnerable, and therefore much more alive. Every minute counts, every day makes you feel happy to be alive, to experience life to a new extent. Everything seems right. We all felt this. We are humans, explorers, survivors, enjoyers of life since the beginning.

Indeed Manuel was in shock, but he didn’t even break a bone, a true miracle. This Chilean is made of titanium. A single shark in the wrong place almost killed him. He informs the rest of the crew on the radio that he’s OK, the snow is good but to watch out for hidden rocks. The session can really begin now. Blair, Mathieu, Jason and Victor take their lines a bit more mellow until their confidence grows. The first line is always the worst for your brain, but now that it’s out of the way, everyone is relieved and we find a name for the face – “Birthday on the Rocks,” for today is Blair’s birthday.

The first three days are difficult and marked by avalanche danger. Having to explore the zone by heli takes a lot of time and even more money. The snow pack is unstable and everybody is a bit nervous. We find no really good lines, so no really good shots either. Blair and Wolle almost get caught in a tiny slide as they hike, and more slides come down as the heli drops riders on top of lines. This wind is really messed up. We decide to let it rest for a while and wait. The helis fly back to Whitehorse and we kill our time on the side of the road.

Only a few cars pass by everyday, so we play football on the open road. We walk in the forest, play Uno to see who has to do the dishes and spend hours looking at pictures we took while scoping lines. No phone connection, no Internet and not a single house for hundreds of miles on the Canadian side of this wilderness. All kinds of weather pass through the camp, from warm dry days to heavy storms. We love camping life, focused on our mission, so hypnotized by the landscape of tall peaks behind the tops of the pines that we forget about the rest of the world. Shitting in the woods is a real pleasure as well. We gather wood always further and further, expecting to find ourselves in front of a wolf pack anytime. At night we talk around the fire and get to know each other better.

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