Alaska has a way of stripping the word “outdoorsy” of any self-congratulation. About 20 minutes north of downtown, the city of Anchorage gives way abruptly, replaced by the sheer scale of the Chugach and Talkeetna ranges’ 8,000-foot peaks, the long pull of Highway 1 into the Mat-Su, and a cold, clarifying sense that human comfort has a short reach here. It’s the kind of landscape I’d been imagining since 8th grade, when I’d burrow in my suburban Denver basement for hours playing 1080° Snowboarding on Nintendo 64, Blink-182 or Less Than Jake on the 3-disc changer, dreaming of halfpipes, big lines, and the glide-or-die life taking place an hour up Interstate 70. Even back then, the mythology stretched past Colorado. In Summit County lift lines, Alaska came up like a higher calling — the place where riders like Jeremy Jones were pioneering spine battles in Valdez and Mike Hatchett’s Totally Board film series was redefining action cinematography in the peaks outside Juneau.
In March 2026, nearly 30 years later, I finally got my chance to follow that vision north. The question wasn’t only whether Alaska would live up to the version I’d built in my head. It was how close an ordinary snowboarder could get to the big-mountain dream that had been pulling at me since my teenage years.
Rubbing shoulders with a dream
Pretty darn close, it turned out. At least, in terms of physical distance. On my first overnight at Alyeska Resort, I sat at the community dining table inside the hotel’s Sakura restaurant with the ski writer Melissa McKibbon. Across from us we heard chatter of the big-mountain-focused Natural Selection contest tour, apparently happening here, now, with the pro athletes, judges, and crew all staying in the same hotel as us. In a chance encounter we’d sat across from Grete Eliassen and Dion Newport, pro skiing veterans serving as judges at the freestyle backcountry competition. Night one and here we were, downing Nigiri with someone I’d once watched perform at the X-Games.
We were scheduled for a heli-ski day with Chugach Powder Guides the following morning, and spent dinner prying our new friends for intel on conditions. The weather looked good as CPG picked us up outside the hotel the following morning morning…