I Camped on a Glacier in Alaska with 3 Finnish Dudes and Had a Life-Changing Experience

“Aleksi and I have been talking about going to Alaska for 10, 15 years now and it’s always something we wanted to do.”

“Well…Why don’t we go?”

“Yeah, that’d be cool.”

“…No…Seriously. Let’s plan a trip—what about next spring?”

That brief conversation sometime during winter 2024-2025 between Finnish splitboarder Janne Lääkkö and I—someone who I am lucky to consider both a mentor and friend in my current home of Chamonix—eventually led to be the trip of a lifetime where Janne and I and two other of our buddies from Finland, Aleksi and Mikko—a couple of bad, hard-hitting snowboarders—spent 12 days and nights camping on the Tsirku Glacier in the Takhinsha Mountains of Southeast Alaska near Haines. It was one hell of a trip. And it all started at Home Depot.

3 flights, 30 hours, and 5,000 miles and we arrived at the Juneau airport past midnight from France, weary and weird from all the travel. The first thing I saw when I got off the plane was a polar bear in a glass box and an empty baggage claim terminal. It took over an hour in the wee morning hours to find a taxi big enough to fit all the baggage for 4 greasy Europeans and enough gear for a several weeks-long glacier camping expedition. None of us had backcountry skied in Alaska before. It was dumping fat flakes at sea-level when we stepped outside of the airport.

We spent the next week in Juneau based out of the Alaskan Hotel in downtown acquiring gear, food, and necessities all while trying to figure out where exactly to base our camp and how to get out on the glacier. We managed to piss off Drake, the Ski Plane Guy in Haines, by texting him too much and were unsure if he was going to be able to drop us off in the mountains on such short notice. So we hit up all the heli operators in the area to see if any of them would give us a bump on a helicopter before finally Seandog with Alaska Heliskiing agreed that he would if we camped outside the heli zone and had Starlink for reliable communications, which we then purchased at Home Depot, among with a lot of other gear and random items I  never would have thought we needed, like big metal improvised tent stakes that would need to be bulletproof in the event of a strong storm with 60+ mph winds and heavy snowfall.

We lived at that Home Depot for a week. And the bar. Meanwhile it kept dumping in Juneau, which was encroaching on its snowiest winter for the city ever. While we were ironing out details, we hit a day at Eaglecrest Ski Area and met some heli guides from Haines—like Ian, a super nice guy who actually was the one who hooked us up with Seandog from AK Heli that ultimately led to us getting out on the glacier.

Rule #1 of any grand adventure: Make Friends.

We had our in. 

4 a.m. ferry to Haines. The sun rose, revealing tall, tempting, seaside peaks with giant couloirs from their tops all the way to the ocean. It was a pleasant way to wake up and start the day. Finally we were free from the Juneau loop of Home Depot, the hotel, and local brewery.

The weather was good for a heli drop the first day we were there but we weren’t ready; we hadn’t done a reconnaissance flight and were unsure about our proposed camp. Things look a lot different on Google Earth than real life—we had to get eyes on it. Then strong northeast winds came and we were forced to wait longer—setting up tents in icy 50 mph winds would have been impossible if not fatal. The next morning after the wind event we saw looking through binoculars that it had brutalized most of the snow in the area: we were back to square one.

We spent the next week in Haines trying to figure out what to do, where to go, and how to get there, frequenting the towns 3 bars and 4 restaurants. People started to know us—but we still hadn’t put skis and snowboards on snow in over a week. “Any luck?” we were constantly asked by local patrons of the Fogcutter bar when we went in there to play pool at night and drink away the uneventful day spent trying to dial in plans and staring at computer screens with dry eyes. We were starting to get tired from doing nothing at all. We refreshed crevasse rescue technique on the snowbank behind the hotel. We hit the local sauna (oh, these Finnish boys were excited about that). A day ski touring in Canada on Haines Pass got us stoked and ready and recharged our minds with a fresh sense of wonder toward what appeared to be the biggest, most vast, most excitable ski terrain in the world but that was short-lived after going back to Haines and having to wait some more while we continued to figure out logistics. You hear about the mental aspect of waiting for conditions to align in Alaska among seasoned pros and in movies but you don’t truly understand it until your there, laying in a hotel room, exhausted but not having moved for hours, staring at the ceiling, wondering how much more money you would have to spend before you got to fly in a helicopter and click into your skis.

