How should one tier list the days of the ski season? The most intuitive ranking method would be to guess the relative amount of fun had on each day and compare the days against each other. However, I’m choosing different criteria.
A great day of skiing should exemplify excellent familiarity of skiing movement, with the proper equipment loadout, using proper terrain and avalanche decision-making skills, utilizing a high level of skiing fitness, with great communication with partners. On any given day, how successfully did a skier combine the skills of terrain planning, risk calculation, equipment utilization, communication, fitness, and skiing ability? The ideal skier (a skier who is not limited by skiing ability) could still falter in the other areas on any given day out in the backcountry.
Under these criteria, how should we consider the differences in decision-making relative to conditions? The ability to use decision-making skill is quite limited when skiing on the ends of the avalanche danger spectrum. Can a day of skiing be top tier when the avalanche danger is extremely low and all terrain is safe for skiing, making decision making very straightforward? I think the answer to this is obviously yes. In our criteria, I propose to reward the days of “easy” decisions when danger is low and punish days of difficult decision-making when danger is moderate or considerable, even though many days of low danger require zero use of decision-making skill whatsoever. A day of skillful evasion of avalanche problems in complex terrain is certainly impressive, but I don’t think it should warrant a “top tier” day. These criteria do not reward days of great skiing that expose oneself to increased objective hazard.
Do you agree with my criteria, dearest gentle reader, or do you place value elsewhere in the day of skiing? In the car rides? The après? The novelty of the location? Please inform me in the comments.
The winter of 2025-2026 around the Anchorage area featured snow depth totals largely below recorded historical averages in Turnagain Pass and Hatcher Pass. Usually heralded as the place to ski during the early winter, Hatcher Pass suffered from a snow drought until the beginning of 2026. The Front Range of the Chugach enjoyed two distinct periods of excellent coverage, providing more days of good midwinter skiing immediately next to Anchorage than most winters. Turnagain had a strong early winter but quickly fell behind the average historical snow totals by experiencing prolonged droughts throughout December, February, March, and April.
This tier list will feature the most memorable days of my 2026 winter, not including many more days of solid conditions and meager objectives with my great friends. All those days not listed are likely a C+ to A- on this list. If I were going to tier list these days just based off pure joy, the list would look extremely different, and there would probably not be any entries in F or D tiers, because I just have too much fun with my friends to have any single day that low. I love skiing with friends.
F TIER
Harp Mountain 4/29/2026
This trip up to Harp featured poor plan execution, movement through terrain, and conditions, with below-average decision-making and good communication and group fitness. Declan, Gus, and Bennett planned to traverse the ridge behind Harp to access a low-angle refuge safe from the persistent slab, wind slab, and wet loose that were forecast for that springtime week. We started too late in the evening, took a long time to move up through the steep sections of the Harp east ridge skin track, and ended up having to bail on our plan due to lack of time.
Our backup plan was to ski the slightly steeper west ridge that descended back to the car. While traversing to this ridgeline, we triggered a large wet loose avalanche on the most southern-facing aspect of Harp.
We felt tons of collapsing while descending the west ridge when we creeped onto southern aspects. We got back to the car with our tails tucked between our legs, having made zero good turns between the three of us.
D TIER
(Empty)
C TIER
Mint Valley 4/14-18/2026
Ben, Andrew, Gus, Jack, and Bennett skied up to the Mint Hut for a few days in mid-April. An old and stubborn persistent slab near the top of the snowpack was a widespread concern around the area at the time. While at the hut, fourteen inches of new snow fell on top of this persistent slab, making for a multifaceted and weird snowpack. Making risk decisions as a group of five is already a huge nerf to decision making ability. Luckily, these fellows were happy to approach the powder-covered terrain with caution and made sure to test slopes prior to and during all climbing and skiing on slopes that could avalanche.
No red flags were encountered until the group attempted to ski the Tenement couloir, where we found some isolated collapsing on the persistent slab layer halfway up the couloir. Of course, persistent slabs commonly trigger and propagate on skiers with no prior red flags having been observed. It’s unknowable if the days spent skiing on top of an old poor snowpack structure was risky or not, but I’d imagine these days of skiing exposed us to much more avalanche danger than any other trip I took this winter (except for the late April ski up Harp).
The skiing on this trip was of excellent quality with poor visibility. We skied underneath the Peppermint Spire, scampered up and down the Backdoor Gap, and lapped the Penny Royal Glacier with over a foot of fresh powder. Clips of this day can be found in THIS VIDEO.
