So I know all of you want to feast your eyes on shots of the “Real” Jeremy Jones boardsliding a 60 degree razor spine or Ryland Bell slashing down a 2000 ft fin over fatal exposure, but well…that ain’t happenin’ right now. Gonna have to wait till Deeper drops next fall! Until the dinner bell, I thought I’d serve an appetizer plate of equally savory, but not so spicy images that describe some of the juicy details of our epic AK adventure.

The Fairweather Range of Alaska is home to the sickest spine walls on earth. Man-eating fins like these don’t form up just anywhere because it takes a rare combination of maritime snow in ridiculous quantities to make it happen. There is no doubt Jeremy would hang out in a tent for 19 storm days for just one day of riding such wicked snow features. Thankfully, we spent 9 days tent bound for 11 days of riding these virgin spines.

Towards the end of our trip we were visited by several flocks of noisy snow geese.  The geese didn’t seem to mind flying in white-out conditions but we did hear them turn around abruptly after flying into unseen mountain faces. They were the only wildlife we saw the entire time we were out there aside from a mysterious house fly outbreak that coincidently appeared just after Lucas Debari arrived at camp. We let Debari off the hook after finding flies in places he hadn’t been but strange nonetheless.

You’ll never look through Jeremy’s goggles but if your lucky he just might share a glimpse of what he’s seen on his Sony HD helmet cam. Same goes for his journal that sits to the right. You’ll never read it, but on occasion he’ll open it and share his inner vision.

Of the 13 splitboards we brought with us on the trip, 2 were broken. Neither of the deceased were Jones’ Solutions. Lucas Debari sent this one to heaven slamming into an unexpected chunk of glacial ice on a high speed runout. RIP.

Needless to say, after three weeks without a shower and hiking 14 hours a day, we all got pretty stinky. The freezing temps kept the stench at bay however as sweat never had the chance to waft out that far. This picture symbolically depicts the funkiest funk we encountered on the trip by most votes, Bell’s boots and Burt’s ass.

You might think we were roughing it out there on the cold glacier, miles from nowhere. But really, no. We had a toliet with a bitchin’ seat and we ate damn good food including this tasty scallop veggie curry served up by Burt and Tero Repo.

While we didn’t have to battle gaping bergschrunds at the bottom of our lines, us media folk fought for fresh batteries and clean memory cards. Laugh away, but it was no easy fight. At any given time there were 8 cameras rolling not including the ipods and point-and-shoots that the athletes carried. Batteries got drained daily and cold laptops didn’t last long trying to dump memory cards. Five solar panels similar to the one shown here kept us alive and shooting.

Ryland got us all hooked on the candy sweet taste of Baren Jager, a honey liquor that was lip smackin’ good and too easy to swallow. Mr. Bell took his passion for the nectar one step further however, naming the sickest line he did all trip after it.

If you ever get the chance to fly with Drake outta Haines you just might see this ornament of a jolly cat on a sleigh sitting alongside his pilot-side window. It perfectly describes Drake’s flying style  – nimble, smooth and seemingly effortless. Touching down and taking off on crevasse strewn glaciers is no problem for the former professional race car driver nor are pitched banked turns 50 feet from jagged alpine faces.

We saw sunrise and sunset on the move many days. A 2:30 am wake-up and an 8 pm arrival back at camp was not uncommon. Long days on the glacier were always rewarded however, usually just as soon as the sun cracked the horizon.