Waiting for snow

We're checking the forecast and doing the snow dance but still nothing more then a few inches here and there. Just enough to limit activity up at higher elevations. We've been trying to keep things interesting by riding the local trails that we haven't been on before or riding the same trail in the opposite direction or convincing Denver to do something cool like eat-a-banana-while-scratching-his-chin-and-keep-pedaling. Super cool, right? We've by no means explored all the options but it's time for something new. Something new = Snow.

How about this:



Instead of this:

The final Alaska post

The last picture of the "view" from our apartment. These are possibly the most photographed trees in Anchorage.

The last days in J347

Our last ski trip

the last picture of the snow

the last goofy picture

Don't just laugh. I'm sure you can't look quite this hot while wearing ski boots and leggings.

early spring in the park

Spring is staring to come, even to Alaska. It is staying light 'till almost 10 pm now, so Chelsea and I took a walk through the park to see what other changes spring was bringing.

These are typical Alaska trees. I always half expect to see the Thorax hiding nearby, ready to suck peas down his fingers.

A nifty statue behind the police station. (I have no idea why they put it here, where only six people see it every month)

This model was walking by, and I asked if I could take her picture. She obliged.

The first pussy-willow things of the season. Branches with particularly nice ones are always in danger of being ripped off and carried home by Chelsea for "decorative" purposes.

Farewell Aleyska

When our lazy selves don't want to sweat for some turns we head to Aleyska Resort. The views are beautiful and standing in a tram is a truly genius way to get to the top of run. We'd like to say that nothing at a resort can compare to the backcountry; however, chair lifts and trams give the backcountry some serious competition.

This last weekend the Subaru freeskiing championships were held at Aleyska, we got to watch a few nice runs, but one of the competitors fell and actually died, terrible! Freeskiing anyone? Anyways, the comps were discontinued until the next day. We lugged the camera around in a pack to try and capture some pictures of the resort before we head south.

The headwall where the competitions were held. Another view of the headwall.


The finish gate: fun times with some rockin awesome music and nice flags.

The view from the top of the resort with the Turnagain Bay in the background.

Sun Dog

Denver was able to capture this sun dog over Magnum peak. Sadly by the time we had summited the clouds and rolled in and the visibility turned to pea soup.

Lots of Snow

I am happy to report 12 inches of new snow this weekend. Let the snow days continue!

Dumpster Diving

Denver found some speakers beside the dumpsters at school yesterday and brought them home. They actually worked! We have wanted to buy some speakers to hook up to the notebook (which is our sound system, TV and everything) for a long time, but didn't want to spend the money.
Anyways we won't have to watch movies with the computer on our lap anymore, we can rock out to some Bob Dylan and feel sexy looking at our new free speakers. As you can see below these nifty noodle speakers are super cool and look like they might of been even cooler in the late 90s.
My husband is a good one for doing a little dumpster diving. The lamp in the background came from one of his other jaunts into garbage land. He has also recently brought home other special finds such as a: broken tripod, a broken Niterider headlamp, two chairs that work, another functioning lamp, numerous pens and pencils and a Christmas tree stand and Christmas lights that didn't work (Jocelyn helped him with the last two fabulous finds). My contribution in the dumpster diving was a futon-like-couch-thing that we quickly decided was too wet and stinky to ever recover, so the cough thing was returned to its home in the trash. We still don't have a couch but we do have two very nice camp chairs.

Telepalooza

This weekend we were invited to join the teleskiing Barnetts at Telepalooza. The formentioned Barnetts were staying at the Aleyska lodge and let us crash at their digs on Saturday. We had such a good time with some spring skiing, good laughs, spa soaks and some awesome cajun goodness from the Double Musky. We are going to miss our skiing buddies (The skiing buddies had better come visit us in Oregon if they ever want paybacks on dinner...we're thinking about a big mac or something)

Spring Break in Valdez, AK

During Spring Break we spent five days skiing in Thompson Pass. We were totally blessed with bluebird skies all week.

We had the time of our life with an unplanned heli-ski day!

On the heli day we would drop 4000 vert of untracked pow, load our skis in the ship, and do it again.

Looking down from the top of the run called Stale Fish


The heli camp base lodge


Paul, our guide, pointing out our next line


Catching some air off a cornice



After our day of heli skiing it was back to human powered powder hunting

The Sunburst Avalanche

Last Saturday, Chelsea and I decided we wanted to do an overnight tour, going up the valley between Sunburst and Magnum peaks. Talking about it at home this seemed like a good idea. Over the past week there had been about 7-8 feet of new snow in the Pass, and we knew the snowpack would need time to adjust to this new load; so it was a good time to cool our jets about the steeps and do more of a tour.

