It was a rough wake up call Sunday morning. My entire body was aching from the 6 hour race the day before, but it was warm out and I had made plans to meet friends at noon for a backcountry ski. I thought it would be good to get out for a mellow day in Arctic Valley to stretch out my legs, instead of just lying around getting stiff.
Craig, Zuzi, Dean and I headed up to Arctic Valley and up Gordon Lyon Peak. The snow was quite sun baked on this side, but made for an easy skin up.
On the way down my new skis didn't perform quite as well. The snow was very grabby and I was having trouble turning. I haven't yet mastered this jump turn and always resort back to trying to carve, which doesn't work on this stuff or in powder. What can I say, where I grew up there was no powder. I'm still learning.
The other three had no problem. Dean has been skiing since he was like 5 or something. Craig used to be a ski instructor. Zuzi was once a national champion of downhill skiing. I was in good skiing company, and it was fun to watch them glide down the mountain effortlessly as I tumbled and struggled to turn.
After the first crappy run I was hesitant to go back up, but we wanted to check out Rendevous Peak and Avalanche Gully which looked soft. Dean noted that the powder gets blown into this gully and the sun barely hits it.
We skinned all the way to the top of Rendezvous taking in the fantastic views that the Chugach provide.
Then headed down the gully. The top was pretty soft with areas of wind blown crust scattered about.
The gully was at least a foot of smooth powder for a nice 1000 foot run.
Niko was happy to run around with Jasper again, and these two were completely done at the end of our second run.
1 comment:
Looks like a great time you had on the mountain ... especially with the dogs. Must have been tough on the legs though after running a race the day prior.
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