Explore the Juneau Icefield on skis or snowboard and experience the power of the wind!
This is a locally organized, backcountry basecamp style event that is meant to expand the possibillities of wind travel and freestyle kiting in the snow. Dates are April 22-28, 2009
The Juneau Icefield is a amazing backdrop for such a event, with endless terrain to carve ,climb, and take photos.
Event registration is $325. Includes air travel with Ward Air roundtrip to the Icefield, event t-shirt, community basecamp, kite gear demo’s from Best Kiteboarding, icefield safety clinic and raffle prizes!
**Participants are required to bring their own ski/snowboard gear, avalanche safety gear, climbing harness, warm clothes, shelter and food**
For more info and registration information please fill out the form on kitejuneau.com
Registration deadline is March 15, 2009.
Event and Registration: Icefield Snowkite Event 2009
The Juneau Icefield, the fifth largest icefield in North America, is a example of interconnected highland glaciers in the Alaska-Canada Boundary Range. Situated in very close proximity north and east of Alaska’s capital city of Juneau, the icefield lies at 60° N. latitude.
Comprising a rock and ice area of 5000 square miles, the icefield is punctuated by bedrock islands (nunataks) and spectacular subsidiary mountain ranges. It has 38 out-flowing trunk glaciers, the terminus of which reach low elevations at or near sea level. The most significant of these are the Mendendhall, Taku, Talsekwe, and Llewellyn Glaciers. The icefield, like many of its glaciers, reached its maximum glaciation point around 1700 and has been decreasing in size since. Of the icefield’s 19 notable glaciers, the Taku Glacier is the only one presently advancing. Dense rain forest and forbidding cliffs, with deep gorges and fiords, rim the coastal edge of the icefield.
Research has pin-pointed the deepest temperate glacier known today, revealing ice depths in excess of 4000 feet (1240 meters). These great depths are in areas which were glacier-free 5000 years ago, but now are ice covered fiords extending through the heart of a vast glacierized landscape.
