The blue sky lit up the Chugach Range like a neon sign. It blinked: OPEN.

As our plane cleared the Girdwood Valley, the winds smacked us around like a redheaded stepchild. The pilot made a first pass over the landing zone on the Eagle Glacier. "I don't like this," he murmured and turned to make another pass. The second time around he deemed it safe enough and nosed her in for the landing.

"Don't dawdle," he said, as we jumped out into hip-deep snow while trying to catch all the gear he was throwing at us. Within a minute he was gone and so was the sun.

Soon the prospect of finding the hut assumed an epic quality. We had three miles to travel down the glacier to Rosie's Roost Hut. The visibility went first, and then the wind picked up. Our 60-pound packs launched over our heads every time we hit a wind roll — the solidified waves of snow slowed us down like speed bumps. We had landed at 3pm, but by 6pm we still had not found Rosie's. It was almost 7pm before we realized we were on the wrong ridge.

In an effort to shorten our climb back up, I proposed a traverse across the gully dividing the two ridges. The cornice my ski tips were on gave way, and I dangled over the edge with only my left cheek and pack holding me on the slope. There would be no shortcut.

We went around the ridges and after another three-quarters of an hour, we found the hut buried under five feet of snow and dug furiously as the light slowly dimmed. Darkness set in as we threw our gear inside, thanked the higher powers (as well as the Mountaineering Club of Alaska for building the shelter) and broke out the whisky.

I had arrived in Alaska two weeks earlier for the first time to participate in a ski mountaineering course with the American Mountain Guides Association. Close to our location, an 11,000-foot glaciated plateau to the south protected us from major weather systems, so I had yet to experience true Alaskan weather.

Eleven guides flew into the Scandinavian Peaks Hut just off the Matanuska Glacier. For eight days, we covered various skills such as tour planning, rope work, crevasse rescue, and we fashioned an improvised sled out of skis. We toured and climbed throughout the area, then skied 18 miles out to the road. The weather was mostly cold and clear with a few days of low visibility, but nothing you would call a storm.

After the course, I met up with Mike at his grandma's place in Anchorage. He had spent three days sitting on the couch, watching Judge Judy with Uncle D and visiting with his ex-girlfriend, who took this time to remind Mike how "over him" she was. Needless to say, he was ready to go that morning.

Around 10am, Alpine Air Service in Girdwood told us it was clearing, so we hopped in the taxi with our ski boots on and headed up the Turnagain Arm Road, dumbstruck by the vertical relief.

Our plan was to ski the Eklutna Traverse, a 40-mile traverse starting on the Eagle Glacier with a first night at Rosie's Roost Hut, north over Whiteout Pass to Hans Hut, down the Eklutna Glacier to Pilcher's Pirch Hut, then out Eklutna Lake in six days. While flying up to the Eagle Glacier, the Chugach Powder Guides told us their clients needed snorkels, so we were optimistic. We knew of a small low-pressure system moving in and thinking on a lower-48 scale, ignorance bred enthusiasm.

But after finding Rosie's Roost, we were stormbound for three days. With the winds up to 100 miles per hour, we sipped cocktails, ate sautéed salmon and periodically dug out the hut so we could maintain our entryway. Rosie's Roost was built in 1968, so the place was sturdy but not insulated. We boiled water all day to keep the heat up. Luckily there was a library, including Chris Bonington's Everest the Hard Way, Frederick Forsyth's The Odessa File, last August's Cosmopolitan, and a deck of cards, which kept us from pondering our stormy reality.

The third morning cleared briefly, giving us a sucker hole to go out and make some turns. We dug a pit and found five feet of new snow, so we played it safe, skied a few low-angle runs, and made it back to the hut before the storm picked up again. That evening we prayed hard to the gods for some fine weather. They must have looked auspiciously upon us because the next day arrived without a cloud in the sky and another foot-and-a-half of champagne snow. After a hasty breakfast, we promptly skinned up the glacier and lapped a small peak a half dozen times, cold smoke following us the entire way, before our legs were Jell-O, and we headed home.

After five days in the hut, it was time to head back to civilization. Since the six-plus-foot snowfall left questionable avalanche conditions on the traverse, it was no longer our ideal way out. Instead, Mike and I headed north, down the Eagle Glacier, all the way to the Eagle River Valley instead. Our maps only covered the first 10 miles, so our total distance remains a mystery. We skied down through several icefalls and over a narrow gorge before finally exiting the glacier.

What followed was a 14-mile skate and bushwhack down the old Iditarod Trail, accompanied by moose and a wolf or two. Our necks strained as we took in all 6,000 vertical feet of Polar Bear Peak, the most dramatic and prominent of all its neighbors. We arrived at the Chugach State Park Eagle River Visitor Center only to discover that with daylight savings, clocks sprung ahead, giving us only three hours to catch our flight back to Seattle. Mike's uncle picked us up and lectured us on the history of Alaska's highway construction and population boom. We barely listened; reflecting on our first attempt at Alaskan hut skiing, the hard way.... and plotting our next attempt.

— Matthew Schonwald and Mike McCarthy, MountainZone.com Correspondents

MORE FRESH TRACKS: Go there