A Backcountry Home in the Chugach | Ascent Backcountry Snow Journal

I’m super excited to share my writing and photography to support this piece on the history of PNH Tour Camp. This issue also highlights another trip I guide in Greenland for Ice Axe Expeditions, with photography by Keoki Flagg. It’s a privilege to work as an athlete for such an amazing photographer, and you’ll see and feel that detail in all of the shots that accompany the Greenland piece. I also shot photos and wrote the “Classic Line” story in this issue about Mt. Dana and the Dana Plateau, and share one of my favorite photos in the gallery section of ripper Jules Hanna in Tahoe.

Back to Tour Camp, it’s literally a dream come true to have helped create such a place that still to this day is the only ski tour focussed operation of its kind in Alaska.  Enjoy the story, pick up a copy of Ascent, and please come visit us in AK!!

“I want to talk to you about ski touring in the Chugach. You think you can get up to PNH (Points North Heli-Adventures) this March or April?” 

All it took was a quick call from the man himself-owner, operator and lead guide Kevin Quinn, and life got instantly better. I didn’t know how much better at the time, but I did know that the invite I just received was something that could not be refused.

Along with his wife Jessica, “Quinner” as he’s known by most, runs the most well respected helicopter skiing business in Alaska. Even though his business is rock solid, Quinner envisioned a ski touring program where one did not exist in the most famous mountain range in the world for skiers and riders. One of his heli guides, the late, great Kip Garre, was a ski mountaineer who shared this vision. Kip was a driven visionary, a true skiers skier. He wasn’t going to stop heli-guiding, but he saw that there were “heli runs” that weren’t being skied because of a US Forest Service boundary that delineates where motorized and non-motorized recreation can take place.

Read the rest of the story here