Then Drake texted. “I can maybe fit you in for a scout in the coming days if you want.” The days passed slowly and then finally, on my 29th birthday, we got our recon flight.

We pulled up to the Haines Airport and Drake, moving swiftly to his hangar from his plane, hardly looked at us when he said, “Look, if you boys are globetrotters and expecting for me to drop you off soon after I told you how busy I am and then never coming back to this place then you shouldn’t fly with me. But if Haines is a place you plan to come back to in the future and you want to try and figure it out, I can take you. Otherwise this doesn’t make sense and you should leave.”

The ol’ Drake show. We had prepared for this. Locals said he was a bit crabby. One cool character though, and he eased up once the plane’s wheels left the tarmac. What he showed us absolutely blew the lids off our skulls and rekindled our stoke like lithium batteries doused in kerosene and set ablaze.

Spines. 

We finally saw them.

Drake gave us the grand tour. He explained everything. 

Jaws-dropped. We hardly spoke the entire plane ride.

Back at the hangar, Drake felt like a comrade and we were laughing, talking shit. We picked the long-gray haired, kind blue-eyed man’s brain for a little knowledge and left feeling glee. That night we tied one on for my birthday at the bars. I sang Luckenbach Texas at karaoke and told everyone I lived in France.

2 days later we were flying in a helicopter to our glacial home for the next 2 weeks.

Our pilot went by the nickname “Slinky”—a cool, calm, quiet cat who flew the heli from the off-grid lodge 35 miles outside of Haines which was filled with dogs and guides and ski bums and heli-skiers eager for the best runs of their life. Slinky had style. I sat shotgun in the helicopter, and in the headset he bumped smooth, groovy 70s jams as he effortlessly slid the chopper out of the base and into steep mountain wilderness. I’ll never forget that moment. Or the creepy song that was playing right when we were landing, with lyrics that rung in my ears for days afterwards, “Lost in the desert, the rescuers will never find you,” and sung in a light, happy way. The flight in was beautiful.

Perfect, still, sunny weather greeted us at the drop site after Slinky lifted the bird and flew it directly overhead and then back to base. We were totally on our own now, and we were ready. Camp was magnificent. We were dropped off on a perch near a rocky outcropping in a safe flat area, far from avalanches, and above a glacier on the left and at the level of another on the right, with far reaching views of the Fairweather Mountains to the west, 15,325-foot Mount Fairweather looming in the distance and the remaining panorama consisting of nothing but world-class mountains—all extremely demanding.

This was heaven if I had ever seen it. 

Then came digging. That was the task for the day. For the next several days, actually. I’ve never dug through so much snow in my life—or enjoyed it so much. We had to anchor in our tents perfectly for the wind, which would surely come. That dreaded, god-awful wind…

Halfway through the afternoon on the first day, Janne and I snuck out for a powsurf on the local low-angle hill just to the side of camp. The views and surf down were the best I’ve ever had on a binding-less board. We hit a few laps.

Then it got cold. Alaskan cold. Down clothing and gloves on at all times. But camp was set up, the kitchen was dug out with nice benches and a table, snow was getting melted for drinking water, and we were content as could be. The next day we’d try our luck on the glacier below and go check out the big beautiful steep scary wonderful amazing dream-line haunting gut-wrenching disgustingly sexy spines that sat just across the way that we dubbed “Sirens” and later learned were officially known as “Rooster Tail.”

We skied a steep southeast facing couloir in bad crusty snow on a peak that was riddled with epic chutes just to the north of camp in a zone we called “Petit Chamonix” due to its striking resemblance to the terrain in the part of the world we had just left behind. Janne laced the line with grace and ease, looking like he was skiing on-piste back home, but I forgot how to ski it seemed, and side-slipped a large section above exposure where a fall could have more than troublesome. Fucking Chamonix riders.

Then we were down on the glacier, surrounded by big, gorgeous blue ice seracs and steep lines galore. We roped up, wary of crevasses, traversing through them like criminals avoiding detection, and toured over to the spine wall to check out conditions—they weren’t good. The spines were crusty and wind-affected and overall boney with sharp rocks and icy runnels between them. We would have to wait for another storm at least before we could have a chance at them. Luckily one was on the way. So we turned around and skied a pretty run on the glacier, returning to camp with some good pictures to drool over and meticulously study the following days, pulling them out on a phone screen enthusiastically after a couple tin cups of ice-cold whiskey.

