Our Last Hurrah of Winter Break

We do love living in Alaska! What to do when the weather turns colder and the snow is still meager for local skiing?  A hike that we've been wanting to attempt, even checked out a week or so ago to the notch of Hunter's Pass to see if it was hike-able out of South Fork Eagle River Trail, the ridge climb to Rendezvous.  We anticipated it being about 5+ hours and had intended to get an earlier start, but, well, we started climbing about 11:45 am - even at that, sunrise was only 10:12 am yesterday morning, and the sun wasn't up over the mountain and shining on the top of the ridge until almost 1:00 pm!

This picture doesn't entirely express the near tears and a more than a little swearing that went with the considerable climb with much more snow (Brian says a "little more") than there was when we "checked it out!"  Although it doesn't look that deep in these pictures, it was up to my knees at times, and balance was challenging as it got steep.  Still, you can see what a brilliant sunny day it was, and we saw only two other people on the way - 1 skier climbing up to the top of the saddle (less than 1/2 way up for us) and one other hiker who had also set his sights on Rendezvous but turned back because of the deep snow.

As we accessed a couple of "shoulders" on our way up, they had a kind of moonscape feel to them with the frozen weeds in interesting geometrical configurations.

We finally got to the highest point and decided we were not going to make it all of the way to Rendezvous and back in daylight (and I for one was unwilling to go further and come back in the dark!)  This looks more like a genuine smile when we stopped for hot tea, and I realized that we were going to turn around!

And this is my favorite picture - of Brian - as we turn to walk back along the ridge.  The sun is on the other side of us now and beginning to set even at 2:30 - sunset was predicted at about 3:45 yesterday.

But . . . we weren't done!  The morning paper had a great picture of the full moon setting over Hatcher's Pass north in Palmer - so we had thrown toothbrushes and dry socks and shirts (and a bottle of wine and cheese and crackers) into the car in the morning, and we continued north to the Valley Hotel in Palmer.  We hung out for a while to warm up and have a snack, then headed to Hatcher's Pass to ski under the full moon about 7:00 pm.  It is my sincere regret that I did not take the camera, as it was beyond description - trails were perfect, ski wax was right on, and the moon over the mountains seemed like a possible once in a lifetime convergence of everything coming together.  The only thing that would have improved it is we were hoping also for the Northern Lights to be out as we skied.  Missed them.  This is a shot of the moon that I took from the car window as we drove north, but it doesn't do it justice.

And there's more!  This morning we skied at Government Peak before heading back to Anchorage!  Another beautiful (but cold - 3 degrees) sunny day - the trails were a little icy and not in as good as shape as Archangel Road, but still fun, and we had the place virtually to ourselves!

 This has been the best winter break - back to work tomorrow!