March 3, 2011
Since the weather shows no sign of improving (I now dream of the once dreaded partly cloudy chance of snow) I’m going to quadruple down on the negativity and spend all my time complaining. Bellow is a video of Wilson and I in Summit Lake 10 days ago or so, hopefully things improve soon.
July 21, 2010
On what may have been the last nice day of summer, Charlie and myself went to hike up to Reed Lakes in Hatcher Pass on Saturday afternoon after work. A quick 2 hr hike led us to some of the most dramatic scenery in the state. More pictures of the trip can be found here.
July 20, 2009
Summer, despite being a lot of fun, doesn’t really inspire me to post much around here. In fact, the only reason I’m posting at all is I’ve received a fair number of complaints the last couple days, specifically from Jeff, who was sick of seeing his face at the top of the page. Anyway, the combination of employment (however easy it may be) and the long days this time of year, don’t exactly encourage me to sit around and update this place. It’s been hot too. The warmest summer since I’ve been up here, with the type of brutal, apathy inducing, scorching days where the sun has the force of a knife and your left wanting to do nothing more then lay around, read a book, and wait to get out of town on the weekend.
Jeff and I have been slowly improving our weekend camping routine over the last 4 summers, which has made each escape from Anchorage much more enjoyable. Gone are the days when I’d sleep uncomfortably through the rain wrapped in a tarp or in the back of a fish slimed van with 4 dogs, when weekends were mostly a challenge of enduring consecutive days of little sleep and bad eating. Jeff and I are doing things more properly now. We’ve begun traveling around with a small charcoal grill (named Little Red) thats seems extremely durable. It survived a full weekend sitting in the back of Mikey’s truck while he forded rivers, attempted hill climbs in a gravel pit, and rallied the road to McCarthy at over 80. And despite constantly forgetting lighter fluid (we”ve had to get it started with lake Louise alder fires) Little Red has allowed us to cook elaborate meals (a typical menu would be bacon wrapped pork tenderloin, with potatoes and onions caramelized in pineapple juice with a quessedilla or hot dog for desert); I’ve generally eaten better on our weekend road trips then I do in Anchorage.
So far we’ve spent our time hanging out in Anchor Point, Chitina (twice), Kasilof, Portage, and Brad’s cabin on Skilak Lake., but I’ll try to keep this brief, and focus on the fishing. On our first, ponderous trip to Chitina, Jeff and I were greeted by a quickly rising river, and very few fish. We didn’t even keep our nets in the water for an hour before deciding to spend the trip grilling, playing bocce, and passing out in the sun on a blue tarp. We returned two weeks with Mikey who’d dip netted in Chitina for years and knew some productive holes. On the way into town, Mikey got pulled over going 97 in a 55, but the Cop didn’t write him a ticket, told him to “have fun fishing,” and gave him a much needed can of bug dope.