The next day we toured up on the other side of the glacier from camp to the saddle directly south, scoped the snow on that side only to find more bad, hard, icy snow on north faces, and got a wonderful view of the sea several miles away. We hit a long, mellow glacier run in evening light back to camp that was powder—in that sort of orange, inviting, surreal light you see in ski movies that just makes you smile and feel warm inside even though it was painfully cold in the shade where we transitioned to downhill mode and our fingers and toes were already numb. That sunset was purely epic. A giant full moon was rising. What planet was this we had all of a sudden become stranded on?

The full moon made everything visible at night and headlamps became obsolete. Then came the aurora. A green dancing vibrant light display created when charged particles from the sun collide with gases in Earth’s atmosphere, steered toward the poles by the planet’s magnetic field. It was stronger than I had ever seen, shifting and caressing the surrounding terrain like a giant hand petting a puppy’s head. My heart was overfull. I stood out there for a while, forgetting how cold it was.

Then the storm came.

Winds shook the tent and made sleep virtually impossible.

Snow was pounding, and we had to get up and get dressed in the middle of the night in all our gear to unbury the tents to prevent them from collapsing. Getting back in the tents, we had to make sure we didn’t bring any snow or wetness in there with us, and put our down clothes back in their dry bags, before sleeping a few hours and getting up to do it all over again. There is no room for laziness on the glacier—sloth kills here.

Storm days were spent digging and melting snow on little pop-up stoves. You want water? Then you have to go collect snow in plastic bags and sit down on your little foam pad so your ass doesn’t get wet and boil it. This took hours. The majority of our camp experience was spent melting snow for drinking water and using that water for our freeze dried meals, which were made edible by copious amounts of Sriracha. We dug a snowcave as a failsafe in the event that winds would collapse our tents. If that happened, and we didn’t have a place protected from the storm, we would all die. Luckily I was with 3 Finns who grew up making snowcaves for fun and this was second nature to them. So we designed a palace.

2 rooms. 2 entrances. 4 beds. Multiple staircases. Tall ceilings with plenty of standing/walking space. Cubbies and shelves. We made the most glamorous snowcave I’ve ever even imagined. It only took 2 full days of shoveling snow and dragging it out through a tunnel in big duffel bags. I alone probably moved over 1 ton of snow. “Nimeni on Gulag Martin!” (My name is Gulag Martin in Finnish). The whiskey on those nights tasted better than it ever had. Life in the mines was surprisingly good.

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Once the snow hotel was dug and secure, we finally had a day to rest. A break from gulag life. We slept in and played cards and ate a lot of candy and just let the day blur past, doing not much. Chilling is always so much better when it’s earned.

The next day we dug around a little more, making final arrangements on our snowcave, dialing out little furnishings and details, and played cards and chess. Mikko beat me 8 times and I didn’t win once. The next day was similar. The storm raged on. I kept losing at chess.

Then at the end of the next day we had a brief weather window. We attempted to ski cut and trigger an avalanche down our return couloir so it would be safe to climb back up the next day—a tight, steep 50º+ 2 ice ax couloir—but to no avail. It was too steep to form a slab—most of it sluffed off during the storm. This fun little technical climb above a big bergschrund and lots of firm, fast, bone-breaking-if-you-fell snow was the only way back to camp after a day on the lower glacier, where our beloved spine wall and other delicious north faces on the menu sat, looking hot-and-ready after the storm that dropped a meter of new snow. You can take the dog out of Chamonix but not Chamonix out of the dog.

While trying to surrender the hazardous snow out of the couloir, Aleksi crashed his drone on a snowfield near the top of a 500-foot free-standing spire next to the couloir and I thought that it was a goner for sure. I underestimated Aleksi—something nobody should ever do. He literally roped up and alpine climbed over to the snowfield, traversing on thin snow above exposure while Mikko belayed him in the blistering cold, big gloves and down jackets on, while Aleksi plucked the drone out from the snowfield hanging over 400 feet of death exposure like he picking apples at the supermarket. Who had I come here with? I felt way out of my depth but pleasantly amused at the same time. Meanwhile on the other side of camp, out of earshot of the boys while they were playing Mission Impossible, Janne and I snuck out for a mellow powsurf but didn’t make it 50 meters from the tents when we were stopped dead in our tracks, our bones rattled—hair raised on the back of our necks, palms sweaty from what we had just seen.