The primary avalanche concern for the area was a layer of buried surface hoar. This entails those beautiful, feathery or blade-like crystals of hoar frost that commonly grow in cold clear weather on the snow surface and are subsequently buried. This is the most common type of weak layer that is involved in fatal avalanches, because it does not give any of the classic signals of severe instability (whoomphing noises and shooting cracks). It was now underneath a 7-10 foot thick cohesive snow slab.

Once we started skinning through the valley, however, with our heavy overnight packs on, we began to doubt the seriousness of the snowpack instability. Skiers whooping down faces that we would have loved to be on was hard to watch.

The farther up the valley we got, though, the more I thought that we had made a poor choice of overnight snow caving spots. We was looking up at the steep slopes of Sunburst and Magnum hanging over our heads, and we grew increasingly uncomfortable.

Buried surface hoar, except in extreme cases, is resistant to remote triggering (i.e. you will not trigger a slope above/around you from a low angle slope nearby). So Chelsea and I had a quick conference and decided that we were ok with skiing underneath these slopes, as long as nobody was coming down them. No sooner had we decided this, then a group of skiers appeared 1500 feet above us and started trundling chunks of cornice down to see if the slope was stable. They rolled almost to our feet, and we quickly decided that this was a death trap (complete with a gully behind us to get washed into). We decided we could go snow caving somewhere out in the flats and have just as good of a time, so we ripped our skins and headed down.
The pictures below show what happened less then five minutes later, as the group of skiers headed down.

Milliseconds after fracture initiation. The skier jumped off the rock outcrop above him and most likely triggered the avalanche when he landed.

(photo by Peter Knape taken 2-23-08)

This avalanche was 1/2 mile wide with a crown face up to 10' deep. It ran 1500 feet to the valley floor and 200 feet up the other side, triggering a sympathetic release off Magnum.

(photo by Peter Knape taken 2-23-08)

Looking up from the debis pile. Notice the deep crown face as well as where it stepped down to deeper weak layers.
(photo by Lisa Portune taken 2-24-08)

The crown face (photo by Lisa Portune taken 2-26-08)

The search and rescue helicopter touches down on the debris pile. the skier that finally triggered it was the sixth one down the face. He was buried for 30-35 minutes, and was blue and unconsious when he was dug out. Another skier was knocked over and partially buried by the powder blast. Luckily, they were both wearing beacons, and no one was badly injured.

We built a jumper and did some kicks

Everything was perfect this weekend. The sun was shining, there was seven feet of new snow from the recent storms and Anne let us eat half of her sandwich on our Sunday tour of Tincan ridge. Because of bad avalanche conditions in the pass this week, we had to stick to low angle terrain (less than 25-30 degrees. This is the angle of most easier blue runs at a resort). It is hard to be to bad to the bone when you are skiing angles under twenty-five degrees, thus our day was a hanging-out-skinning-around-chucklehead kind of day. We did some kicker action on the way down. Here is Denver showing us how it is done.

This is Anne doing a 360.

Chelsea, eyes on the goal, takes flight.
Shad the bad, catching some air
The peak in the distance is Sunburst peak. We skied sunburst on Saturday and will write about those travels in another post.

The Best Commute Ever

I’ve been commuting to work this year on a small part of Anchorage’s super nifty trail system. I usually cycle, but some rare days I’ll just let my own two feet make the traverse. On even rarer days when the snow gets too deep or my tire is too flat I have the opportunity to walk my bike to work.The commute takes about twenty-five minutes cycling and about forty-five minutes on foot. I get to breathe the fresh air, feel the pale sun on my face, and scrape the icicles that grow in the corner of my eyes. I make my way to work in the great outdoors, but make my way home in the warmth of the truck. Denver picks me up every night and gets us both home in about seven minutes.

Thunderbird Falls

The temperatures have been hovering around -5F for the past three weeks. We gaze at the horizon hoping for storm clouds; alas, we must report yet another week with no new snow. Making the most of all the ice we headed out to Thunderbird Falls bearing newly sharpened ice tools and lots of warm clothes. We spent four hours alternately shivering and whacking our way up the frozen waterfall.

Skiing Harp Mountain

Our most recent adventure was just outside of Anchorage with a ski tour of Harp Mountain. The ascent was rather long due to a nasty surface layer of breakable crust, nessecitating lots of boot packing, but the sun gleaming off the solid ice in the couloirs we were going to ski kept our morale high. What a relief to gain the ridge! An hour later we were picnicking on the top of our chosen route.

Our adventure buddies: Shad, Anne and the dog.

After we got through the throat of the couloir we actually discovered a little pow stash. We were able to ski an awesome line all the way back to the car. This is Shad throwing down in true telemark style.