Back on the Ice in Nabesna!

Friday morning Brian and I headed out to Nabesna for the weekend to ice climb. It's very rare that I get him to agree to ice climbing. While he loves exploring mountains he dislikes all of the gear setup and standing around that ice climbing involves.

But he agreed because I told him about this climb called the Corridor where we could free solo a bunch of ice steps while making our way up a narrow canyon only roping up on the longer pitches. The ice is moderate and I thought it would be a perfect lead for me since I haven't led ice in over a year.

We arrived Friday evening to the sun already set at 5pm. We stayed in a cozy cabin at the Sportmens Paradise Lodge, drank wine, ate macaroni and cheese and sorted our gear for the climb in the morning.

We headed out around 10 am. We are not into the alpine start, although we recognize that we might accomplish much more if we could wake up early. We parked at the Jack Creek pullout and headed over the tundra up towards the gully.

It was unseasonably warm, especially for Nabesna. At this time of year I expected it to be between 0 and 10 degrees. And after reading that earlier in the week it got down to 40 below with the windchill I was a bit nervous. But Brian's thermometer read 24 degrees. Perfect ice climbing temperature.

Eventually we were in the gully proper and started to free climb a few small steps.

We passed Wing and a Prayer, a grade V climb which Jayme, Carlene and I attempted and failed to climb a few years ago. It was March and the snow was deep. It had taken us three hours to just get to the gully after breaking trail with our snowshoes. We climbed the two smaller steps below the main pillar. I had no intention of leading it, but Jayme was game to try. She started up, got about a quarter of the way, and said nope. We had already been out five hours and it was getting dark so we retreated.

Wing and a Prayer

But I noted the alternate route "The Corridor", which Jayme said was more moderate, and knew I would be back to climb it.

Finally two years later I was back to climb it. I have to admit I was nervous to lead, considering I hadn't even swung an ice tool yet this season and only climbed three times last year. I pictured my first swing bouncing wildly and that I wouldn't have the strength in the my forearms to hold on, almost like the feeling you have the first time you swing a tool with your left hand.

The view back down the canyon

Roping up for the Corridor

But it turns out it's just like riding a bike. While I did feel a little out of shape, I felt like I got back into the groove of placing screws and building anchors pretty quickly. This climb is similar to Kid's Corner in Caribou Creek, where you keep discovering another fun pitch just around the corner.

I even had someone ask why we were going all the way to Nabesna to climb something similar to what we could climb closer to town, and I thought well if you have to ask that question then you don't really understand why people ice climb. I'm not out there to get laps in on really hard climbs. While it's nice to climb really difficult routes sometimes to see how far you can take it, for the most part I love to climb because I want to explore new areas that I'd never be able to get to without crampons and ice tools. And getting far away from town is not a bad thing.

 

The fact that I got to do this all with Brian made it that much more fun. I was worried about him having a good time. I'd like him to go with me on future trips, so it was important that everything went well. We have such different levels of comfort in the mountains. He is completely comfortable scrambling unroped on exposed ridges, but admitted that he is not as comfortable on a rope. I've been known to cry unroped while clinging on a moderately exposed slope and have even had a panic attack or two. On the rope I feel much more comfortable.

We picked a turn around time of 3 pm and it came up so quickly that we didn't get to go all the way to the to. But we put in a good solid day out. By the time we got our act together with all the rappelling it was dark and we only had one headlamp. We ended up hiking out in the dark.

 Brian won an entire turkey dinner at work, so we brought it up to the cabin and cooked up a big feast that night.

Back at the cabin, tired and happy.

Variable

It's amazing what a difference three days can make. Thursday we were swimming in fresh soft powder and Sunday we were breaking through crust and falling on our faces. Okay maybe just I was falling on my face.

 

A group of us headed down to Turnagain Pass again Sunday. We bypassed Tin Can and Sunburst and decided to head up Corn Biscuit to find some untracked snow. The conditions were variable and so was my skiing.

 

I was still having a great time, but mostly because I was laughing at myself falling on every other turn. I would make a few beautiful turns in soft powder only to hit a hard crust and launch myself face first down the mountain. I got my ski caught under an alder and did a face plant into crusty icy snow, then took 15 minutes to figure out how to get up while laughing hysterically. These are only few scenes in the comedy of errors that was my day yesterday.

Last night our friend Ken asked, "Do you have to be a good skier to ski in the back country?" And the answer to that is no. It's probably a lot less work if you are though.

Even though I sucked pretty bad today, how could I have a bad time with a view like this.

Afternoon Ride

It seems that everyone is headed down to Turnagain Pass this weekend, after hearing about all of the snow they have been getting. Since I have plans to ski Sunday, and had some things to get done around town today, I decided to stay in town.