Janne heard a little “whumph” in the snow. Only a small one. He said he thought remotely triggering an avalanche would be possible. He thought that we should turn back there. I said yes, that it was probably possible, but also that we were so far away from avalanche terrain that we were fine there. It was super flat at that position. Janne said ok keep walking then but that he’ll stay where he was standing for a moment and just watch what happens next. I said ok guy.

I made it about 6 steps when I heard another little “whumph.” Over 500 feet to our right on the steep part of the face just below the couloirs we skied the other day, a medium sized avalanche broke and flushed the couloir below it. Then we saw a big powder cloud emanating from the lower glacier and fixed our gaze higher up the mountain, above the initial avalanche crown. We saw not one, but 5 more avalanche crowns. The entire mountain of couloirs had flushed, all propagating from that little whumph I heard, the furthest remotely triggered avalanche being over 1,000 feet away. We turned around right then. No powsurfing tonight.

The 1 meter of snow that had fallen landed on large surface hoar crystals that formed during the cold, still, romantic night of the aurora and was now extremely problematic. Every rose has its thorns.

The next day the visibility was bad and once it cleared enough to see a few feet outside of camp, we dug snow pits and evaluated the snowpack to see how it was reacting after a couple of days of it sitting there. But not much had changed, and it was still extremely reactive on the surface hoar layer buried over 3 feet deep. Avalanches were certain and could be large and propagating. And the thing was, the next day was our last possible day of riding before we had to head back to civilization and it was supposed to sunny—a banger day if conditions would have lined up. But we saw the writing on the wall.

We had talked over freeze-dried dinner that night in a hopeful tone that the spine wall was so steep that maybe the snow had sluffed off before it had the chance to form a slab, or perhaps the surface hoar had been erased by the wind and wasn’t lingering there, and maybe—just maybe–there would be a chance to ski a line of a lifetime. Shoot—a chance is all we would need to eagerly get up and out the door in the morning.

We were up before sunrise. The snowcave was extra cozy at night and fairly warm. And quiet—so silent sat its walls. Even with wind blowing outside you couldn’t hear a thing down there because of the way snow dampens sound. I got up first and gave salute to the rising sun and starting melting snow for breakfast and coffee. The Fairweather Range to the west was glowing golden as as ever, shining bright and smiling back at us, big crazy spine walls waving at us in the distance in what is truly the Mecca for steep riding in this wild wonderful world. We didn’t talk much over breakfast, scrounged it down, and geared up. Then it was time to rappel down the exit couloir and get onto the glacier and set off for the spine wall.

“That’s a fucking awesome way to start your day!” I declared at the bottom of the rappel into the glacier. Chamonix has taught me to appreciate some strange things. Then we made big, fast, GS turns one at a time to the flats below, wary of the nefarious slab lurking beneath our feet. It was sunny and cold and just a pretty day to be out on the glacier. By noon we were at the top of the other side of the glacier, next to the spine wall, ready to bootpack up to their daring entrance. The spines looked sexier than ever.

We crossed the bergshrund, Aleksi going first and making a giant bootpack with his big giraffe legs, and then we climbed up the 50º face on the back to the ridgeline leading to spines. So far so good. But then at the top things went sour.

The ridgeline was thin as a sword’s blade, with deathly exposure of cliffs on one side, and a long wave of undulating cornices all the way up, climaxed by a 50-foot-tall cornice at the top that was as long as a school bus, maybe a school bus and a half. The only way to get to the spines was either on top of or under the cornices which could break from our weight or, in theory, at any time. After some minutes of discussion and debate, we decided to walk under them.

Aleksi and Janne went first. Not 10 steps in Janne triggered a windslab that avalanched down to the flats below. It failed on the surface hoar layer. Then Aleksi triggered another slab a few feet later as he climbed, this time a bigger one that almost carried him along with it. We all looked at each other without saying a word, our faces showing no emotion or signs of either excitement or disappointment whatsoever. We knew what it meant before having to say anything.

It was what it objectively was. We knew that the chances of actually skiing the spine wall today, in these conditions, were astronomically low. But we gave it our best—which is all you can do as a man in this life. Back at the ridgeline, we looked at our return run to the glacier, which was still properly steep and pretty nice-looking honestly. Some birds flew far overhead and we stared at them in surprise as they silently cruised past, high above; in 2 weeks of glacier camping this was the only sign of life we had seen. Not one animal or organism had been observed the entire time we were out there. This camp we set up was like an outpost on an alien planet deep in the depths of the galaxy that held nothing but rowdy mountainous steep skiing spine terrain with no signs of intelligent life.

