Valdez, Alaska Ski Guide & Avalanche Education Provider

The Valdez Glacier area is a vast zone for backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering in Alaska with access near the small oceanside town of Valdez. It has a unique micro climate being coastal but also a primary outflow drainage for the high elevation and heavily glaciated terrain of the interior Central Chugach. This maritime-interior snowpack dynamic means the area is significantly colder and drier than nearby portside skiing zones. The Valdez Glacier area can have half the snowpack, at the same elevation and aspect, as terrain five miles to the south across the Lowe River Valley (closer to Cordova). While it may have only half the snowpack, that snow may also have only half the water content (i.e. be much lower density powder).

There’s something for everyone in this area: long mellow powder runs, insanely huge gullies and couloirs, steep faces and chutes, multi-day tours, and heavily glaciated ski. mountaineering terrain.

Experience Alaska’s best backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering with the Chugach Mountain Institute. Professional and highly qualified guide Mat Brunton is a year-round Valdez resident with 2,000 days experience skiing and mountaineering in Alaska. He is attuned to the snowpack here from the first snowfall through the last.

Don’t choose a guide that only comes to Valdez for a short stint in the spring, hasn’t followed the snowpack, doesn’t understand local conditions dynamics, and lacks knowledge of terrain if you want the best Valdez skiing experience. Choose CMI: the Valdez and Thompson Pass based ski guide.