Culross Island, Prince William Sound (Ski)

If there is a more sublime place to ski than Prince William Sound, I haven’t seen it. Far from roads, in a realm of icebergs amidst a profusion of marine mammals, the snow reaches waterline and we Alaskans can ski from the Sound to maritime glaciers.

There are few other places on earth where such extremities converge: Glaciers a thousand feet deep plunge into the Sound’s waters. Icebergs calves amidst whales feeding. Moss-draped spruce rise alongside sheer glacier-carved cliffs. The sea life is so bountiful it seems to percolate from the depths, as otters rise with shellfish, whales breach, and sea lions cavort in droves. Some of the smallest and largest creatures, ice worms and whales, live in adjacent ice and water.  This overflowing volume of life includes the ground itself, a web of moss and roots and ferns that spills over the rocks, overhanging the cliffs, often reaching the water’s edge.

This time of year, much of that earth in the western Sound is buried beneath feet of insulating snow. In Blackstone Bay, the wall of snow at waterline may be so high it is hard to ascend. Don’t let it stop you.

Prince William Sound has many rounded domes, mountains that glaciers polished in a previous era. It takes just a few minutes of skinning up these mountains around Culross Island or the eastern side of Cochrane Bay to obtain panoramic views.  Ridges on the east side of Blackstone Bay present veritable boardwalks up into the glaciers that nearly surround the water.

Surprisingly, there is snow down to waterline even in this winterless year, at least in Blackstone Bay. In normal snow years, there is ample snow from Blackstone Bay to Culross Island, back in Pigot Bay, and farther off around Port Nellie Juan. Numerous Forest Service cabins including Paulson Bay, Shrode Lake, and Pigot Bay offer luxurious base camps for ski trips. However, these cabins typically fill up months in advance since prime ski season in Prince William Sound overlaps with the shrimping season that begins in mid April.

Ski destinations in the Sound are farther away than most people will want to sea kayak even in a long weekend, so it takes either a longer human-powered trip or a motor to get out to good ski terrain. On a motorboat, however, many ski destinations are only about an hour outside of Whittier. Culross Island often is a good destination for scenic skiing. It has an expanse of islands and peninsulas on one side, open water on the other, and the full expanse of the central Chugach visible to the north. There is a good moorage and landing area at Goose Bay cabin, which unfortunately is not open due to snow damage dating to 2012. Goose Bay is not preferable for camping, as it lacks dry and well-drained gravel berms.

The western sides of both Cochrane and Blackstone Bays have numerous points for landing and beginning to ski. In a low snow year like this one, they also are a better bet to find snow down to waterline. In typical years, there are many feet of snow to the water in Blackstone well into the summer.

The snowpack in the Sound is quite different from Turnagain Pass or other nearby mountains. It is the most maritime of snow, heavy and dense from frequent winter and spring rains. It can be hard to catch it at the right time, ideally when it is still cold at night but turning to corn during the day. It is particularly important to watch for wet slides and the avalanche hazards of an isothermic snowpack, which can result from prolonged temperatures above freezing. Culross Island has plenty of low-angle terrain for a suspect isothermic snowpack, while the east flanks of Blackstone and Cochrane Bays are steeper.

As this winter showed, the snow line is climbing ever higher up the mountains. Skiing from ocean to mountaintop, water to glacier, will soon become another climate change anachronism. Now is the time to ski the Sound and experience the kind of scenic and biophilic overload that exists almost no place else on earth.