Dean Cummings
Editors’ note: Dean Cummings is one of the greats of Alaska skiing—not just for first descents and extreme lines, but for understanding snow and snow safety and sharing his knowledge. Cummings grew up in New Mexico and became involved in outdoor safety education in his early teens while working as a guide assistant for the Santa Fe Mountain Center. He later went on to become the captain of the US Freestyle Ski Team. From the mid-1980s through the ’90s, he made hundreds of first descents and won the World Extreme Skiing Championships in 1995. A pioneer of Alaskan helicopter skiing, Cummings is the owner, operator, and head guide of H2O Guides. His experience and diligence in developing the highest standards in guiding and education allowed him to secure permits on the largest tract of heli-ski terrain in North America: the Chugach Range in Alaska.
Two decades of guiding in Alaska have given Cummings an intimate knowledge of the snowpack and mountains and, coupled with his vision and commitment to guiding, have led him to found several education programs for both guides and the general public, including the North America Outdoor Institute (NAOI). He authored and crafted the “Be Snow Smart” education program, which annually reaches twenty thousand people with practical, easy-to-implement recreation safety procedures. Here he recounts three of the most significant first descents in the Chugach: the Tusk, the West face of Meteorite, and Mount Francis.
The Chugach Range is just incredible. The range has one of the highest concentrations of interconnected peaks and glaciers in the world with Alaska’s deepest annual snowpack. I was stunned when I first arrived in 1991 for the World Extremes in Valdez. After making several first descents in the range, I realized that we needed to develop protocols not just to ski these peaks but to stay alive. My protocols eventually morphed into the Steep Life Protocols.
I founded H2O Guides in 1995, the same year I won the World Extremes, and am proud that this is H2O Guides’ 20th anniversary season of guiding people down these mountains and providing the experiences of a lifetime.
People always tell me that I’m lucky to ski these big peaks, but the reality is that in the last 24 years of guiding in the Chugach I’ve only had a handful of perfect opportunities to make the biggest, baddest first descents, including the West face of Meteorite Mountain, the Tusk from the summit proper, and Mount Francis from the summit proper.
THE TUSK
In 2010 I attempted a Tusk ascent and descent with local heli-snowboard guide Sunny Hamilton, wife of H2O guide Mike Hamilton.
We attempted to climb to the summit proper, but while I was leading out the climb Sunny got cold, and it was getting late. That was three strikes, so I aborted touching the summit.
But I was still hungry to descend the Tusk from the true summit, down the direct face.
So in April 2011 I got my window and was dropped off on the summit by helicopter with 400 feet of 11-millmeter rope for a rappel.
It took 16 attempts to get the rope to run clean, and I had to recoil the rope each time. I was concerned about getting the rope stuck in rock each time, which would have forced me to do a technical down climb doing a variation off the backside.
On the 17th toss, the rope ran clean, and I started the rappel. I was under constant threat of getting injured or knocked unconscious by falling rock, and I was very concerned about severing the rope on sharp rock or getting stuck. I was already on strike two at this point. Strike three would be a rescue situation.
I successfully rappelled to a safe zone to put my skis on, and began the descent on 60-degree unsupported slope through a 70-degree three-dimensional double fall line that protected the main face. It was technical and strenuous, and I almost overheated.
Once on the main face, the most important part was skiing the spine to allow my snow slough, or an avalanche, to part around me.
After descending the main spine, I cut skier’s right onto the fluted face then dropped through double cliff bands, over a bergschrund, and finally out onto Tusk glacier.
WEST FACE OF METEORITE
During the filming of Global Storming with Matchstick, I did the first descent of the West face of Meteorite Mountain, which was named after it was struck in 1927 by a meteorite that sheered off literally millions of tons of rock.
The West face is highly exposed with over 1,000 feet of cliffs for the first half. The second half is a couloir that exits over a mandatory 120-foot cliff.
The descent began blind with a convex bowling ball that went from 50–60 degrees working left to right with only one big rock above the couloir for a safe zone.