Finding a spot to fish from can be a problem in Chitina, the Copper River is huge, and flows hard enough that it’s almost impossible to hold your net in place without bracing it against a rock or finding a back eddy to hold it in. Access to the river can be a problem as well, most of the accessible spots are on privately owned land, and the decent public spots require either a 4 wheeler or a boat to reach them. The state has even narrowed the bridge at O’Brien Creek to keep trucks from traveling the 4 wheeler trail, which is the old Copper River railway bed. When checking the area out on our earlier trip Jeff and I were pretty sure our lack of a 4 wheeler would be prohibitive, but when we arrived, Mikey drove his truck through O’Brien creek without hesitation, Jeff followed, and we drove down the trail, receiving strange looks from everyone we passed. Eventually we hit a narrow stretch, which dropped a few hundred feet directly to the river from the trail and decided to park the cars. Jeff and I began walking while Mikey used the dirt bike to shuttle gear for the remaining distance. At one point Mikey flew off the trail over the cliffs in the direction of the river, but luckily he hit a tree and only fell about 20 feet. A Mormon in the military had to use his 4 wheeler to winch his bike out of the trees and took time to lecture Jeff and I on the “dangers you might not perceive.” We arrived at Mikey’s favorite spot, a big back eddy at the bottom of a cliff, and found two people already there. They were friendly though, and allowed us to climb down and fish with them. The charter operator, Mark Hem, who’d dropped them off, objected to our invading of his clients space, but after a short verbal tussle with Mikey he left, and we spent the day peacefully fishing while listening to stories from Butch, one of the people who’d arrived just before us. The fishing was frustrating, dipnetters are no longer allowed to keep Kings in Chitina, so we had to throw back all 13 we caught. I’m quite sure it was the first time I’ve ever cursed catching a King. We caught about 12 reds in about 12 hours, but Butch kept us smiling with stories about his 12 boats, and saying things like “most people quit fishing when they don’t catch anything, I buy a new boat.” Butch even offered to smuggle our fish aboard his charter, to save us the hassle of dragging them up the cliff and down the trail to our car. The highlight of the trip may have been seeing Mark Hem’s face after we drove back across O’Brien Creek and collected our fish (that he’d just cleaned, thinking they were his clients) from Butch before driving off.
Hunter, Jeffe, Kim and I went down to the south beach of Kasilof for the extended fourth of July weekend. We caught 22 fish, but my main impression of the weekend was eating really well, thanks to Kim’s domestic skills and the hard work of little red. Where on my previous visit Jeff and I resorted to eating steak cooked on a burning soccer ball and folding chair, this year the food (sitka deer, halibut, fresh salmon) was excellent. We played some long multi set games of bocce (between team Loud Mouth and team Michigan) and even went swimming to deal with the heat. It was a pleasant change from the normal dip netting madness. On Sunday, Hunter chose not to use waiters, and with the whole beach staring in surprise caught a fish the moment his net hit the water. After charging out, tossing his fish on the beach he repeated the trick with another immediate fish to cheers up and down the beach. People even began calling him Spartacus.
So eventually we’ll have some more stories and pictures posted, but until then keep yourselves entertained with the following. As I’m excited b
February 2, 2009
Tuesday, after skiing Tin Can Proper, while Graham and I were sitting around drinking beer, someone mentioned how it was nice that a storm was coming, as it’d give us a couple of days off. Everything was skiing really well at the time, and I was a little afraid another storm would mess everything up; but I was exhausted and some rest did sound really nice. Well the storm came, and I took two days off. I watched a bunch of soccer, and ate a lot of bacon, things were good. The initial reports were that the mountains had received a mere three inches, nonetheless I was anxious to get out and see how things were doing. And now I’m looking back fondly on those couple of down days, as after the last 3 days I’m again exhausted.
Hunter and I took the dogs up Tin Can Friday afternoon, once Hunter returned from a job interview. We saw the cars of both Graham and the Hope crew in the parking lot, but didn’t see anyone we recognized on the way up. The dogs are both getting a lot better at skiing, and Hunter, while skiing with Walter, is a mustache away from being Scott Kennett. We found a lot more than 3 inches, up top the wind had wiped some of it into deep drifts, but generally things were covered by about a foot of featherweight snow.
Saturday I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing, eventually I got my act together and began stumbling around my room looking for it. At least half an hour passed before I found it with a text message from Graham saying “Get Up, It’s Sunny!” I thought about that for a moment, then looked out the window and realized that it was, in fact, sunny. I’m still adjusting to waking up after dawn. By the time I called Graham he was already on his way to Hatcher Pass, so I woke Hunter (who was sleeping on the couch) and soon the two of us were on our way towards Turnagain. It was bright and sunny along the arm, but climbing the pass we were met by light fog. We skinned up Magnum, emerging from beneath the fog as we gained the ridge, and slowly made our way towards our lines, soaking in the afternoon sunshine. No one had put a track down what we wanted to ski, a pleasant change from last weekend. I was shocked by how deep the snow was when I dropped in, the cold had kept it from consolidating, which allowed me a couple face shots along the run. I filmed Hunter’s turns, my hands burning from the cold, I really need to learn to work a video camera with gloves on. We didn’t stick around long, Hunter’s skins were failing in the cold, we’d attached them with zip ties from the start, and as we began to feel the winter chill of inactivity we weaved or way through powder and alders to the car and headed home. A phone call with Graham on the drive set my plans for both the night and the next day. We decided to take advantage of the conditions, get up early the next morning, and head for Eddies ridge.
