The last great ski weekend
People keep asking if I will be coming back to Alaska. I really appreciate the beauty, and the cool things that you can do with mountains. I don’t have a return date on the calender, but I’m planning on riding from Quesnel up to the Arctic Sea in the spring.
I have started my Alaska Departure routine. Which includes returning the items I’ve ‘rented’ to WalMart (Hair Clippers, having created ‘Belgian MoHawk’ another one of my uniquely horrible hairstyles, etc) and arranged one last pot-luck.
The other night I went to a slide show by an ‘extreme traverser’. The guy told of his skiing (with 180 lbs of gear) in his unsuccessful unsupported trip from Anchorage to Valdez, and his subsequent supported (because no one really cares) trips. One was a first traverse of some local mountain range which took him and 2 friends over 20 days. This slide shows clouds coming in… Here we are spending 6 days in a tent… smoking weed… my friend just read and wrote in his journal… I decided to go outside and shovel. He had a great sense of humor, and each picture had a corresponding picture, the last is him, with his tiny expedition shovel, standing on a glacier, in a blizzard (day 3? 4?) fiendishly shoveling. Some parts sounded really fun, other times it just seemed that the guy is a dirty sock short of a full load.
Afterwards Annie came by to fill in some airtime for her NPR show on Neighbors. I tell the ‘arresting times‘ story. You have to download the entire section, but 1/4 of the way in - after the ad break - Lindsay neighbor exercising, Jonathan the roses then an unnamed Dr friend and I had spliced together dog walking stories. Dr Andy, had just told us how that as an interning Dr. patients will answer virtually question that he asks them. Then to illustrate his point told the story of a schizophrenic, girlfriendless, patient who needed a viagara prescription.
Saturday I ended up doing a 32km traverse, going up one valley, which right when it 
seemed to be dead-ending, we climbed out, ate our second lunch, and started making first tracks back down the long lake valley towards Anchorage. Annie, Dave, Brent, and Jen were along to make sure that I didn’t hurt myself too badly. I was reminded more than once that if I hurt myself it would ruin everyone’s weekend, at the time I was skiing my REI sleds down a slope which was equal parts heather, snow and rock. After two I forgot how many times I fell. It was a dawn to dusk day, which is now around 9h. Really great thing to have done, and the pictures tell a better story so here they are.
The Race
Well, I was 21st, beating the first women by 6 minutes. Yay, except that I male, and the winner of that race was sadly 10 minutes ahead of me. I used to be a good skier, and know what good skiers look like. The people I was skiing with, weren’t good skiers. So I just ‘chilled’ and ‘attacked’ them on the hills with 8km remaining. Then my skis stopped gliding, the ‘hacks’ caught and passed me, I debated walking because it couldn’t have been any slower. I crawl to the car and dry heave. Max the 18 year old who I was skiing with last week, and got 3rd, reminds me that I was bragging about how much I like to suffer. ‘Urting, ‘Urting. To all the older people I’ve out raced in my sprier days, I don’t apologize, it was fun. Buff down, I can’t imagine what 30 will feel like. Today 30km took 7.5h less than yesterday, and I’m not sure which one hurt me more.
OK, I’m off to go run up Wolverine mountain.
