Pika Glacier Ski Trip or Pika Glacier Shoveling Trip?

Objective: Have fun skiing mellow slopes and practicing skills!

Trip Length: Planned 6 days, but it turned into 10

Trip Type: Backcountry skiing with fly-in glacier basecamp

Group Size: 2 (turned into 26…)

Dates: April 22-May 1, 2018

The Tale:

I wrote and re-wrote this post about the Pika Glacier many times. After recounting the story to friends and family upon returning from the glacier, I can’t quite come up with what to write that would really help the reader understand what my first Alaska Range trip was like.

In short, the original plan was to fly in to the Buckskin Glacier to ski, but after an updated snow report, Tyler and I flew into the Pika Glacier in the Central Alaska Range on April 22, 2018. The day we flew in was beautiful and sunny with 2 fresh feet of snow the night before. The following day carried in an eight day storm, with quarter mile visibility at best, 12 feet of fresh snow, and avalanches galore. We spent the days shoveling, stomping the runway, reading, staring into the whiteout, digging holes to nowhere, and learning a lot about base camp life with the 24 other people stuck out on the glacier. We got in one ski run on our second day on the glacier, but otherwise, we did not ski any slopes. The funny thing is, that every day, I hoped we would be able to go home and was disappointed when weather window after weather window never came. But as we were flying out, I was sad to leave. The simplicity of glacier life ended up being hard to leave and I still kind of miss it.

I’ll chat about lessons learned managing an ostomy at a basecamp and then let my photos tell the rest of the story…

Lessons Learned:

When the Denali rangers ask if you and your partner want 1 or 2 Clean Mountain Cans, you you should alway say you want two for a two person team. And if you have an ostomy, you should ask for two for yourself. You can never have too many poop cans. I don’t know why I thought my boyfriend pooping on top of my poop would be a good idea. After arriving at the glacier and realizing my mistake, I can up with a solution. I initially used a WAG bag which I stored in the CMC. But after a while, my WAG bag no longer fit. In fact, I am extremely grateful there were no ravens on the glacier because I would have had to find better storage solutions for my poop if there were. Let’s just say I quadruple bagged and wanded the poo zone very well. And then carted that out in a VERY secure container. I then disposed of my giant frozen bag of poop after getting back to town.
Some days, everyone poops into a bag. I can become quite self-conscious about my ostomy, but on the glacier, everything was even. I was no longer the only one facing issues of where to poop in a storm, and everyone out on the glacier had to poop into bags just like me. In fact, it was easier for me to empty my ostomy into the container in the security of the cook tent (after our toileting zone was covered by feet of snow), than for others to figure out how to poop into a bag for the first time.
I brought a gallon of white grape juice to help flush out blockages (which I tend to get when I go on trips). Luckily, I did not get a single blockage on this trip, but I had a cup or so of white grape juice as a preventative every day. I did have a kit of supplies ready in case I had a blockage, including: syringe, catheter, backcountry 10L bucket to fill with irrigation water, regular ostomy supplies (pictured below).
I am always worried about my ostomy leaking while camping. I had a bad poo explosion in a sleeping bag once and that was enough for a lifetime. Luckily, I did not have a sleeping bag poo-splosion on this trip. However, I did spill my ostomy when trying to empty it in the cook tent during the storm. The nice thing about snow is, you can scoop it up. I just shoveled that soiled snow into a giant double wrapped trash bag. Then there was no more brown stain on the floor of the cook tent. Problem solved.
Things usually work out better than expected. This trip, my ostomy was hardly an issue. The issue was the 12′ of snow and our inability to escape the glacier.