Skiing - The BEST Birthday Present

Headed north today about an hour to Hatcher's Pass again, where we skied a couple of weeks ago - two different trails today though.  Both were groomed for skating and diagonal.  Independence Mine is the topmost trail and you see snowboarders hitching rides up in the back of pickups and taking off from the side of the mountain on the way up.  It's about a 20 minute (or less if you're faster) climb up the trail, then an outer loop (more climbing) and an inner loop, the only fairly flat terrain - it was a good workout - we had our diagonal skis. Some serious training going on there - mostly skaters!  Two of our pictures were near the top and don't even nearly show you how gorgeous it is!  Great descent back to the car for a warm up and a snack, then we drove about 1/2 way down to another trail, Archangel, which is more nearly level and also beautiful going back into the mountains.  We only skied about an hour, but the trail is groomed as at least a 15k, so we'll have to go back and try the whole thing.  The trail at the bottom, Gold Mint, is the one we did a few weeks ago, ungroomed, on our backcountry skis.  You'll see our moose picture - saw four moose on the side of the mountain as we drove down on our way back to Anchorage!  Had a great day and now we're headed out to dinner!

It's Snowing Again!

Several days of freezing rain - Yuck!  Unusual, we're told, for that to happen.  The University closed at noon on Monday and didn't open again before Thanksgiving, so Judy had the whole week to work at home.  Also took up knitting again - a hat and two scarves so far with scrap yarn we brought with us!  For a couple of days before the rain started, a fog had rolled in and that mist froze overnight all over everything -- it was just beautiful but we kept forgetting to take pictures -- not like an ice storm, because it was a very fine frost over the trees.  For three days, there was so much ice on the streets and sidewalks, it was almost impossible to walk -- they don't salt here and barely plow -- they put some sand or cinders down, but not on all side streets -- it's different! 

It started snowing during the night last night - at 1 am it was still raining, but we woke up to SNOW!!  A walk to the best bakery ever for scones and coffee, then continuing on to the Westchester Lagoon.  Pictures here from our morning walk along the trail from our house.  Brian is at the top of the stairs that we walk down to get to the trail, and Judy is on a small bridge along the Coastal Trail. We walked to the end today, up 5th Ave. to downtown, then back to 12th with a stop at the grocery for cinnamon for the applesauce we started before we left.   We'll have dinner tonight at our landlord's, Mary and Lance Mearig, just downstairs from us.  We're bringing applesauce and stuffed mushrooms -- and wine, of course!  Maybe we'll start with that now! 
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and to your families and friends!  Tomorrow is Judy's birthday and we'll be off to find enough snow to ski in!  Stay tuned! 

While Waiting for Snow!

NO NEW SNOW YET!  Forecast was wrong and we mostly have hard crusty snow everyplace - and not enough of it.  But we hiked in a new place on Saturday and actually they had a little more snow and there were people skiing - not easily it didn't look like!  We hiked for 2 1/2 hours on a hard-packed snow surface up towards the mountains and on narrow paths through forested land - very pretty and a sunny, though very cold day.  It's been unseasonably cold here and in the single digits at night (until Sunday, it warmed up to 20s again).  Here are a couple of pictures of Brian on the trail we were hiking.  We hiked back on the Powerline trail, which is a wide and open trail that runs along the mountains for quite a ways.  A guy passed us on a bike with the fat tires that must have had a really WILD ride back down, as it's quite steep in parts, and another guy on skis (same wild ride) and their 3 dogs having a ball racing after them. 

Sunday we had heard there was more snow at Eagle River and "excellent" conditions, BUT -- we drove to Eagle River, which is just about 20 minutes north of us and then another 12 miles back into the mountains to the Eagle River Nature Center.  We're still exploring where all of the trails are - there are just about a million of them! We had a good time there and it is just gorgeous -- it is a multi-use trail though, and they haven't had new snow though they've had some since Anchorage did.  Still, it was so walked on that the trail wasn't that great.  We skied for about 1 1/2 hours, checked out the 2 yurts and a cabin that they have available for rentals - it's one of the prettiest trails that we've ever seen.  The last trail that we were on was less used, being further away, and it was pretty good, especially for skate skiing.  But we hurried back to hear a talk on the Iditarod Historic Trail, which one of these trails was a part of.  The Crow Pass Trail was a part of a trail that was carved out to carry mail by dogsled from Valdez, where it would be brought in by boat to the port, to Nome, way up in Northern Alaska, where there was a pretty good-sized city and no access to regular mail through the winter months (which there were a lot of!). 

