Happy Birthday Mr. Brown!

Our good friend Andy had his birthday last week and for a present, we brought him to Alyeska for a day of bluebird sky skiing. It was SUCH a b-e-a-uuuuuuutiful day.

Started in the morning with all the trees covered in gorgeous twinkly frost and a fog bank resting at the feet of the Chugach Range.

The fog was still hanging around, as well as the below zero temperatures, as we swished around on the empty slopes.

The Birthday Boy himself....enjoying a great Alaskan day.

Ben and I gettin ready to ski down into the clouds below.

Looks like Andy is boarding underwater, icy water!

Weekend o fun.

I think that weekends should be 5 days and the work week should be 2. Whoever set it up the way it is should be hung high in the center of town. Alas, we must make the best of what we have... so that is just what I did this weekend. Pictured below are some shots from ice climbing which happened on Sunday, on Saturday I went backcountry snowboarding in Turnagain Pass. I have no pictures from that day because it was sooooo much fun that I never stopped to take a picture, even though it was a great day for pics. too bad :( We went up Tin Cup, the run we tried to do a week ago. Man was it amazing. The powder was super dooper deep and even fluffier than it was deep! It was pretty much like flaoting down a mountain on a cloud, but since there are no pictures of that amazing day which will live forever in my memory, you'll just have to imagine it for yourselves...

As for the ice climbing, it was a blast as well, we hammered into a waterfall south of town. There were some really cool ice formations like this one in a cave half way up.

That's me, chopping away at the waterfall. If you have never ice climbed then get a ticket up to alaska and meet me at my place, trust me, it's worth it.

A shot of Kevin looking back at me as he headed for the top.

Can't wait for next weekend. Damn, 5 days to go.

Paper cup.

Jesse Christy and I went down to turnagain last weekend to try to conquer Tin Can. It's the name of a run in the backcountry that lots of people love to do. We found tin can and headed for what we thought was the way up to the summit. Come to find out after skinning for quite a while that there was a very large gorge blocking our access to said peak. Without the proper ice axes and stuff we opted to do a different hill that was just to the left of Tin Can. After the run we named it paper cup cuz it was slightly smaller and less hard core than it's bigger neighbor. We managed to get some great turns in and Jesse even hucked off a the top of a tree covered in multiple feet of snow! A great day in the backcountry, as is any day spent outside enjoying fresh pow. Can I get an Amen?

paper cup at turnagain

Backcountry Skiing in Turnagain Pass

This Sunday, Ben and Kevin and I ventured out to Turnagain Pass for some free skiing - backcountry that is. The hike up was tough, however halfway through a couple caught up with us and zoomed right on by....they had to be in their 70s! The weather was great going up, but then about 20 seconds after we started skiing down, the snow started falling hard and reduced the visibilitity to about 10 feet but you couldn't see any definition in the snow.....so needless to say, it was a bit rough coming down. Anyway, here's some pics. Ben had the camera this time, so no pics of him this time :(

Trekkin up!

It was about 2 degrees out, as shown by the frost in my hair!

Takin a turn

Kevin on his way down.....in almost a blur - he goes SUPER fast.

Happy New Year!!!!

