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Choose your line.

In 19 years of exploring Alaska I can say with full clarity that the session we had filming Deeper in the Fairweather Range in the spring of 2010 was the ultimate session. Never have I seen stability, snow quality, cold temps and clear weather line up like that, and never have I seen a zone so stacked with massive, rideable spine walls. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of that trip. At the time I assumed this was the pinnacle of the trip, but I was wrong. On April 22nd and April 23rd after a 7-day super storm we took our riding to a new level. But the quantum leap occurred when we cracked the code on Wall of Walls on April 12th. Looking back, it was my single biggest jump in progression since the first day I linked turns on a snowboard 25 years prior.

Photos by Jeremy Jones

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The labor of love. Fairweather Range, Alaska

April 4th, 2010
I sit 60 miles to the closest person and in the heart of the Fairweather Range. Drake dropped me off two hours ago and should be back soon with the rest of the crew. The only sound is of this pen. There is work to be done, but I take breaks to sit, listen and feel the landscape. I am not sure exactly where I am. The proposed zones I had checked on maps and had photos of from my previous trip last year were all off the table do to poor out-runs in the lines. We flew through notch after notch into mountains filled with granite towers and huge spine walls, but I could not find a zone suitable to call home for a month. At this point all my focus was on glaciers and out-runs. As we popped over a ridge the glaciers became more filled in. To my right a big grey wall peaked out behind some clouds. I couldn’t see much, but I knew it was the right aspect, the out-run was clean and the wall was massive. “Anywhere in here will work Drake,” I said with only a slightest glimpse of the zone. Two circles and I am on the ground with enough gear to last a month. But am I in the right spot? The clouds have covered the wall. I hope it’s good.

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Jeremy Jones, in for the long haul while waiting for the weather to clear on Wall of Walls. Photo: Ryland Bell

April 10th, 2010
Three thousand feet above the glacier floor and a nine-hour hike from our base camp. Ryland and I lie tucked under a rock, dug into the snow and hidden from a cold north wind that is an arm’s reach away. Two hundred feet from me is the drop-in point to the biggest spine wall I have ever seen. Two hours ago we gained this ridge as dusk turned the landscape from purple to dark blue. A view of the ocean greeted us, leaving us both speechless and teary-eyed. Silence, darkness, cold and an unknown land that has never seen the footsteps of humans. Never have I felt so small, so alone, so on the edge of the world, so content. There is no way I could be here right now a moment earlier in my life. We are big mountain riding now!

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Sense of place. Truly in the shadows of giants.

In eight hours I will force myself from the comforts of my bivy sack, pack my sleeping bag into a small duffel bag and throw it down the 2,500-foot couloir we hiked up. Then I will walk to my line, and if everything feels right I will drop in just as the first rays of sunlight hit the face. I am tired, wet and hungry, but what is keeping me from sleep is the mandatory air that guards the bottom of the spine wall. Is it 15 feet or 50? There is limited exposure in the out-run, so I will fully commit and find out the size once I am over the lip. If you told me five days ago I would be thinking of this line I would have laughed. I figured the Wall of Walls would have taken weeks to build up to, but we have had four days of sun and have been able to progress at a rapid rate. My legs are toast from four mega days of climbing, but the conditions are too good to rest.

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Don’t be fooled, this is looking straight up at some of biggest spines Jeremy has ever seen.

April 12th, 2010
Yesterday was a day I will never forget: A day where everything came together. This is why I started out on this quest. The last two years I have put every ounce of energy I had into my new approach. The lessons learned in the High Sierra, Antarctica, Chamonix and my first on foot AK trip last year have made this moment possible. My dream of riding the best lines of my life on foot was achieved. It can be done. It was done with boots too frozen to lace, little sleep and really tired legs. It was a sixteen-hour day that resulted in a sunrise descent of Wall of Walls into a sunset descent of Free Fall Wall into a four-hour tour back to camp.

Read also: Jones’ Journal: In the shadow of Denali

Originally featured in Snowboard Magazine 11.3: The Primitive Issue

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