indescribable

lower butter bowl
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i have no way to begin to describe the day that i have experienced today, this place has the abilitiy to take you to places you can never imagine, the things that i experienced in just one day you would be happy to experience in a lifetime.  And i managed to pull it off in 10 hours.

Yesterday i have not seen it rain so much in a single day, no-one was calling it a fly day on the next day.  Yet i awoke at 7am to blue skies, i thought it was going to be a typcial "sucker hole" giving you clear weather until you get kitted up just in time for the clouds and weather to come in by the time you are psyched and ready.

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Well this was the real deal - we got ready before 9am to be second out in the zone. We made it out to lower Butter Bowl to completely flat light and a dark horizon but i was for once so excited to be able to experience the true alaskan powder i came all this way to get. Well the light was totally flat - meaning you could not see up from down over 2 metres in front of you.  The beauty of snowboarding is you have to rely on the skiers to make some tracks and definition for you - that means they get the eat the snow well before you do.  He He He It took quite some time to get us all down - we were hemmed in by a crevasse on one side and an ice fall on the other - the snow was beautiful, we got at least 6 inches, more than enough to cover our previous tracks and make it like floating on a cloud. Luckily enough we got a quick bump back up to the top where the previous group gave us a heads up on some good powder by a cliff band.  The advantage of the flat light meant i had no idea how fast i was going - all i could do was focus on the tracks in front of me and my next turn - it turned out that i made some beautiful and effortless linking turns down an amazing run, truly spectacular effort for me and could not have been better.

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Except the pilots called it a day as they could not make out any definition in landing and pick up due to the light conditions.  So 2 more runs down to make a grand total of 37 runs in 5 days - a big effort for this place.

After getting back and settling down CJ offers to take us on a flight to the beach.  We got in the heli once again and took the 20 minute ride along the sound to the ocean - a great ride over some spectacular sights. This was a truly momentous occasion for me - i sat on a log to have my lunch, i was sitting on the other side of the world looking out ocross the Atlantic Ocean - on a beach......in Alaska.

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I will never forget that lunch for the rest of my life - and it was the best sandwich i have ever had the opportunity to eat. Sitting back thinking of all i got up to today seems like it happened over several days it seems totally strange that i was on the mountain today - particularly as it is absolutely teeming down outside and blowing a gale - this weather is the wildest i have experienced out here - just some more fun going on.  This place is absolutely endless.