Im looking at ticking off #1 on my bucket list. Anyone got any advice for 2-3 weeks in Alaska. Hoping to do 6-7 day window for heli. Budget of around $15k. “If you dont do it this year, you will be one year older when you do.”
https://www.alaskaheliski.com/ Was good https://www.ski.com.au/xf/threads/dsnss-50th-birthday-bash.74247/page-5#post-3263621
Been a fair few years since I was there but I'd do one week in Girdwood/Alyeska and book a couple of days with CPG. They were a very professional operation, more so than the one in Valdez I was with. The big plus with Girdwood is that you have several options. Alyseka is the biggest ski resort in Alaska and a pretty good one. Then CPG have a base in the hotel at the resort where you can do heli or cat skiing. Have heard some good reports about PNH including the one linked above by DSNS, so no doubt they would be very good. Plus the fact that I know one of the guides there - Pete Bilous who is a US born, Wanaka NZ resident who guides for HMH in our winter so used to dealing with Australians. Valdez of course is the famous name, pretty much where it started in Alaska and there are several operations there. These days they would be much less cowboy like than they were in the earlier years. The one issue about places other than Girdwood is that there are limited skiing options other than the heli. Some will have cat-skiing if weather is bad but you are generally committed to a heli week. So I would suggest starting with Alyeska, plus the fact that it is only a fairly short drive from Anchorage.
So I just finished up my week at Chugach Powder Guides at Girdwood. We scored about 10ft of snow followed by 4 perfect bluebird days in a row. Maxxed out our required 60,000 vertical feet in the 4 days (5 day package). Couldn't have got it any better really. I highly recommend CPG. They were very professional and catered to all of our needs. Our guides name was Dan and he was such a good dude. He took loads of photos for us and really allowed us to progress safely to some really gnarly lines whilst navigating the catastrophic avy danger we were dealt with. Interesting that none of the other guides offered to take photos for their clients. If you consider yourself a ski bum you must do a 5 day Heli trip in AK. Doing just 1 day you just don't get the required progression to do the proper AK stuff
I booked about 6 month in advance and it cost about US$8k for the Heli part (check Chugach Powder Guides website for more details). It books out real quick so I'm glad I did. You could get lucky and get a random day here or there, but as my previous comment, you really need to do multiple days to build up the progression with your guide to hit the proper AK stuff. Plus, it help to give yourself a bit of a weather window