Pastoral Peak 12/9/2025
Ben was quite angsty on the drive out to Turnagain Pass. It was the last day of his last visit to Anchorage until the springtime, and he didn’t want the Anchorage camaraderie and fraternity to end. In addition to his melancholy, he made sure to give complete non-answers to Gus and Richard when asked about his opinions on what he wanted to ski and how he felt about conditions.
The group pulled into the Sunburst parking lot and last-minute decided to ski up to Taylor Pass, avoiding the lower elevation terrain in Turnagain Pass that was plagued with glide cracks. The skiing was excellent and moods improved greatly during our day, so much so that we blinked and found ourselves on top of Pastoral Peak, despite the avalanche forecast warning of buried surface hoar on steep slopes above 2500’, which matched exactly the terrain we found ourselves in.
This buried surface hoar ended up strengthening over the following 3 weeks after this day and no avalanches were triggered on this layer, making us look very smart and calculated in our decision making in hindsight. We skied the north face of Pastoral (not as fun as the south face) and skied off several aspects of a rib of Pastoral to the north before skiing an aspect of Sunburst towards the eastern end of the ridge back to the car. Clips of this day can be found in THIS VIDEO.
B TIER
Hanging Valley Couloir 3/11/2026
After finding great surface conditions on Harp Mountain the previous week, Zac and I decided to try our hands at the couloir at the back of the Hanging Valley in the South Fork of Eagle River. An old persistent slab had been slouching its bum ass for weeks under the nice six inches of fresh powder in the northern front range. We were aware of it, but we were not convinced of its ability to propagate – this layer had seen no reactive pit results and had not triggered any avalanches for three weeks.
Zac and I pulled up with the diamond tester to see if this persistent slab had any sort of motion.
Zero motion detected!
We booted and skied the lovely couloir with a buried weak layer underneath us for most of the run and found the skiing to be fun and engaging. It was a long and cold day with not quite enough food. Zac’s backpack hip strap no longer fit him all the way cinched down when we returned to the car. I think I burned up quite a bit of my big boy built-in insulation as well.
A TIER
Falls Creek 5/24/2026
April did not allow ample adventures in Anchorage. Most of the month of May made the masses manifest for more merry misadventures. Finally, after waiting for six weeks for decent springtime conditions, one clear night on the twenty-third of May finally allowed the wet and warm snowpack to undergo one freeze-thaw cycle.
After watching the weather doggedly, Declan and I wandered up Falls Creek the morning after this clear night to see if the freeze had been enough to stabilize the classic couloir in the back of the valley.
While inadvertently nabbing the eighth fastest backcountry skiing Strava segment to hike up the Falls Creek trail, we found a hard consolidated crust and lots of snow coverage towards the top of the valley. I had skied this line five years prior with Richard and recalled some interesting rock scrambling to access the top of the couloir by following the ridge to the top. Thanks to the cold and cloudy springtime, the approach to the top of the line was much more filled in this year and made for some great snow climbing with isolated easy scrambling sections.
After skiing the classic line, we considered skiing a second couloir or chute in the basin but realized the freeze crust had already started to disappear. With our skis beginning to punch deeper into the isothermal snow, we kept it to a one-run day.
S TIER
The Ramp 3/16/2026
Ali and I skied six inches of powder all the way down the south face of the Ramp. What else needs to be said? We saw a porcupine in the bushes on the way up to Hidden Lake. There were lots of snowmachine tracks that made travel interesting and feel less cool. Luckily, the snowmachiners didn’t venture over to ruin the perfect runnel of snow down the wide open 30-degree triangle face that never ever holds any snow in the winter. We felt like some lucky ducks that we decided to go ski this. As if waiting for someone to finally take advantage of the great conditions, the wind finally picked up from Ship Pass right as we skied the run – it had been dead calm and stable in the Front Range for about three weeks prior. I don’t know anything, but I can’t imagine this face gets skied very often, especially not in the conditions Ali and I found it in. Please reference THIS VIDEO to see some of the highlights. I took lots of video this day and didn’t use it in the east coast ski vacation video and may use it in an upcoming BurawoyMCSR ski video. I’m actively taking music suggestions for this video, please let me know what music would be nice for this!
You know the skiing is bad when the communal blog shows up 
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