AK-Thompson Pass

I was soo excited about my trip that I had a tough time sleeping last night. Instead I read about rappelling and setting snow anchors in my mountaineers book and hoped that would put me to sleep, it did. I met up with my cousin at Sea/Tac airport and we flew to Anchorage to hook up with our college buddy Shay and two of his friends. We drove the 4 hours to Valdez in our rented Navigator and were taunted by the beautiful Chugach Range the entire way(pictured above). We stopped to take pictures a couple of times and gauk at some monstrous glaciers that were pouring out of the range.
We made it to Thompson Pass (Above), where ABA is headquartered, and proceeded to get the navigator stuck in a snow drift. Nothing our shovels and some pushing couldn't get us out of...but it is VERY cold here, the car was saying it was -2 Farenheit. It's a good thing I brought the full quiver of Arc'Teryx layers to keep me warm. It was snowing and blowing very hard at the pass.

We filled out our forms and spoke with Dave who runs the Heli operation we are riding with...he was very excited about the snow that fell today and thinks it shold be good the next couple of days. The wind has been heavy in Valdez and we are hoping it will calm down a bit for us..our fingers are crossed.