Caroline George: Valdez - A dream come true

After a great trip to Alps, I flew to Anchorage, AK with Adam. Both he and I respectively had AMGA exams and advanced courses to take(www.amga.com) My friend Angela Hawse had been waiting for me there for a few days because I had had to postpone my flight there due to some health issues (see Les Droites entry).

Yet, as soon as I got there, we drove 6hours from Anchorage to Valdez - the world's heliski mecca - to start checking out the terrain we were going to be examined on. And this is what we found...

Long story short (will let the pictures speak for themselves), this course made my dreams of becoming an aspirant guide a reality. After taking the advanced alpine and rock this past fall and the level III AIARE course in March, this was the missing piece to the puzzle. This has been a very dear dream of mine. I have had to fight for this dream and believe in it in ways I had never before had to. It's been the most amazing journey, one filled with hope, happiness, sadness, deep grief and sorrow, challenges, learning experiences, amazing travels, and mostly amazing people. I am greatful for it ALL. I am greatful for having believed and for people who believed in me.

I am now so excited for the journey ahead. I am still a ways away from getting the full certification but for now, I am just happy to be where I'm at...

Berlin Wall

While training, we got baseline information regarding the snowpack. The black line is the ash layer from when Mount Redoubt erupted late March. Impressive. This layer however made for really poor skiing, when, a few days later, it came to the surface on southerly aspects.

The Worthington Glacier

Eric Larsen building a sled, training for our sled lower drill

Skiing through seracs on the so called 27mile glacier

Getting a ride back to the car on a Harley... in Alaska, the law is that the passenger needs to wear a helmet, but not the driver of the bike... no comment!