Things didn’t follow my plans for an easy night, getting to bed early. Kim came over and I was again unable to resist drinking beers and playing PES for hours, but when my alarm went off the next morning at seven, I felt fine, the whole hiding out in my room while trying not to wake anyone routine was reminiscent of my working days. As Graham and I drove along the highway near Bird I remembered that it was Super Bowl Sunday, which was the day last year when we skied Proper on a crowd-free sunny day, and I began hoping for a repeat event. Again we found the pass to be pretty deserted. I’m pretty surprised about the depth football love felt by the AK ski community.
The approach went really well as I couldn’t get us lost in the Eddies woods, with the skin track so established from the crowds it resembled an arboreal highway. We were forced to drink out beers on the upper ridge as it was so cold they were starting to freeze in our packs. They made for a nice treat as we traversed the Eddies ridge, which is very wide and flat and makes for a great ridge walk. After 45 minutes or so we reached to a rock we couldn’t down climb, and in the process of finding a way around it, Graham kicked off a shallow windslab. Our proximity to two tasty spines, combined with the other events, convinced us it was time to descend. I went first, made my way down the bed surface of Graham’s slab, and found my was into the bowl, before cutting over (photo bellow) to my chosen spine. The snow was light bottomless powder, sluffing lightly in the gullies on either side. The apron was covered with half buried debris from the last storm cycle, but that was only a minor inconvenience. I slid to a halt, sat on my skis, began fiddling with the camera, and waiting for Graham’s run. Graham sped along his spine before slamming into an alder at the bottom that didn’t slow his progress. After a couple rounds of pictures we got started on the slow walk home. We were back at the car around 4, so we took about 6 hours round trip. Another good day completed, but it’s only a beginning, we’ll see what this next storm does to us and get back at is as usual.
Interesting stuff on my down day
January 16, 2009
Well, its almost 80 degrees warmer then it was when I arrived late last week. Wednesday we’d planned to go ice fishing, but freezing rain put a hold on that. Since then I’ve done very little, mostly read, ate, and laughed at the dogs. The weather doesn’t look like it’ll be improving anytime soon, and at the same time, who’s to say when we will have anything to report. I’m not going to complain though, time to read is plentiful, which won’t be true if it’s ever sunny and stable. Drinking and reading does get old eventually though. Here is some stuff of slight interest for everyone to ponder until I’m done being a waste of space.
January 13, 2009
We crossed the border shortly after the thermometer in Hunter’s truck bottomed out at 40 bellow, and as we drove towards Tok we could feel the temperature continue to fall, as the space near the windows felt as if it was an active heat vacuum. The last day of the drive went well, it even got sunny in the afternoon, and despite Hunter and I taking turns almost totaling the truck (Hunter in early morning blowing snow, myself on Anchorage ice) everything arrived in good shape including Max’s snowmobile.
Since then I managed to break my fritschis the first day at Turnagain, but managed to get them warrantied. The shop, in some strange attempt to quell word of the discovered flaw (a weak toe mounting bracket that cracked while free heeling on crust) seized the defective bindings before I was able to take any pictures to share here. Oh well, the skiing here is marginal at the moment. After a 3 week spell of sedentary life in Michigan I’ve enjoyed getting out but, the turns haven’t been anything to rave about. Anyway, onwards from here, hopefully some snow arrives, the avalanche cycle that follows is swiftly cleansing and afterwards the skiing is excellent for months. Until then I guess we can all take a suggestion from Dave Ridgeway and practice skiing with a smile, or study up on some of the crazy avalanche stories going around eithing with video, or strange sunny settings. And while we have been thinking that it’s cold here, its not as far bellow what is normal here, as it has been in some places.
