Excited to present a trip report from the 2023 Jones Backcountry Adventure Grant winner - Mikey Alosio of Crested Butte, Colorado.

In April 2023, Mikey and his partner Jack Caprio used the grant to help fund an expedition to the Neocola Range in southern Alaska. The pair got dropped off on a glacier by bush plane and spent a week riding lines before starting a 50+ mile split/packraft traverse following a partially iced over river to the ocean. They got picked up where the river met the ocean at the Cooke Inlet.

Check out Mikey’s trip report and photos to get inspired to start working on your application for the 2024 Jones Adventure Grants.

Most Americans spend hours scrolling social media. Not me. When I’m not splitboarding, maps and books are what devour my time. Pouring over trip reports from intriguing alpine areas and cross referencing the zones on digital maps is what inspires my motivation in the mountains.

I had never heard of the Neacola Range before stumbling across an article published in The American Alpine Club journal about some new climbing routes recently put up in this remote range. The article was primarily focused on the huge rock features, but it also mentioned there were some massive couloirs in the area. I started digging around on FATMAP and Google Earth and found the jackpot - an unnamed mountain with multiple steep and narrow four thousand foot splitters on its northeast face.

Locating the face was a thrill, but the real fun began as I dove into figuring out how to ride these monster lines. My favorite ways to travel in the mountains are via splitboard and packraft and I quickly realized this trip would be the perfect “splitraft” trip. If everything lined up we could ride the lines and then exit the glacial zone by floating a river to the ocean and our pick up spot.

With my ultimate partner Jack Caprio onboard, and the support of the Jones grant, the trip becomes a reality in April 2023. We give ourselves two weeks, a week to spend on the glacier and a week for exit travel. The legend himself, Doug Brewer from Alaska Backcountry Adventures is our bush pilot. The plan is for him to fly us from the Kenai Peninsula to the heart of the Neacola Range in Lake Clark National Park and drop us off on the Pitchfork glacier. We will shred for a week, then split and float 55+ miles down the Big River for a pick up at the Cooke Inlet.

Flying into the zone we carefully scout the rapids and ice blockades on the Big River and our route options through the glacial moraines. Before finding a smooth spot to land, Brewer gives us a tour of the entire glacial valley from the sky. The lines we came to ride looked incredible, and enormous!

We set up base camp on the Pitchfork Glacier at the base of the unnamed face I had found on Google Earth. Because we plan to float out with all our gear, we pack light. Floorless shelters, 20-degree bags, and just enough food and fuel to last 14 days. We head to bed that first night fully stoked. In the morning we will set a booter up our
first couloir!

We could not have asked for a better start to the day. After some coffee and breakfast, we leave camp under good weather and after a couple switchbacks we start bootpacking. Hours of booting later we still aren’t to the top of the line. Flurries begin falling and the temps drop so we pick up our pace. Topping out we’re ecstatic, but the weather is only getting worse so we quickly transition and begin our descent.

On day three we explore an unnamed fork of the glacier which gives us an imposing view of the line we climbed on day two. We dub the face Nicholas Cage Face.

Following a down day of well below zero temps, we score a perfect weather window and decide to climb another couloir on the face above camp.

This line gets much steeper toward the top. We climb the skinny ramp in the center and ride down on the climbers right of the cliffs.

Dropping in, the line seems to go on forever. We leapfrog our way pitch by pitch and stop a couple times to soak in the surreal surroundings. Later that day we name the three lines above camp Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. The line we had ridden earlier is Breakfast.

That evening we check the extended weather forecast and find out that a large weather event is coming in a few days that could trap us in the mountains for another week or more. It’s time to start our trek to the ocean.