Posts tagged #skiing

Winter Travels and the White Mountains part. 3

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Flashback Friday

Winter travels

    Last time I wrote about our winter travels in the White Mountains I left you with the story of our time at the first cabin, and the fact that it slowly started to snow, something that turned into a windy snowstorm during that night. If you want to read more about the beginning of this trip you can click on the below pictures.

Cold Snowy Winter morning

As we awoke the next morning a thick blanket of snow was covering the cabin and all the forest surrounding us. We could not see the tracks we had made the night before. The wind had been howling all night, to the point where I was wondering if the cabin would blow away or not. We made sure the day before to haul in enough wood for the next people to start a fire, and more wood for us to keep the cabin warm during the night. During the night we had taken turns tending the wood stove, but the fire was almost out once we woke up. It had been hard to keep the fire burning, and we burned through all the wood, and then some. The cold didn't bother us too much since we still needed to prepare for our next trip, the trip to Elezar's cabin. W had already waxed the skis the night before, and we started the fire again, and brought in some more firewood. Water is never an issue on these winter trips, since you have all the snow in the world surrounding you. You do need a small amount of water to start melting the snow though, otherwise it will burn and evaporate immediately. 

Leaving Lee's Cabin

    After a semi slow morning, packing and cleaning the cabin we were finally on the road again. There was a thick new layer of snow, and we kept breaking trail, which gets very hard after a while. Once we got to the turnout to go towards Elezar's cabin we started to doubt where we were going. It's not as easy to follow a trail if there isn't any trail. But a quick look at the map told us to go along the forest patch. So we did. We finally saw a man and his dog come up towards us on the trail, pushing his fatbike. He said he was suppose to meet his friend last night, but he had never showed. That made me worried. During the rest of our trip towards the second cabin we never saw this other guy, hopefully he made it to a trailshelter and was just resting up before continuing. 

Breaking Trail

    It was Sunday and no other person could be seen, well except the fatbike guy and his dog, that we had met earlier. We were breaking trail almost the whole way to Elezars cabin. There is a race that goes through the White Mountains, called the "White Mountains 100". That is a 100 mile race that you can do on foot, skis, or fatbike. It's very fun to follow, because each year is different. Some years the trail is more beneficial to skate skiers, whereas other years the fatbikers are the winners, and so on. All this BLM land allows for this enormous area, an area to roam free, to ski, skijour, dogmush or snowshoe if you are in to that. You can book these cabins to, for very cheap. They don't have any electricity or running water of course, but you don't really need that anyway. After about halfway towards the Elezar's cabin a couple of snowmachiners came through and broke trail for us. The first time ever I really appreciated the sound of a snowmachine. 

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Slushy Snow

    Some of the areas we ski over are semi submerged in water, because there are creeks that you can't necessarily see with all that snow. Scraping off that wet slush from your skis is a must, before it turns to ice and make it even harder to ski. But can we talk about the weather? After a pretty grey morning the sun started to peak through the clouds, and now we could actually see blue sky! Maybe we could even see some aurora in the evening....wishful thinking I'd say. 

Towards Elezar's Cabin

    And then finally we came to the turnout towards Elezar's cabin. There, up the hill is where it lays. We were again left with breaking trail towards the cabin, and this time we also knew that this meant the cabin would be cold. I admit, I was a bit tired. It's hard to ski far, and also hard to break trail. It's about seven miles between Lee's cabin and Elezar's cabin, so not that far after all. 

Sunset

    We arrived pretty early in the afternoon and got a glimpse of a beautiful sunset later on. After we got the fire going and some hot drinks we got the cribbage board out and started playing. It's a pretty nice feeling to be on your own, out in a cabin far from everyone else, a place with no cell service or electricity. I went out several times during the sunset to try to take some pictures of the beautiful light. 