I wanted to get out for a little though, so I met up with Tim at noon for a Fatbike Ride. We rode all the good winter singletrack - Moose Ridge, Salmon Run, Blue Dot, Birch Meadow, Black Forest, Baseball Boogie, Speedway (or Area 51), to Moose Meadow, up Rover's and back to the car.

We rode for three hours and on the ride home I thought about how a three hour ride has become a short afternoon out for me. I felt like I could ride for so many more hours. Having endurance is a good feeling. I remember back to a time when an hour long workout kicked my ass.

It makes me wonder, if I take the time and put in the energy, what else can I do? I guess that's how people get hooked on endurance racing

I guess this month begins my White Mountain training. I'm also throwing around the idea of doing the Susitna 100. Training right now consists of only a few days a week of riding with lots of climbing and skiing in between.

Last year I got burnt out on winter biking by the end of February. This year I'm taking a more leisurely approach to training by doing a lot of cross training, and hopefully I can avoid the burnout that comes with riding too much. I think I will enjoy my winter much more this way!

November Powder

The office I've been consulting at was closed for veteran's day today, so instead of sitting around on my ass all day, I decided to take advantage of all of the powder I have been hearing about in Turnagain Pass.

We headed down to Tin Can with a group of seven and were a little discouraged by the rain we drove through in the Portage area. It was a mix of rain and slush at the trailhead but we knew that meant fresh powder up higher....

And now to just get up higher...

Yep it was dumping...

Visibility was pretty bad at the top, so we stopped short of the summit and did a long run down through the trees. The snow was deep, up to our knees in places and light and fluffy at the top.

Down below the snow got heavy and it was hard to turn, so we had to just point it and go and keep up our speed or we would get buried in snow with cement like consistency.

After another run, we were exhausted from thrashing through all the deep snow, and ended the day with beers and burgers at the Brown Bear. I had a really fun day out and considering it was the first ski of the season, I feel like I did really well. My new skis and skins make such a big difference.

More storms on the way, more powder to be skied this weekend!

Sitka!

The overnight ferry to Sitka was interesting. We got a cabin and thought we'd sleep the whole way. We were tired from the hike up McGinnis that day, and didn't have trouble falling asleep. But not before we caught the sunset and snapped this shot off the back of the boat.

After sleeping for about three hours we woke up to the boat turning a lot. We were sliding back and forth on the bunk beds, and listening to the engine rattle the doors to our cabin. Every time I fell asleep, I awoke again to doors banging and my feet hitting the bottom of the bed.

We arrived in Sitka early. We still didn't understand how the ferry worked, so we took our time getting dressed, because we figured we had a lot of time. We were wrong, just as I was changing out of my pajamas a women came barging into the cabin yelling that they needed to clean it for the next people getting on. Sooo, you pretty much have fifteen minutes after you dock to get the @#$% off the boat!

We sleepily checked into a hotel and slept in that day. After dragging ourselves out of bed we got coffee and walked down to the bike rental shop. We needed away to get around. We talked to the bike shop owner and he gave us a tip on a hike that wasn't on the map.

We rode to the end of the road in Sitka and found the hatchery that he told us about.

 

We locked our bikes to a bridge and headed out to find the trail.

 

This giant log bridge got us over the creek.

Wandered up through the trees wondering what we were going to find. The shop owner told us there was a lake there with a canoe that we could use. There were actually two boats there. We came out of the trees and suddenly found ourselves at this beautiful alpine lake. It felt like we were the only people who had ever been there. (Despite the boats).

 

We hopped in one of the boats and floated out onto the lake. This was probably my most favorite place we visited on the whole trip. It was so quiet and peaceful here. There were huge waterfalls coming

There were huge waterfalls coming down the sides of this canyon. I wondered if anyone had climbed them.

After the hike we spent the rest of the day riding back to town and then relaxing in Sitka. We looked over maps and realized we had already covered half of the trails in town. Sitka was beautiful and we were sad to have to leave the next day. Back to Juneau!

Fall Riding, Moose, Ice, Rainbows and a little Bromance

It was a weekend of riding, but somehow I didn't get any pictures of anyone on bikes. Saturday a bunch of us headed out in the chilly morning up the powerline trail for a mellow social ride to Green Lake

My friends are so colorful...

 

Green Lake was completely frozen over. This is about the only time of year that you can see this lake frozen. In a week or so it will be covered in snow.

 

The moose were out all over the place, including this bull not too far off the trail. He was accompanied by four others. Another bull, a cow and two babies.

Today we rode from my friend Emmy's house, behind the ball fields, up to the STA trails and then a fun ride all the way back down. The puglsey handled the frozen bumps and roots pretty well. Not as easy to maneuver as my Dos Niner, but not too bad either.

We cut through an area I have never been through before and found this...

