Girdwood, Alaska, is one of the smallest towns on the face of the Earth. We know this because we drove all over the place looking for town, until we finally stopped at the general store to ask for directions to Girdwood. The grizzled old dude working the counter leaned forward and said, your lookin at it.

The general store turns out to be just like everything else in Girdwoodthe only one. I would rather have a burning hot spear shoved in my eye than be a single guy in this place, declares Josh Loubek.

Its not all bad, though. The Westin Alyeska Prince hotel, for example, kicks ass. We were amazed at how four ski punk skids (Woody Lindenmyer, Curtis Tishler, Josh Loubek, and me) managed to get such luxury accommodations. Staying there is sort of like having a hotel room from a James Bond flick: five-star services in every nook. There was even a motion detector in the closet to turn on and off the lights every time someone reached their hand past its cherry rosewood doors.

Alyeska, the local ski resort, kicks some ass of its own. It has some of the sickest terrain to be found at a ski area. Unfortunately all the steeps, cliffs and exposure (i.e. goods) are pretty much off-limits to public access. The mountain makes up for its lame access shortcomings, by being buried under 10 million feet of fresh Alaskan powder most of the time. We arrived at Alyeska during a storm cycle that dropped 150 inches of snow on the mountain in the previous 10 days. Its April, most ski areas in the lower 48 have already closed down, and were skiing it up.

On Easter Sunday we had Eggs Benedict for breakfast and then charge in 25 inches of fresh Alyeskan pow-pow for lunch. Woody says the Eskimos cant remember a bigger winter. He doesnt know any Eskimos, but seems to know what hes talking about. We got a special tour of some out-of-bounds terrain, but it is obvious that getting the ski patrol to take us anywhere cool was not going to happen.

We decided to find cool stuff ourselves along Alyeskas steep virgin ridgelines that fall away into the Turnagain Arm Inlet. After a five-minute hike past a very legible No Inverted Air sign, we came upon a kicker some local dude named Brandon has just built in the Glacier Bowl. Curtis Tishler threw a soaring, fully laid-out front flip. Seven or eight patrollers come out of the patrol shack to observe the illegal inversion. Curtis had already gotten his pass pulled once due to creative differences over the definition of inbounds ski terrain, so we all agreed to run away.

Alaska is a different place. Everything is bigger herethe trees, the mountains, the glaciers, the fish, the women. On our last night in Girdwood, we went to Chugach Mountain Helis end-of-season party. Olympic downhiller Tommy Moe owns part of the operation, and threw a killer party. A 20-foot-wide bonfire burned in the muddy parking lot, moose meat and salmon grill on another fire. A group of people played their guitars, bongos, and whatnot as best they could. I went over to the grill to chow a hunk of fresh salmon, and Moe did the same. While we swilled and chilled I said, This salmon rules; too bad we dont get this in Colorado. Tommy gave me a look commonly given to us lower-48 people who say stupid things like that, and said what any Alaskan would say in response, This is Alaska. End of story.