The boys let me drop first. I made a big cutting turn to the left, nothing moved, and then I opened it up, flying high and fast and long all the way to the bergschrund in one sweeping motion that felt to me, graceful. I felt good at the bottom. Alive. I tried to whip my drone out to shoot the boys but one of the propellors broke and it was too cold for me to unscrew the bearing and repair it. So I just sat there and watched at the boys stylishly snowboarded the steep face back to the glacier, stopping underneath another steep and absolutely massive spine wall known as “Urchin Spines.” Disappointment was briefly overtaken by contentment. We skied back to the flat bottom and started the chilly, slow walk back home. We didn’t talk to one another. I think the boys, like I was, were working through a lot of things mentally. 2 weeks of glacier camping, perpetually melting snow with little stoves, digging snowcaves, hauling ice blocks, eating shitty food, dealing with the blustery cold, missing loved ones, and months of preparation all culminated in one final push for the spines that had us turning around a mere 30 meters from their pearly summit.

C’est la vie.

At least we had the fun 2 ax climb back to camp to look forward to. In the couple of hours it took to get back to camp from the glacier, I already dissected the positives from the entire experience, figured where I could have done better and been more present, observed my demons and attempted to make peace with them, and overall deliberated to myself how I would do the next trip to this mysterious place even better that time around, if I were to be so lucky. I reflected on how the person I was at this moment was clearly different than the one who had come in on the helicopter 12 days and nights prior, even though on the surface nothing really noticeable had changed if you looked at me. These masterful Finnish snowboarders with decades of steep ski and winter camping experience, who I have the honor to call not only mentors but buddies, have been teaching me firsthand the delicate art of patience and learning to turn around from a dangerous decision when every cell in your body just wants to shred and let it ride. They coached me on how to pitch a good tent in the snow and how to build a proper snowcave that would save your ass when you needed it most. They helped me to better understand snowpack and snow conditions in steep terrain and how crucial that is if you want to maintain longevity in an alpine environment that is constantly and relentlessly trying to kill you at all costs. They showed me how to take ego out of decision making and act from a place of wisdom and higher knowledge—from a deeper, secluded place within yourself that is protected from outside influence and which is impenetrable, not subject to the persuasion we often succumb to in our daily lives that comes in many forms, like seeking approval from others and dopamine boosts or social media likes and comments or other generally ego-fueling behaviors, and which just wants to keep doing what it loves and do it well and for a long time, such as skiing cool lines in nice snow with good company. And they taught me a little Finnish, too.

We got back to camp just as the sun was setting, like usual when we went down to that lower glacier, strolling into camp tired and thirsty, with crampons on and axes in had. The wavy ripples from the wind-affected snow on the powsurf zone above camp breathed and pulsed blue and yellow as the bloated sun expelled its final breaths of the day and submerged under the sea of peaks to the West. The aurora greeted us once more that night, this time red like spilled blood. We vowed to come back.

The next day was lovely. We chilled and drank a lot of coffee and calmly packed up camp. Once the tents were all down and our bags were packed, I took a little nap on the glacier, sun roasting my face, warm air swirling in a way that had me feeling like I was more so at a beach than on a glacier. When I came back to, Rihanna, comms operator for AK Heli, messaged that the helicopter would be there in roughly 1 hour, just around sunset time. Then I got the bright idea to build a kicker below camp with what little time there was remaining and send it.

Aleksi hit it first, flying far and landing clean, big scary cliffs a little too close to comfort just down glacier from the jump’s landing. I tried a 360 and fell. “10 minutes until the heli,” Mikko announced. Shit! I had to at least try to land the trick one more time. I charged back up to the top of the track leading into the crudely built kicker, the sun angle low, snow starting reflect its tangerine rays, when I thought I heard the distant chop of a helicopter’s blades. It was now or never. I tried not to think too much and just pointed my skis down the glacier, taking off towards the lip of the jump, popping and rotating and giving it all the finesse I had left in my bones after living out of a glacier camp for nearly 2 weeks, and stomped the 360. “That’s how you do it!” I yelled but no one was listening. I ran over to my bags that were sitting inside of our former camp’s fortified walls and just as I got there I heard the helicopter for real.

Slinky showed up and parked the chopper casually, like arriving to a cafè for Sunday brunch, cooly walked out, and asked, “So how was it?”

Photos