Friday evening a group of 8 athletes along with Nick and I split from Fairbanks for our first OD of the new training year. Our destination was Red Rock Canyon near the Canwell Glacier and Rainbow Ridge in the Eastern Alaska Range. Our goal? Hike in and go crust skiing on the lingering snowfields.
It's difficult at this time of the year to get a good freeze, so we had our fingers crossed and made plans to maximize our chances. Two years ago, we'd tried to do a quick day trip (starting with a sleep over and a 4 AM departure), and while the weather was spectacular we were breaking through the crust in short order already at 8 AM and were forced to break out the klister to shuffle around for the rest of the day. With that experience in mind, we decided to camp the night before and get up at 4 AM in the hopes of hitting the crust at the coldest part of the day.
Despite our best intentions of having everything packed and ready to go, it still took our groggy group 50 minutes to actually hit the trail, but that was OK as the crust seemed to still be hardening as we hiked in. After a little over an hour we reached skiable snow and strapped on our boards, and while the crust wasn't great, it was enough for our lightweight group to stay on top of the snow(yours truly excepted).
We skied for a couple of hours, ending our trip in a big bowl a few kilometers up the valley. After playing in that area for a bit, we turned around and sped back down to where we'd left our gear, hiked out and headed home.
Pics below:
 |
| Burgers in Delta on the way down |
 |
| High Stoke in Camp! |
 |
| We camped at the end of the accessible road - a five foot snow drift blocks the way in the background. |
 |
| The girls and Nick went for a hike right out of camp |
 |
| And the boys played pranks on the girls with moose nuggets... |
 |
| 4 AM Wake-up |
 |
| Hiking in |
 |
| Bears! |
 |
| At the stream crossing |
 |
| Getting up there |
 |
| Not too shabby a view at 6:15 in the morn |
 |
| Getting ready to ski |
 |
| Climbing up the valley... |
 |
| Playing in the bowl at the end of our ski |
 |
| Zipping back down as the crust softens |
 |
| Refueling and packing up for the trek back to the van |
No comments:
Post a Comment