Powder, powder everywhere

Brian and I took some friends out to Byers Lake in Denali State Park this past weekend to celebrate our birthdays. We drove up Saturday morning in a snow storm that ended dropping over two feet of snow on the Lake on top of the many feet they already had.



We arrived in the parking lot to snow deep enough to almost bury the car and were excited to try and find some slopes up Kesugi Ridge to ski down. We rigged up the sleds that I made on Friday and skied in to the cabin. This was my first attempt at making a sled and only had a few hours to throw them together but they worked out well.


I decided to stay and hang out in the cabin while Brian took the dogs down to check out the slopes. The dogs had a great time running around on the maze of trails on the lake. They quickly found out that the area surrounding the lake was a big cliff and the ridge was pretty windblown and bare.

So we decided to hang out in the cabin all weekend. I love the cabins at Byers Lake. We stayed in Cabin #1 this time. They say it sleeps 6 people, but I'd say 4-5 would be perfect if you plan to stay the whole weekend. The lake is perfect for cross country skiing and snowshoeing. There were a few snow machines, but nothing like at Red Shirt Lake.



It was good to relax, because the month of March is going to be pretty busy. This weekend is the Alaska Ice Climbing Festival and next weekend it's off to Valdez for the Ice Pixies again! At the end of the month we're heading down to Colorado and Utah with some friends from Palmer to do some mountain biking.

Sunday we woke up and the storm had passed. It was clear and minus 10 degrees. I hadn't slept well as usual. I get kind of creeped out late at night in these cabins. It didn't help that I woke up at 4 am to someone walking around the cabin with a headlamp. I looked around and everyone we came with was inside. I ran to the door and locked it, because I couldn't imagine why someone would be lurking around in the woods in two feet of new snow at 4am in the middle of nowhere. Seriously. Can you think of any reason?



No one that I stayed with in the cabin actually believes that I saw this but I did. Whoever it was came to the front of the cabin, looked at our stuff and left. Maybe they were looking for somewhere to stay or maybe they were staying in one of the other cabins and were out for a very early morning hike.

We skied around Sunday and took pictures of Denali. We wanted to try to make it to the start of the Iditarod Trail Inviational that afternoon but took too long getting ready and missed it.