Joe giving himself some lovin on Bromance rock.

And these are my cats...

 

I know. Most random post ever. But fall is kind of like that in Alaska. You never know what you are going to find. Ice, Snow? Wind, Rain? It's an interesting and unpredictable time of year.Of course we are all waiting for the snow to come, but sometimes you just have to roll with what you get.

Crabapples, Raspberries, Muffins, Yum

It's no secret that I like to bake. Mostly, I like to eat baked goods. When I am having a craving for a pastry, instead of running out to the bakery, I just make whatever it is that I want to eat.

For the most part I have all of the ingredients I need on hand to make the things that I crave. Butter, sugar, flour, chocolate, eggs. Yep that's about all you need. But I also like using ingredients that grow in the backyard, or that we pick out in the wild.

This year Brian formed an obsession with picking berries. I made raspberry crisp, raspberry nectarine crisp, raspberry pie, raspberry jam, blueberry banana muffins, blueberry pie, and so on. Late in the season we still had a lot of raspberries, but I was all raspberried out so we froze a ton of them.

The trick to freezing berries is to lay them out on a baking sheet and put them in the freezer. That allows them to hold their shape and prevents them from squishing together to form a giant raspberry block. After a few hours you can take them out and put them in baggies. Then you can use only a few at a time, or a whole bag, depending on what you are making.

Today I was looking for a sourdough recipe in my Cooking Alaskan book and ran across a recipe for Crabapple Sauce. Who knew you could eat them? So I got a ladder and my ice axe (to pull the branches down) and headed out back to collect a bunch of crab apples.

Cooked them down, and made applesauce with them. It was a bit tart and I could only eat a few spoonfuls, so I decided to make muffins out of them.

I have been trying out vegan muffin recipes lately, not because I am vegan, but because I haven't had any eggs in the house and wanted to bake something. Turns out you don't need eggs to bake. You can use applesauce or mashed bananas. Yum.


So here's the recipe I came up with by combining a few of the recipes I have used lately.

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
Pinch of cinnamon
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup applesauce
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup frozen or fresh raspberries

1. Preheat the oven to 325º  Place muffin liners in muffin pans (approx. 12-16 muffins) or grease them with Pam.
2. Combine the flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon.
3. In a large bowl mix applesauce with the sugar, oil and vanilla.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the liquid mixture and mix.
5. Gently fold in the raspberries.
6. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full.
7. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Tada! Muffins! It would probably be a good idea to let them cool first, because the raspberries will burn your tongue.

More Summer: Mount McGinnis

Rewind back to June, when we were in Juneau. I'm finding it really hard to go back and write about trips we did in June, but want to get the photos on here, so here goes.

On Day two in Juneau we woke up to tea and delicious sourdough pancakes, made by Ben's mom. Ben told us stories of all of the peaks he had climbed in the area and beyond, which was pretty much every peak on the map. The peaks he hadn't climbed he already had a route planned out. He was back in Juneau for the summer and was going to spend most of his time climbing before he headed back to school in Anchorage in August.

He gave us about ten options for great day hikes. We decided on Mount McGinnis because the hike started by paralleling the Mendenhall Glacier, which we wanted to visit while we were in Juneau.

The hike started out at Mendenhall Lake. It was hot and sunny again. I think it got up to 80 degrees during this hike. I drank three liters of water in about three hours and then did the rest of the hike without any.

 

For the first few miles the hike is in the trees, but after about thirty minutes we started to see glimpses of the glacier as we climbed.

Eventually we came out onto the ridge where we needed to turn left and start scrambling. At this time we had a great view of the glacier. We could see people down below and heard helicopters flying back and forth all day. This is kind of a noisy hike on a day that a cruise ship is in town. People get off the ship and get in a helicopter and get flown out to the glacier.

Because we ended up visiting all of the towns in Southeast where the cruise ships stop, this became a theme of our trip. We felt bad for tourists who only get to stop in town for a day and never really get to see Alaska the way we do.

Cruises are great for people who want to pay a ton of money and don't want to do any planning on their own, but if you have the time and are on a budget I would recommend traveling by ferry. You can travel from town to town on your own schedule, talk to the locals (most of them don't really like the cruise ships coming to their towns, so we found the locals were nicer to us, and they travel by ferry themselves so you meet them along the way), and you have time to really explore the surrounding areas.

We turned left up the ridge and had a fun scramble on solid granite until we arrived back in the trees.

We were now well above where most people stop and turn around on this hike, it started to feel like we might be in bear territory. Then we saw this...

Out of the trees and into the snow...

We stopped just short of the summit again because we had gone over an hour past our turn around time and were planning on getting to the ferry at 5pm.

View from our turnaround point...

Off to Sitka for an overnight ferry ride...