While shooting K2’s “Controlled Chaos” at Mike Wieglele’s Heliskiing in Blue River, B.C. they spent a week cutting waist deep turns in the Cariboos and Monashees.  Two years later they were back in Blue River, filming ski action for the feature film, “Aspen Extreme.”  Once again they chanced upon deep powder under blue skies.  By then it was obvious that each time they skied together produced another chapter in “Scot and Doug’s Excellent Adventures.” 

Valdez might well prove to be the best.  Their needs were simple. Scot wanted to sea kayak. Doug wanted to ski a series of first descents between Valdez and Cordova.  As for equipment, they would need an A-Star to reach the high first descents and a boat to navigate Prince William Sound.  Between kayaking and fishing they would study the surrounding snow filled chutes. And once they inventoried potential lines, they could summon Coombs’ A-Stars to lift them into the surrounding peaks.

 One idea triggered another and by the time Scot and Doug signed off, if the world’s most seductive winter vacation wasn’t set in stone, it was at least penciled into their crowded calendars.  The only thing left to chance was the weather.

It's no surprise that Doug Coombs is the oldest person in the crowded lodge. Surrounding him are a wild haired crew with sport shields and milk chocolate tans that drive dermatologists wild. Not that these twenty somethings worry overly much about age spots, wrinkles or any of the other attendant problems that accrue from prolonged exposure to the sun. Certainly not when they’re skiing exposed fifty-five-degree faces plastered with a variety of beneficent or treacherous snow.

The Tsaina “look” is young, long haired and radical.  The major fashion is total lack of fashion--baggy sweats that do not completely hide the over developed thighs, pile vests, wrinkled shirts, cross trainers, muddy hiking boots and youthful beards—goatees, moustaches, lower lip spiders and three-day growths.

Valdez is best known for the extreme contest, but the contest ended a week ago and this group has assembled for a different type of extreme behavior--not for a judge--but for sixteen-millimeter Bolexes or next generation videos. This is big country, among the biggest you'll ski and it’s obvious that Coombs is building his own Wiggly World here on Thompson Pass. While Coombs is clearly the Master of Ceremonies, that role comes at a price. Following sixty days of heli guiding, he has the disheveled look that haunts most of the men, and many of the women who fill the lodge. Alternately contemplative, alternately hyper, he describes fifty-five-degree descents to photographer Larry Prossor, Schmidt and me who all nod without committing. 

The standing joke in the Tsaina Lodge is only the snowboarders have the budget to fly.  Because snowboarding is still regarded as a growth sport, manufacturers willingly underwrite hours of helicopter time—simply to capture a single frame or a radical video sequence that will promote their equipment. To help defray expenses Schmidt has invited his friend Craig Kelly along for the ride.  One of the world’s most recognized extreme snowboarders, Kelly jumped at the chance to ride the Chugach’s remote chutes.

Though it is now late April, winter still holds sway on these vertical faces and we wake to a gray dawn and slanting snow that speaks to a building storm. The Chugach are an imperious range, concerned only with the slow uplift and rapid destruction of ice and moving water. The actions of men in helicopters who, when the weather clears enough to fly from the Tsaina lodge, are as unnoticed and inconsequential as the mosquitoes buzzing around the high faces. We’re scheduled to meet at eight o’clock for a safety orientation but, studying the swirling flakes and alternating fog banks, Coombs pulls the plug. 

When the weather closes in, the photographers, cinematographers, skiers and snowboarders, break the boredom by doing chin-ups on the climbing holds nailed above the door jambs, playing pool or wandering into the parking lot to hacky sack.  When the weather truly dissolves, skiers cling to the forecast with the fervor of ship wreck victims on an overloaded life raft. 

Surrounded by the skiers and photographers, Coombs has the final say on who flies and who sits. The weight of his decision can make or break a film crew’s winter. A single image of a skier in the Chugach’s chest-deep power could anchor a film or an article and the politicking is earnest, direct and persuasive.

Trying to make himself heard over the thunderous Bob Marley beating from the bar’s sound system, Coombs wears the worn look of a high-altitude guide. Valdez has become a Mecca for cinematographers who, because of their fame, believe they can simply appear and make the show. The clients pay the bills, but the film crews generate the kind of publicity that money can’t buy. Deny the film crews, and the demand dries up. Deny the clients and you go broke. Each time the sun sears through the cloud cover, crews and client raise their faces in hope of eminent clearing and deep snow.

At the beginning of the trip Scot, Craig, Larry and I had the luxury of time, but as the days pass and our departure approaches the waning days grow more valuable and our standards drop. 

Coombs believes heli-skiing is a form of window shopping.  When big blue succeeds the gray bird, the mall opens. The status is: (1) get your gear in a pile.  (2) start putting your gear on because there is a good chance the ship will fly. (3) you're boarding the ship but it's still not definite. (3.5) the rotor is turning. (4) the rotor is turning and you’re off the ground. (5) from here on it looks pretty good. 

Instead, he proposes alternate radical descents that can be accessed from the Tsaina. “If the weather holds we can fly to the Books and stay out until late evening.” He says.

Because the Books are relatively isolated, a rapidly moving storm can easily strand the helicopter.  After three days of sitting, Kelly quickly commits.

