Monday, March 18, 2013

Spring Break 2013!!! Part I

Our Spring Break started out with Jay flying in at 2:30 am after having his flight delayed and missing his connection.  His baggage was on a separate plane and so he stayed awake with Nate and drove down to Anchorage early in the morning to pick up his bags.  The boys were nice enough to let me have a few hours of beauty sleep.  We headed straight up to Hatchers Pass to do some skiing.  The next day we drove out to Valdez to do some cat skiing and backcountry skiing on Thompson Pass.  Here are some pictures from the first part of our Spring Break.

Lucy and Deshka watching for those pesky snow squirrels.
 
The blue sky came out just for the picture our first day on hatcher's pass.
Mount Wrangell towering above the Wrangell mountains.
 
We drove into Valdez just as a storm was moving out.
Can you find the ice climbers?
Looking across Thompson pass.
 
Some more Valdez pics.
 
Our cat skiing day was fun but it was grey and snowy all day so pictures weren't the best but here's one of all of us at the top.
 
The next day we head out for a long trek on skins into a bowl we cat skied in last year.
 
 
 
 
These clouds were very cool.
We had a view of the valdez glacier on the way down.
A cold Lucy goose.
 Jay said 'Nate stop there and let me get a picture.'
I said 'yeah you stay there and let me get a picture.'
 
The sun popped out just in time for the fun part.
 
Lucy the snow dog!
 
 
 
 
70 mph winds came in that night and blew all the snow away, so we headed back home to search for more snow.
Another shot of Mount Wrangell on our way out. It's a pretty impressive mountain.
Jay got a Woodland Park Bier Werks sticker on the legendary Tok Thai bus that didn't get enough business in Tok so she moved to Glenallen haha.
We got back to Hatcher's and set out on terrain we've done often.
 
 
A cold Deshka
 
A Halibut feast to celebrate Jay's arrival.
 
The snow was only so so at Hatcher's pass so we took off the next day a few hours east of anchorage to check out turnagain pass. We found amazing fresh snow and had beautiful blue sky days, so lots more pictures in Part II.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Life is good... AK Backcountry Skiing

 
We were able to get out the past couple weekends for some skiing up at Hatcher's Pass.  Katherine came with us and successfully climbed and skied her first mountain in Alaska, she was very excited haha.  The weather has been relatively gorgeous, so we're crossing our fingers we have this kind of weather for cat skiing in Valdez. 
 
 
 
Nate is a sweetheart for carrying my skis.
 
Sea of powder.
 
Everyone was out skiing and we were able to watch some crazy people skiing steep cutes and their fearless dogs following them down.
 
Yay Katherine!
 
 
 
All smiles on the mountain.

 
At the summit!
 
Frozen river
 

Nate is our brave leader crossing the river.
 
 
 
 
The sun momentarily popped out!
The familiar skinning trail
Lucy the snow goose. 
 
Untouched powder
 
 
Katherine said to me at the top, "we make mountains look good!"
Nate climbed up to get extra elevation for the ride down
Giving Lucy a pep talk before going down.  She's very angry when we start skiing and has a tendency to lay in the snow until someone picks her up.   Hopefully she'll get better!
 
Lola came too!  Nate carried her for a few turns and then she got the hang of it.