It can be hilarious what months of careful planning and weeks of meticulous packing inevitably lead to: four ski mountaineers standing next to a 600lb pile of the bare essentials and the lightest gear that technology has ever offered. And it’s astonishing how that pile of gear, those four skiers, and one very large pilot can disappear into a small airplane. In reality, the deHaviland Beaver is not a small aircraft amongst the fleet of Alaskan bush planes, but compared to the commercial airliners that brought us to Alaska and the mountains that we’d soon fly between, it seemed tiny. Next to our 600lb pile of gear, it seemed downright diminutive. Nevertheless, we were soon airborne – headed for the very end of the Alaska Range and an obscure range called the Revelation Mountains.

The Revelations are incredibly remote and have hosted very few explorers since the first party ventured into them in 1967. The first traverse of the exterior of the range had been accomplished a few years earlier by Joe Stock and company; we would be the first skiers to explore the interior of the range. Our team was Andrew McLean, Noah Howell, Jim Harris, and Courtney Phillips.

Our plan to explore the Revelations was simple; ski as much as possible and eat as much as possible. The weather in the range is notorious for making it hard for human beings to live, much less skiers to thrive, so we tried to keep our expectations low. Rob Jones, a hunting outfitter who operates a lodge near the range, indicated that snow levels were about 60% of normal. We expected this to limit our climbing/skiing options, and we also expected that it would present risks beyond those we are normally accustomed to managing.

Our ride spent little more than 10 minutes on the snow; we began digging our first camp into the shallow show before the engine noise had completely faded down the glacier. As it turns out, the shallow snowpack became a critical factor in establishing our two base camps. Snow depth on the main glacier ranged from 6″ to 36″, where there was snow. The Revelation Glacier is old and fading, with large areas of exposed ice. Above us on all sides, couloirs split 6000′ rock walls in the most dramatic fashion. Low snow or not, the Revelation Mountains present truly incredible ski-mountaineering terrain, easily measuring up to their name.

The risks of climbing and skiing in a range like the Revs are different from the ranges more commonly skied – different even from most of the Alaska Range. The most attractive lines ranged from 3000′ to 5000′ in relief, and all require direct ascent. Because of the variability in snowpack over that much relief, climbing up the couloirs of the Revelations can feel a bit like crawling into the barrel of the Missouri’s 16″ guns and hoping they’re not loaded. Because the range had received so little snow during the winter, we could expect a thin pack over rocks to provide ample opportunities to trigger old slabs, and the difficult terrain management further compounded this. Granting confidence was the obvious fact that the area had received very little snow in the past couple weeks, granting time for instabilities to settle out.

Among the risks of being flushed out of a chute 4000′ long and 40′ wide, other risks were present. Most of the team’s travel occurred on the main glacier that had very little crevassing, but nearly every day we were required to navigate fractured icefalls. Liberating even small amounts of snow on a 40-degree slope in these areas could launch a skier into inky dark crevasses below. Also, adding comedy and amazement to every day were the seracs that capped the walls of the gorge. One in particular, a well- loaded serac overhanging an El Cap-sized vertical wall, regularly launched tons of ice and rock that fell almost entirely freely to the glacier below. The event occurred every 12 hours or so, and shook the glacier impressively at our second basecamp over a mile away. Finally, the wild card in play was snow over water and alpine ice. At times we encountered faceted snow as much as 18″ deep, laying in wait over ice that wouldn’t need too much polishing to be fit for an NHL game.

At times, managing these risks was paramount, and at other times, unconsidered. Dodging the devastation under the seracs was relatively simple; don’t go there, and don’t camp there. The other risks were not so easily mitigated and in the end were eventually accepted. The team adopted the standard protocols of spacing out in the danger zones, skiing one at a time from safe spot to safe spot, and skiing through deposition zones as quickly as possible. Daytime heating encouraged us to avoid slopes that received prolonged direct sunlight – both to avoid being caught in frequent wet slides, and because the skiing in those areas wasn’t terribly compelling. Frequently, within 50′ of the tops of couloirs, hard snowdrifts were easily observed and avoided. Only once did I observe cracking while approaching these features. We received about 12″ of snow in the only storm of the expedition. Other than a significant slide that cleaned out a chute we’d skied two days earlier, we observed very little natural activity after that.

In all, we found the terrain to require every attention we could give it, but the snow turned out to be relatively benign. We moved camp once; an all-day, four- mile epic of downhill trail breaking with skins on in heavy snow deposited by our only storm. We skied absolutely incredible lines, and we gave them names such as The Alpha Couloir, The Boot of All Evil, The Shroud of Turnin’, Jesus Crust Super Gnar, and The Immaculate Deception. The walk out to meet our flight back to civilization included snow-covered glacier, bare glacier, moraine, frozen-river skiing, river bedrock, braided streams swelling with early spring melt water, and a shoe-sucking swamp. I recall that it was about 15 miles, but when you’re having that much fun, who’s counting?

Summary

Project: Revelation Mountains Exploration

Location: Revelation Mountains, Alaska Range, Alaska, USA

Participants: Andrew McLean, Noah Howell, Jim Harris, and Courtney Phillips.

Date: 2010

Media:

• A Trip to the Revelations, by Courtney Phillips, The Avalanche Review, December 2010, 29(2):30-31.
• Beast out of the Earth, by Jim Harris, Powder, Sept 2011
• Andrew McLean’s site