With a wife and two daughters at home, Schmidt admits he no longer spontaneously hucks onto big faces.  “What’s the exposure like?” he asks,

“Primary,” Coombs replies, meaning that a fall won’t send Scott cartwheeling off a cliff or into a yawning crevasse.

The following morning a rotor’s rapid “throp, throp,” summons Schmidt and Kelly from the Tsaina’s bunkhouse.  Cinched into climbing harnesses and carrying packs festooned with shovel’s ice axes and probes they catch the fourth helicopter load out to what Coombs calls Couloir Alley. 

Following the contour of a deep glacier that flows between two vertical walls, the A-Star settles on a ridge above “Cauliflower”-–a chute that offers two thousand feet of raw intimidation.  Descending at forty-five degrees from the landing zone, “Cauliflower” gradually flattens out to a relatively sedate forty, where conditions change from cold powder to a thin, windblown crust. 

The missing link in the “Scot, Craig and Doug’s Excellent Adventure” is sea kayaking among the icebergs that have calved off the Columbia Glacier.  On the evening that the boys are scheduled to meet Captain Neal Oppen aboard “Thor” a converted fishing boat in Valdeze, last minute heli-skiers wave an American Express Gold Card at Coombs. Bowing to the bottom line, Doug sends Schmidt, Kelly, Prosor and I ahead with promises to meet us in two days at the head of Hildalgo Sound.

Captain Oppen who spends winters snowboarding at Bridger Bowl anchors Thor in Heather Bay where the Columbia Glacier’s blue face launches hundreds of icebergs into the main channel, Sea Otters surround the boat and the late evening sky shimmers with harlequin ducks, buffle heads and terns.

Scot and Craig unload the kayaks and paddle toward house sized bergs. Oppen’s warning to keep their distance proves to be prescient. A few seconds later a massive berg turns turtle sending a huge wave that, lifting the Thor, causes her to strain against the anchor.

The morning passes in time to the dip and splash of kayak paddles the cries of terns and passing, curious otters and it is mid-afternoon when Captain Oppen weighs anchor and leaves the Columbia Glacier behind. Charting a course between Blight Island and Ellamar, the hours pass to the thrumming of Thor’s  diesel and the company of otters and dolphins and it is late afternoon when Oppen drops anchor in a mirrored inlet of Fidalgo Bay.

Coombs is expected at 9 am the following morning but it is 1 pm when the A-Star banks over Thor and lands on a gravel beach. Coombs tells Scot and Craig that Valdez Heliskiing is busier than ever and, unfortunately, he can only spare a few hours. 

This close to the Arctic, day fades slowly in late April.  The sun sinks toward the ocean gilding the Sound’s high snow fields, soft gold. One descent follows another and, in honor of first tracks, Coombs, Schmidt and Kelly name the runs “Quickie,” “Ocean View” and “Little Bear” after the Brown Bears that rise on their hind legs as the helicopter passes.

The rare combination of ocean humidity and steep north faces converts the Chugach’s snowfall into deep and stable pack that releases in constant, crystal streams. Often reaching two feet in depth, these sloughs can rip a ski off a boot seconds before it buries the model. Coombs calls it “Getting Chugached” adding that on fifty-degree slopes, slough management is critical.

Rejoicing in the unlimited visibility, Coombs leads Schmidt and Kelly down the sheer, untracked chute. Deep, light and stable, the Chugach powder chases them in airy sloughs that slow and die as the grade fades from fifty, to forty to thirty degrees. “Cauliflower,” however, only serves as a warmup for other, more radical faces to follow.

Lifting off the glacier, the A-Star climbs to a flat perch above “Three Pigs.” Under the best of circumstances, “Pigs” might be rated “intermediate.” While Coombs and Kelly descend a broad face, Schmidt hesitates above a narrow rock-studded snout. Testing the snow with his pole, he steps off  the cornice, lands, and begins to link turns through the fifty-degree powder and hidden ice and rock outcroppings.

 During the next two days Coombs, Schmidt and Kelly, Prosor and I fly to the distant “Books” and the “Wall” –names so intimidatingly steep that they appear unskiable from the ship. 

Kelly and Schmidt are disappointed but have been studying an impossibly exposed point at the head of the long glacier.  Loading our gear into the A-Star, the turbine fires and we lift away.

Ten minutes later, with the Fidalgo Arm sparkling in the distance, Craig Kelly drops in and arcs from edge to edge through a heavy sluff that chases him out onto the glacier. Schmidt is next, skiing nonstop ahead of a crystalline wave.

Coombs is last. Choosing a dangerously exposed line next to a thousand-foot cliff, one missed turn will send him cartwheeling off the edge. The mistake, however, never happens as Coombs traverses beneath the cliff and links turns onto the glacier below.

While the boys had planned six first descents but the A-Star’s thousand dollar an hour burn rate served as sober deterrent to fun for fun’s sake.  Keeping one on the rotor time and one on the distant peaks, they are finally forced to pull the plug. Coombs has heli-skiers beating down his door, Kelly is expected in Greenland and Schmidt must leave for Denali. Their planned week of heli-skiing and kayaking has shrunk to a few days.