So when we got home, we had to look up Nome to figure out why so many people would live up there!  It turns out that was another gold rush story.  (I had figured fur trade, maybe?)  In 1898, three Swedes discovered gold there, and within a year or so, 10,000 people had come to try their luck, living in tents anyplace they could set one down and as close to the river to mine as possible.  The history of Alaska, between the gold rush years, the native Alaskan tribes and the infrastructure that was built during WW II, is pretty fascinating!  Hope you enjoy the pictures of Eagle River that we've posted here too. 

First Skate Ski and a Hike in Girdwood

Brian skied on Saturday - no new snow and off and on a little combo rain-snow.  We tried diagonal but couldn't get the wax, so Judy went to buy yarn (somewhere along the way to moving we lost her skating poles, and she'd already been to yoga!) and Brian switched to skate skis.  An hour and a half later, he decided that was a pretty hilly course and the people here are in darned good shape!  Sunday we got up and ate pancakes (ala James Beard, spare no calories - sour cream and butter), went grocery shopping and drove to Girdwood, which is about 40 minutes away to hike or ski - it turned out to be hike, though we did see a few hardy souls skiing in and out - it looked painful, they hadn't had new snow either, and it was hard, crusty, and had been walked on - a lot. The hike was beautiful though - you'll have to trust us on that one - we had the camera, but discovered we hadn't put the memory card back in the last time we took pictures off for the computer.  We put our Katoolahs on about 1/2 way in, which helped a lot for footing - those are mini-spikes that slip over your boots - very popular here and with good reason - they get a lot of icy conditions, and they don't use salt on sidewalks or roads.  The Winner Creek Trail, where we hiked today, begins at the Alyeska Hotel Resort, a downhill ski resort, and continues about 2.5 miles til you get to a hand tram that can take you over a creek -- we didn't go across, but the trail that continues on was a part of the old Iditarod trail, before it was moved to its more norther location now - it begins in Anchorage and is quite the event we hear - we'll find out this year!  We're reading about Fur Rendezvous, which begins at the end of February and includes the Iditarod and the Anchorage Tour-a-thon, which Brian is thinking of registering for - they already have 1,000 registrants for this ski race in March!  http://www.anchorage.net/1259.cfm (look up Anchorage Fur Rendezvous).  Back to work tomorrow!  We'll try and get pictures next time, and snow is predicted for the next two days! 

First Ski!

We skied on the Gold Mint trail at Hatcher's Pass today, the first ski of the season - November 7th - this might be one long season!  We took our back-country skis, but it ended up that there was actually plenty of snow and it had been rolled and tracked further up at Independence Mine and another trail we stopped and checked out.  We chose to check out a lesser-used trail that also used to lead to a gold mine, now just an up and down, mostly up going out, scenic trail into the mountains.  It's always a thrill to be out the first time on a beautiful day!  We ran into a snowstorm on the way back..  Hatcher's Pass is said to have the first snow for skiing close to Anchorage and may have been good even last weekend.  It is just outside of Wasilla (yes, Sarah Palin's Wasilla) about 45 miles north of Anchorage.  Last night on a walk from our apartment back to Westchester Lagoon, we started up a path back to our neighborhood and saw a moose on our right on the path up ahead.  We decided she was far enough to the side and not terribly interested in us, so we continued on.  It was just getting dark and fortunately Brian all of a sudden saw two more on our left and much closer!  So . . . we decided to take a longer walk than planned and let them have the use of the trail.  One of the ones on the left looked much smaller, as much as we could see in the dusk, and that's a definite rule of thumb not to get between mother and calf! 

Moose on the Loose!

Brian was helping a friend work on a house yesterday, and when he came back out to the truck, backed up to the garage, he had company -- a big female moose (cow) standing right on the side of the truck!  The moose was not one bit concerned about Brian and just stood there while he decided to go back in the house!  Where's that camera when you need it!  It snowed on Monday night, and Tuesday morning the ground was covered -- very pretty to have the first real snowfall.  The temperature is in that in-between stage where it can be more like rain, but snow is predicted in the next few days.  We tend to not get big amounts at a time, I guess, but more consistent light snowfalls.  Went to dinner last night at the same place that Judy's Search Committee took the two of us when we were up here in March -- who knew we'd be up here and at home just 6 months later.  We walked up to the downtown restaurant to meet a friend and took a long walk home, walking her home first.  It was a beautiful night, and we love being able to walk to places right from our house -- a couple of wine bars, many restaurants, and the Coastal multi-use trail close-by.  Soon there should be ice skating on Westchester Lagoon!