January 4, 2009
The family after the fest
I just returned from northern Michigan and my brother’s film festival, and will be spending a few hours at home before I take off with Hunter for Alaska. I plan to keep myself occupied along the drive by searching for anything interesting enough to mention around these parts, so I may have some fairly regular posting, along with a full wrap up of some recent events. It’s a bit sad to be leaving the always familiar mitten state, but I really can’t wait to get back to the deranged excitement of Alaska for some wintertime excitement. I love Canada as well, so my only concern is with the giant freak show we have to cross between the Michigan and Canadian borders. Until then I have some post festival celebratory cannon fire for you.
December 1, 2008
I really don’t have much to discuss, the 108 inches of snow that fell last week has obscured everything I’d had to say. Monster sized storms of this sort have a mythic quality amongst skiers, due to the frequency with which they’re discussed, but when they arrive it seems natural. Not that 9 feet of snow in a week is ever normal, but storms of this size are spoken and dreamt of so often that the situation is very familiar. Getting as much snow in a week as my hometown can hope for in an entire winter isn’t a usual occurrence, but I feel as though it should be, and I am determined to act as if it is. I skied by myself in the pass for a couple days, and rode the lifts at Alyeska on sunday, but I truly have very little to say.
The 10th Turnagain Mountain Division hot on my trail
After hearing Turnagain Pass mentioned on Talk of the Nation’s rest stops of America discussion Wednesday in the office, I wandered up Tin Can a few times by myself, as all my friends holiday plans kept them indisposed. The skiing was as expected amidst a storm of this size; deep turns down flat, lower, treed slopes, as instability and poor visibility kept me off anything high or steep. Lots of easy slow speed face shots through the trees, skinning while soaking wet, and wishing winter could be promoted from a seasonal event to a year round affair.
Alyeska's owner enjoying the snow. Sunday's picture of the day
The holiday generated the expected crowds. Saturday I was joined on top of Tin Can by 15 other people, who stood shoulder to shoulder in a scene reminiscent of the Aspen Extreme ski school tryouts. I think I even yelled “Keep it on the ground TJ!” before I dropped. Anchorage got pummeled with snow saturday night and I’d planned on skiing the front range above town sunday, but Max got me out of bed, handed me a free pass and drove me to Alyeska, where the confusion over the new lift ticket system forced the lifties to let people with expired passes ride for free. It seemed half the people I know were there, which is unfortunate as my social skills were at zero. Transfixed by the new snow I was mumbling like a drunk 17 year old, but instead of “I’m so wasted,” I repeated, “it’s so good” and “this is just what I needed” again and again. Even a pitcher of porter and jager shots with the Skinny Raven crew failed to take my mind off all the snow. Winter has now truly arrived, more thoughtful, thorough posts will be coming soon, when I can do more then babble about snow, winter, and how happy I am.
Update: As I’m walking out the door to work I see this good news. Alyeska wins the race to 200
November 17, 2008
High winds and periodic snow made sitting in the office all last week painless. With the adverse weather coming midweek I knew the only thing I was missing while in the office was long hours face first on the couch. Friday, expecting our mercilessly random weather to show it’s abrasive side Saturday, or at best leave us with horrible instability, I promised Kim and Max I’d be social, and possibly go out for a change.
