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!