Endless Mountains

    There is something about that calm, that calm you only get away from eveyrone else. I miss it. That absolute silence, no loud noises, no cars driving by your window. Absolute solitude, well, apart from being with your partner of course. It makes me feel more alive, to be able to be out there, in the wilderness. Disconnected from everyone. I miss it.

Nighttime

    As the darkness fell over the cabin on top of this hill I had high hopes, high hope of some northern lights. The night was a bit cloudy, and I left my GoPro out in case that aurora decided to stop by. It didn't. Still the moon casted a bright light over the cabin that night. A reminder that even in the darkest time there is always a light out there for us.

The Wall

    The final morning we woke up early. We had a long stretch back, well about 12 miles or so. Both of us were also a bit nervous. Nervous that the car wouldn't start, and we aimed to be back before the dark was setting, just in case we needed to get some help from any passing car on the highway. I managed to snap a few pictures before we started our journey. The final stretch of trail also includes what some people refer to as the Wall, its a 1 mile hill, including a climb of about 600 feet. It's a struggle. However, we were semi lucky since we got all that snow the other day. The way towards Elezar's cabin had been smooth traveling down the Wall. I can not imagine going down that hill in a luge like track, which I know is often created in these areas. 

    We finally arrived back at the car, and the final stretch we were passed by some other snowmachiners. W skied fast back towards the car, because if the car did not start, at least there were some other people there to get a jump from. But, we were lucky, my car started on the first go and we were happy, happy but tired. When were you last out on a winter adventure?

Posted on December 22, 2017 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Flashback Friday, The great wide open, Alaska, Cabin Life and tagged Cabin 2017 Alaska White Mountains Winter travels Winter Wintertime Winter Adventures winter sun Winter travels and the white mountains deep winter skiing snow Snow snowscapes Mountains Mountain Sunset glowing sunset Cabin Life_ Skiing.

Skiing in Denali National Park

 

Adventure Tuesday

Spring in Denali?

    A few weekends ago, when we made a short appearance in Alaska again, we took the opportunity to go skiing in Denali. We were so lucky when it comes to the weather. It felt like spring, snowmelt, 45 degrees and sunny, with some blue sky! Denali is tricky, she can create her own weather patterns, that is why so few people actually get to see her. But we did, and we have so many times in the past too, countless times.

 
 

Too warm to ski?

    The only downside to cross country skiing when its above 40 degree is that it is slightly too warm. But, we really really wanted to get out, and hiking was not an option since the snowpack was so deep. We decided to ski up this creek, towards the mountains. Sun was shining and the snowpack was thick, if you were trying to walk on the snow without skis you would sink through, well actually that tend to happen a bit with the skis too. We saw open water at some places but not a single animal, well, we did see some ptarmigan, but that was about it. We packed the snow down at our tunaround point and sat down for some lunch. I told W how lucky we were, lucky to be out here in the middle of Denali National Park. We glanced up the creek towards the mountains, and bot of us were thinking about the same thing. We wished we had a tent, more gear and time to actually get ut there and get somewhere. But we were pleased with the outing still. You take what you can get, right?

 
 

    Snow will stay on the ground until late April, early May, sometimes even later in Alaska. In Madison it's completely snow free now, and I walked around in shorts this past weekend. 

 
Posted on April 18, 2017 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Adventure Tuesday, Alaska, Denali and tagged 2017 Adventuring Adventurer denali Denali National Park Alaska Winter Adventures snow skiing Sun Mountains USA Outdoors Skiing Spring National Parks National Park Denali.

Tolovona Hotsprings

Out for an Adventure?

    A couple of months ago me and W booked a cabin at Tolovana Hotsprings. We booked it so early and still only weekdays were available. That was ok for us since we work a lot during the weekends, and thus we could compensate. We have quite the collection of hotsprings here in Alaska, a lot of them in the southeast but very few in the interior of Alaska. Unfortunately some of these hotsprings have become expensive resorts for tourist, and these are of course the ones that are easily accessible. So we are left with hotsprings you have to drive quite a bit to get to, and most of the time accompanied by a semi long hike/ski/bike or however you would choose to transport yourself.