Friday night didn’t work out as planned. After work Max ordered “The Motherload” a 256 piece knife set (with 7 Earnhardt switch blades, 12 pearl multi-tools and a broadsword) from that cooky QVC style Knife Show, I always half suspected of being a farce. The thought of a giant box of worthless knives arriving on my door step got me laughing, and eventually drinking Jim Beam. It wasn’t long afterwards, while enjoying my book, that I realized I was reading with only one eye, decided I should stand up, crashed to the floor, and crawled my way to the couch where I passed out face down. I woke up hours later, it was still dark, but conveniently, thanks to our far western timezone, was able to turn over and catch the Michigan game halfway through the first quarter.
Sunburst's Wasatch impersonation
As that started to turn ugly I slowly became distracted by more urgent and less depressing concerns, like the level of sunshine in Turnagain Pass or whether Somali Pirates are rum drinkers. Max called, just as I’d seen evidence of sunshine in Portage, saying he was at the shop buying some AT boots. He’d woken up next to a loaded .45, decided to get new boots on the drive home (a full 24 hours of impulse shopping) and would be ready to go in an hour. I got started on lunch (we bring food now!) while watching Real Madrid crumble against Valladolid.
Despite the dire avalanche warnings the pass was absolutely slammed with people, in a typical early season fury that will hopefully die down once Alyeska opens and distracts most of them. Max and I avoided Sunburst, with it’s Wasatch like crowds, and headed up Magnum, where there was a skin track, but only 2 sets of turns. We didn’t see anyone going up, but were able to watch the ant farm like chaos on Sunburst, as groups of black specks climbed and descended from the ridge.
We took our time up top, dawdling around, checking out a fallen cornice that survived the summer and eating smoked salmon burritos as the sun sank. We dropped off the south western side of Magnum into Davis Creek and took advantage of the nice new snow, that was a light fluffy 18″ with a delicate wind crust which was detectable with a ski pole but became imperceptible once moving. The surface hoar was glittering and the snow died in a warm twilight orange as we descended toward the creek, before working right towards the car. We found a decent path at first, but as we got lower we ended up in a full brown bear style thrash through thick alders that had me wondering if Max’s new knife set included a machete while laughing about the people that would follow our idiotic path looking for an easy way out. We hacked our way out just before dark, and headed back to Anchorage hoping the sun would hold for Sunday.
looking towards Davis Creek just after dusk
I’d like to say we returned for more on Sunday, but despite another lame early exit from the night’s events (again face first on the couch), Max ended up blacked out, banned from all downtown bars, and eventually in handcuffs at a lame discotheque. Charlie’s warnings of thick fog kept us rooted at home, passing the day with books, talk of Kim’s new Russian woman and hours of PES before being nursed to sleep by the some Italian soccer. More to come real soon, winter is just getting started.
Friends Update:
November 13, 2008
by Max
Winter is officially here- Its not the cold temperatures or the lack of sun that means winter is here, nor is it the snow on the ground, but what signifies winter is here is the lack of forecasting. Weather forecasting during the sunless months goes on autopilot. Looks like the destination is “PARTLY CLOUDY. A CHANCE OF SNOW SHOWERS”
INCLUDING...WHITTIER...SEWARD...GIRDWOOD...MOOSE PASS 400 PM AKST THU NOV 13 2008 .TONIGHT...SNOW SHOWERS. SNOW ACCUMULATION 3 TO 6 INCHES. LOWS IN THE 20S. VARIABLE WIND 5 TO 15 MPH. .FRIDAY...SNOW SHOWERS LIKELY. SNOW ACCUMULATION UP TO 2 INCHES. HIGHS IN THE MID 20S TO LOWER 30S. LIGHT WIND BECOMING VARIABLE WIND 10 TO 20 MPH IN THE AFTERNOON. .FRIDAY NIGHT...PARTLY CLOUDY. A CHANCE OF SNOW SHOWERS IN THE EVENING. LOWS IN THE 20S. NORTH TO WEST WIND 10 TO 20 MPH. .SATURDAY...PARTLY CLOUDY IN THE MORNING THEN BECOMING MOSTLY CLOUDY. A CHANCE OF SNOW SHOWERS. HIGHS IN THE LOWER 20S TO LOWER 30S. VARIABLE WIND 15 MPH IN THE MORNING BECOMING LIGHT. .SATURDAY NIGHT...CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SNOW SHOWERS. LOWS 15 TO 25. VARIABLE WIND TO 10 MPH. .SUNDAY...SNOW LIKELY. HIGHS 25 TO 35. .SUNDAY NIGHT THROUGH TUESDAY...MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SNOW SHOWERS. LOWS 15 TO 25. HIGHS 25 TO 35. .TUESDAY NIGHT THROUGH THURSDAY...MOSTLY CLOUDY. A CHANCE OF SNOW SHOWERS...LOWS IN THE TEENS. HIGHS 25 TO 35.
