Comp - Chugach pillows and lonely snowshoes
December 30th, 2011; I had three days left in Alaska before I moved with a friend to Whistler, B.C. for the winter. Decided I was going to need practice time on pillows before I headed there, as my main image of riding in Canada was 1000 meter perfect pillow lines every day. Wrong but hopeful. My friends Nick and Andy decided to come with me for a day trip to Turnagain, a popular hiking spot about 70km out of Anchorage in the Chugach range. 
The tree line there ends fairly low, at about 200 meters so the hike did not take long. The low clouds gave us somewhat of a nicer temperature than it had been lately, about -12 Celsius.
We had a specific spot in mind, a short band about an hour from the trail head that we could stay on as long as there was light, which was not long a week after winter solstice. We hiked past the zone so we could have a small run into it to get warmed up. When we approached the top of the zone, Nick discovered he had dropped one of his snow shoes from his backpack. I gave him one of mine while Andy and I put in a few boot packs into the pillowy cliffs.
Soon discovered it was better than we could have imagined. Perfect little three meter plus drops into gentle happyness, bringing powder howls to either scare or attract other tourers. 
At one point I accidentally bounce off a chunk of ice under one white blanket and it sent me too far the the left of where I inteded, straight into a tree well. Stupidly it was the first time I had rode that season without my Avalung on. Thankfully Andy was near by and didn't have to put much effort into unburying me. The snow in the throat made a pretty good cough for several days. Nick came down just before dark with no luck on his lost snowshoe, so we left. The next day, New Years eve 2011, I came back with some other friends on splitboards and snowshoes to attack a near by 2-3 hour peak, Tin Can Proper, as it was supposed to be clear-ish. 
The snow pack had been quite stable for a long time. A quick pit at similar aspect confirmed this so we dropped, with a little sluff management. At one point a friend of mine lost another snow shoe from his pack, a common problem with my friends for some reason.
Sadly the lack of cloud cover dropped the temperature down to about -29 celsius, taking the feeling from the ends of my big toes for several weeks. A short hike out gave us the tree run I had done the day before. Someone had left Nicks lost snowshoe at the trailhead. I threw it in the bed of our truck and drove back in Anchorage. We got back in time to get chow, pass out, and sleep through the fireworks. I felt after these few days, along with other early season sends, I had my legs under me good enough to do Canada, proper. Yeah right...