After skiing the first 500 feet my slough turned into a Class 2 avalanche that flowed over the 1,000-foot cliff. As I skied safe zone to safe zone, I watched three more point slide releases.
The only way to ski the couloir was to ski 300–400 feet at a time then get into a safe zone, skiing a little bit and hiding, going a bit more then hiding, so not to get swept over the 120-foot cliff by point slide releases.
Once I got 400 feet above the cliff I ran out of safe zones, so I had to be quick to make it to the edge of the cliff. Then 100 feet above the cliff I had to negotiate white ice. I used my skis like crampons to make it past the ice. It was a one way ticket at that point. I side stepped up about 12 feet above the cliff then did a sliding sideways jet turn so I could redirect my angle for the landing.
In the air the wind started to get under my legs and began to push, trying to force me upside down. I was able to gyro my arm to keep upright.
On the landing I lost a ski and did three huge flips over the bergschrund.
Even with the triple tomahawk landing it felt successful because it was such a burly physical descent with massive exposure, multiple point release slides, and the white ice.
MOUNT FRANCIS
Skiing Mount Francis from the true summit was a 20-year dream. This descent involved endless logistics, research, and mental challenges.
Mount Francis is one of most aesthetic, north-facing slopes in the world. It starts with a mandatory 80-foot cliff jump below a 70-degree fluted clamshell entry.
I’ve climbed it twice, and flew in with film companies, but it was never the right time until April 2012.
With my Steep Life mission to share protocols, I knew if the conditions aligned I would go for it.
On April 17 we flew in with the goal to document my descent from the summit proper. If everything checked out on the aerial survey and summit scout I would do it.
The key ingredient was making sure I could get a visual of the take off and landing zones. I climbed to the top of a chimney skier’s right of the clamshell for a vantage point where I determined that even if I didn’t make a perfect landing I could still pull off some friction moves to self arrest and not tumble over the 300-foot cliff below.
The entry was a classic convex clamshell—40 degrees tapering to 70 degrees on 70-foot-long flutes. The snow was Goldilocks: not too soft but soft enough for punching arm anchors into the snow like a snow picket.
I worked down one of the flutes, using arm anchors and my ski edges. Halfway through I punched through a curl that was like a frozen ocean wave, and it was almost enough to mess with my mind.
I readjusted and got myself in position for the jump. This was the crux. How do you unhook from 70 degrees, do a jump turn, and get your tips, hips and hands facing downhill all in one motion for an 80-foot drop?
On take off it felt like I reached terminal velocity instantly.
My right arm never made it fully around, and my hips were behind and to the right. Midair I wondered how bad this might go. I flipped, and I could see the Lowe River and Prince William Sound 6,000 feet below. Time slowed down; it was surreal.
On impact, I flipped, and my right ski came off. On the second flip I was looking for my ski in midair so I could grab it. I didn’t want to lose any equipment.
I self arrested and when I came to a stop my ski was right in front of me.
Then the reward for that tenuous descent and cliff drop was the perfect powder run. It was too good to be true. I skied fast and made big GS turns down perfect deep powder to the escape route above the 300-foot cliff and into the exit couloir, which was an incredible descent down a 55-degree powder spine.
I skied cautiously above the bergschrund to avoid ice chunks, and once over the ’schrund I had to navigate some crevasses, then with the light fading I made time to the lower cirque to get retrieved by the heli.
Nobody has dared to ski these three particular routes again. I ski these big peaks and document them to get people’s attention, inspire them, and share the Steep Life Protocols that allow people to implement better terrain management, stay safer, and take their skiing to another plane.
This is The Steep Life—the risks we take as humans who are committed to getting in touch with nature and ultimately the protocols that help keep us safe allowing us that sweet privilege. It’s the privilege of living in the moment, filling your lungs with fresh air, feeling your heart pounding, blowing your mind with visuals, hearing the sounds of nature, getting after it, loving it, benefiting from it, and recognizing that we need to give back to it, protect it, and respect it.