October 14, 2008
Over the summer months I pay no attention to weather forecasts. It seems rather boring; either it’s rain, sun or clouds but it has little importance for me. I’ve spent the past two days walking around in the snow, and I’ve been preoccupied by winter thoughts all week, and the weather seems consequential. I keep finding myself reading the National Weather Service Public Forecaset and feel like I’ve read it before. Sometimes it takes a second, but eventually I remember that I have read the same weather report, every day last winter. From October through April our daily weather forecast will contain a simple combination of five words; chance, snow, partly, rain, cloudy. Occasionally they’ll omit either rain or snow, and sometimes on a freak chance the computer that randomly generates these reports will malfunction and place a sunny somewhere. Reading the report leaves you less clear about what’s to come then before. I guess it might snow? Or at least be cloudy? I’ll be getting used to this for the next 6 months.
WESTERN PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND
INCLUDING...WHITTIER...SEWARD...GIRDWOOD...MOOSE PASS 400 PM AKDT WINTER 2008 TONIGHT...RAIN AND SNOW DEVELOPING BY MIDNIGHT. SNOW ACCUMULATION UP TO 3 INCHES...MAINLY OVER HIGHER ELEVATIONS. PATCHY FOG. LOWS IN THE UPPER 20S TO MID 30S. NORTHEAST WIND 10 MPH. WEDNESDAY...SNOW AND RAIN. SNOW ACCUMULATION UP TO 2 INCHES... MAINLY OVER HIGHER ELEVATIONS. HIGHS IN THE MID 20S TO LOWER 30S. NORTHEAST WIND 10 MPH. WEDNESDAY NIGHT...SNOW LIKELY IN THE EVENING...THEN A CHANCE OF SNOW AND RAIN AFTER MIDNIGHT. SNOW ACCUMULATION UP TO 6 INCHES...MAINLY INLAND. LOWS IN THE MID TEENS TO MID 20S. NORTH TO WEST WIND 5 TO 15 MPH. THURSDAY...MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SNOW. HIGHS IN THE MID 20s TO LOWER 30S. NORTH TO WEST WIND 5 TO 15 MPH. THURSDAY NIGHT...MOSTLY CLOUDY IN THE EVENING WITH A SLIGHT CHANCE OF SNOW...THEN BECOMING PARTLY CLOUDY. LOWS IN THE LOWER 20s TO LOWER 30S...COOLEST INLAND. NORTH TO WEST WIND 5 TO 15 MPH. FRIDAY...PARTLY CLOUDY. HIGHS 25 TO 35. FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH MONDAY...PARTLY CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SNOW SHOWERS. LOWS 15 TO 25. HIGHS 25 TO 35. MONDAY NIGHT AND TUESDAY...MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SNOW AND RAIN SHOWERS. LOWS IN THE 10S. HIGHS 25 TO 35.
August 6, 2008
sorry, realised I hadn’t put up any pictures of the fish caught off Point Mackenzie.
my years first silver….
Jeff and a bloody Coho…
This was less than an hour’s work, much thanks to Max and Jeffe for the excellent boat driving.
mmm salmon
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