Valdez Backcountry Skiing & Ski Mountaineering
Guided Trips & Instruction
Central Chugach Ski Guide
Valdez Ski Guide & Avalanche Education Provider
Suacit (the name for the Valdez area in its indigenous language) is home to the best oceanside skiing, snowboarding, and ski mountaineering on Earth. It’s the snowiest town in the world averaging over 300 inches annually at sea level!
This is sea to sky riding at its finest.
The coastal-maritime snow climate here is the best for the steep and deep skiing that made the Chugach famous, but there are endless options:
- Glades and tree skiing
- Vast mellow powder fields
- Steep chutes, ramps, and faces
December through February there’s generally powder skiing on all aspects and at all elevations with the sun having little to no impact on snow quality. By March the snowpack is usually deep enough to provide access to most terrain and powder skiing can be excellent through the month on most aspects, although timing relative to solar exposure becomes more important.
By April the snowpack is at peak depth. Corn skiing is epic (arguably the best in the world here and in the Thompson Pass zone), and powder skiing can be fantastic through the month on northerly aspects. Well into May there’s still plenty of corn, and the potential for some north facing powder.
This zone is significantly less cold than the transitional-intermountain Thompson Pass zone and especially the interior-continental Tiekel Valley zone, but the coastal mountains around Valdez still provide many days a season of DEEP, low density, BLOWER cold smoke all the way down to sea level!
This area generally has the most stable snowpack (less persistent slab problems with relatively few persistent weak layers) of CMI’s three core zones (Valdez, Thompson Pass, Tiekel Valley) with most avalanche activity being direct action as a result of heavy snowfall during storms.
Few, if any, have explored the Valdez area more extensively than Chugach Mountain Institute. CMI is the only ski guide service based and residing in this area full-time, year-round. CMI is in these mountains on a regular basis throughout the year.
CMI knows this terrain with an incomparable depth of knowledge and experience. CMI follows the snowpack here from the first snowfall through the last. No other guide has as intimate knowledge of this area’s terrain and snowpack. Whether you’re interested in human-powered touring from the road or a fly-in trip (round trip and fly-in, ski out day and multi-day trips available), CMI can help you experience the best snow and terrain the Valdez area has to offer.
Plus, CMI doesn’t just guide. As a Master’s-level outdoor educator and American Avalanche Association recognized avalanche education provider, CMI will help you build the knowledge and skillset to be more self-sufficient with avalanche safety and snow-season backcountry travel. CMI will help you develop the ability to experience the “freedom of the hills” on your own.
Booking information is available here. Call 907-831-9686 or email Info@ChugachSnow.org for inquiries and availability. The skiing and splitboarding in this zone is within minutes of town where there are breweries, a cannabis shop, restaurants, a supermarket, and many options for lodging. There are also extensive vehicle camping opportunities outside of town, which is an excellent way to cut down on expense (especially in the spring when the weather is relatively benign). Hot showers can be had in Valdez at the Harbor.
As the only mountain guide that lives, works, and plays here year round I’ve been able to develop a much more intimate relationship with the land than non-local, seasonal guides that are only here for spring skiing.
One of the best aspects of developing this profound sense of place is experiencing two entirely different worlds as our home planet spends a year traveling around the sun: the (relatively) snow-less world vs the snow-covered world. This is the north couloir of Bob’s Knob as seen October 9, 2023 versus February 19, 2023.
Living here all year, being committed to this place, and developing an intimate relationship with it provides a much deeper understanding of terrain, weather, and snow dynamics than a non-local, seasonal guide can hope to gain. This is a great benefit to clients, and a primary reason to choose CMI for guiding services.
Allison Creek is a very special area with BIG ocean and mountain views. While not the shortest Port of Valdez approaches, the touring and terrain options from this valley are endless. There’s mellow powder skiing, LONG and STEEP chutes, 1000′ boulder pillow lines (known as “The Turtles”), and ski peakbagging to varying degrees of difficulty. It’s a great zone for ski mountaineering and adventure skiing, as well as full day tours for the less vertically ambitious.
This zone encompasses a large area of terrain east and west (on both sides) of prominent Sugarloaf Mountain including Area 51 and Solomon Lake. There’s a great variety of terrain here, including some of the mellowest as well as the steepest “sea to sky” skiing in the Valdez area.
The West Francis area (where Mt. Embick, Mt. Comstock, and the west side of Mt. Francis is located) provides some of the best, most varied, and easily accessible “sea to sky” skiing in the world. Typically accessible by mid to late December, this zone is often filled with blower, cold smoke powder all the way down to the ocean through February. Good skiing in this area lasts well into April, with the lowers holding corn and the northerly uppers still holding dry powder late in the spring.
The East Francis area has a much longer approach than its neighboring west side, but features even more terrain and options. The lower section of the East Francis basin, above the Trans Alaska Pipeline Service Road, affords incredible views of the Port of Valdez and the Lowe River Valley. Whether you’re seeking wide open powder slopes, chutes, incredibly steep and long couloirs, ramps, or exposed extreme skiing terrain; the East Francis area has it all.
This major drainage, featuring the closest skiing (and climbing) to the town of Valdez itself, is unique in many ways. The terrain is BIG, STEEP, and requires the utmost diligence in regard to avalanche assessment given that a mistake in such unforgiving terrain could very well prove fatal. From the valley floor, massive couloirs (avalanche chutes) thousands of vertical feet in length (that must be booted) provide access to diverse upper alpine areas where skins can again be donned to reach peaks, spines, couloirs, and faces that are generally glaciated.
This large area includes terrain east and west (on both sides) of Valdez Glacier Stream, around the Valdez Glacier, and includes subsidiary drainages to Valdez Glacier Lake. There are numerous micro climates within the area and the terrain is extremely diverse: from mellow powder slopes (that are a good option when avalanche danger is elevated) to extreme big mountain terrain.
This area encompasses a large zone of the Richardson Highway corridor starting several miles outside the town of Valdez to just before the road starts climbing up to Thompson Pass. It includes several major drainages into the Lowe River and numerous micro climates, as the primary snow climate transitions from Valdez coastal (maritime) to Thompson Pass intermountain (transitional).