Entrepeneurs Ski Alaska

TORDRILLO MOUNTAINS, Alaska (Fortune Small Business) -- I am standing near the peak of a craggy, white-capped mountain in Alaska. With me are three world-class adventure-sports athletes.

Big-wave surfer Dave Kalama clicks into his skis while surf superstar Laird Hamilton straps on an unusually long snowboard in the knee-deep snow. A few yards away, tromping to the edge of a cliff to survey our exit options, is Jeremy Jones, Snowboarder magazine's eight-time Big Mountain Rider of the Year. The bright red and blue A-Star helicopter that just deposited us here takes off in a blur of white powder, spins 180 degrees and disappears over a spiny ridge.

We peer from a tiny knoll down thousands of feet into the Triumvirate Glacier, the second largest in Alaska. This rippled ice leviathan winds 30 miles through the Tordrillo Mountains, a section of the Alaska Range 60 miles west of Anchorage.

Overhead the sky is bright blue, cloudless. The landscape below is blinding white. Even this crew, made up of veteran adventurers of the world's most beautiful places, can't find adequate words.

Snow Blind: Extreme skiing through the recession - May. 20, 2009