Skiing to Tolovana Hotsprings

I knew the distance to Tolovana hotsprings were 10 some miles. Somehow i never quite translate this into kilometers, so most of the time I kind of think of it as kilometers even though I know it isn't. We even had a map, with elevation and distance, although these maps almost never sink into my mind. What I am trying to say is that it didn't quite sink into my head how hard of a ski this could be in the worst conditions. For one, I didn't have any warm wax for our crosscountry skis, yeah that was the first problem I guess. Although it wasn't really that warm so I couldn't quite figure out why the kick wax wouldn't stick with the wax I had. W's friend on the other hand had waxless skis, fishscales. I understand now that the trail conditions can be so extremely different depending on how much snow you have, when it snowed last, how much snow machine traffic and most important the temperature.

Hiking or skiing?

The start of the trail was (as you can see on the map above) pretty steep downhill. Most of that downhill we kind of laughed the whole way. We kept falling and slid all over the place so we decided to hike down the rest of the way. One thing that I already got reported from someone else, is that the trail is a snowmachine trail (a lot of these trails are traplines that trappers made and watch throughout the winter) which is pretty narrow, so not wide enough to snowplow with both of your skis if you need to slow down. That same person also told me that his friend actually broke his leg skiing down that downhill part... After the downhill part there were a couple of miles through the low point. As long as the trail had a slight slope to it, it went fine, but after a while me, W and our friend decided to hike instead. I believe the problem with the kickwax at this point was the icy surface and snowmachine tracks eating up all the wax we had and or water molecules coming inbetween the ski and the snowsurface.. who knows. As the elevation map showed, it was time to start going uphill...We hiked, because unless you had skins on your skis, this would not work.

Hiking it is...

    In the picture above you can see how narrow the trail is, and that the snowmachines have been digging the trail down...kind of like a luge. Also, if you look closely, slightly above the trail to the left you can see a a white narrow "trail" kind of looks like a creek going down the hill...well that hill is where we started.

    While hiking up the dome it gave such a payoff to turn around and look behind you every once in a while. We were lucky that the weather was kind of sunny. On top of the dome though, you had a beautiful view of the landscape. In the picture below you can see what we had behind us

    And this picture below is showing where we were going.

    The last part was pretty steep downhill so we hiked the last bit, and finally we arrived. Afterwards I was told that a lot of people going to Tolovana hike and bring a pulk/sled so that they can hike up the hills and then sled down...seems like an extremely good solution.

The Hotsprings

    The tubs are filled with hot water directly from the hot springs through a hose, and likewise semi cold water is filled from the creek. There were two other tubs too, that worked a little different. The view was pretty amazing. I have been to Chena Hotsprings which is a developed hotprings outside Fairbanks, and other than that, only to the boling river in Yellowstone. Now while the boiling river is really nice, I still prefer this setting.

Evening fun

    As the sun disappeared behind the hill we went back to the cabin for dinner. We are lucky now, cause the sun doesn't actually set until 9 pm these days, which calls for bright evenings. One other really cool thing about this cabin is that it has it's own windturbine connected to the lights in the cabin. When we arrived at Tolovana we had no wind but the next day it was extremely windy. This is apparently common, since we read the log book and several others had been commenting about the wind. Hence they have a wind turbine. The rest of our time there we ate good, played games, skied and hung out in the hotsprings.

    Final picture below, it's from the parking lot. Look straight ahead, and a little to the left...

    There is the trail going up the dome, and Tolovana is behind that dome somewhere. Have a great weekend.

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Alaska, The great wide open and tagged Alaska Food Fun Happiness hiking Outdoors Ski Skiing Tolovana Hotsprings water Winter Spring Adventures 2013_2 Adventure Snow Nature Mountains Environment Spring skiing.