Hope everyone's new year was more fun than you hoped for...because ours was a little less. Here goes out story......
Our plans included driving up to Talkeetna (about a 2.5 hour drive from Anchorage) with some friend to ring in the new year with some great Alaska bars and fireworks. Ben and I ended up having to stay at a cabin that was a 25 min drive from Talkeetna itself because they were the only place we could find to allow dogs. Come to find out, they allow them, but you can't keep your dogs there when you aren't.....so we had to tote the pups around in the back of the car for the night :(. We brought in EVERYTHING into the cabin so we'd have room to tote around friends and pups in the Jeep, and headed for the town. After a fun time was had by all in Talkeetna, Ben and I and the dogs headed back to our cabin. As we headed on the really wide back roads eagerly awaiting the warm cozy cabin, a moose came out of the trees. So we slowed down a bit and moved over to the right side of the road.....then WHAM! What we thought was road was actually the 5 ft ditch just filled in with lots of snow, the Commander went in and went in hard (and tilted). After attempting to drive it out, it was obvious there was NO way. We gathered ourselves (ok, just me, I kinda freaked!) outside and LUCKILY for some reason we left our cross-country ski boots in the car, and all our skis were on the top of the car. We only had one pair of gloves and NO lights! It was about 12:35am in the Alaskan wilderness....needless to say, it was DARK. So we attached ourselves to the dogs and headed on the faintly lit (from the snow) road. The dogs were a bit freaked out as well and ended up not pulling as much as we hoped. So 3 hours later, we somehow arrived at the cabin, completely worn out. Then come (later in the) morning, we had assistance from the cabin owner and a couple of friends to pull us out of the ditch.....with chains needed on the truck to pull us! Whew! What a memory eh? We're thinking next year to lay low.

Here is a picture of the ditch where we had gone in, you can't really tell but its about a 4-5 foot difference from the road to where Ben is standing. Now just imagine the Commander there at about a 45° tilt!

The Cabin

This is the cabin we stayed at in the morning after our "fun". It is a GREAT place, has really friendly owners, and has the most AMAZING view one could hope for. Unfortunately the clouds were a bit low, so we didn't see the top of Denali (Mount McKinley), but you could see the rest of the Alaska Range and could just imagine what it looks like on a clear day.
Its called "My Alaska Cabin", we HIGHLY recommend it to anyone and everyone. We'll post some pics below, but stop by their website for more pics and information.







A cool firepitThe great viewClose up of Denali

So here's a funny story, when the car was finally dug out and we were on our way to town for breakfast with everyone else, we stopped suddenly to take a picture.....and the skis and snowboards on top of the car kept zooming by. In the frenzy of everything, we forgot to close the ski rack! :)

Hatcher's with New Friends

Last Saturday, we ventured out to Hatchers Pass with our new friends up here, Heidi, and Jesse and Kristy. Heidi is our "online" buddy (funny story, good ending), and Jesse and Kristy moved up here from Hawaii last fall and knew our friends Spring and Kevin.
Anyway, Heidi just got new snowshoes for her and her husband that she wanted to go explore in, and Jesse and Kristy hadn't been to Hatchers yet.
And a side note.....Kristy is a SUPER trooper (no, not the movie kind!). She is currently 6 1/2 months pregnant, and the day before we went to Hatchers, she spent the day in the hospital getting 2 full IV's shoved in her after getting super dehydrated from a cold. Then proceeded to leave us in the dust practically up the mountain! What a crazy trooper!

Heidi testing her new gear

Self portrait of Heidi and me!

Ben and Jesse with the puppies (the dark one is Marina - Heidi's dog)

Mmmmm!

My Grandma Reed surprised me this Christmas by sending me her AMAZING coffee ring....the best thing to ever hit your lips, if you're lucky! Its a delicious pastry that she hand makes and that our family has, rather DEVOURS every Christmas. Not being able to be with them this year was hard, but this made it feel a little better while making my stomach feel a little worse :) Totally worth it though. THANK YOU GRANDMA!

It got kinda cold up here this winter!

We decided to share the chill with everybody. This is a picture of the inside (yes inside) of our window in our bedroom. We ran the humidifier while we slept and it was super dooper cold out that night and this is a close up of the ice sculpture art that formed on the window. Pretty cool stuff eh?

Happy Winter Solstice!

Why Winter Solstice you ask? This is a big day up here in Alaska, it means our days are going to get longer now...no more sunrise at 11am and sunset at 3:15pm. And this is a little thing we like to do each year...take our noon shadow picture on the Solstice! :) Crazy eh?

Ben trying to show off his Popeye arms...

Hunting in Kodaik

hunting trip in Kodiak

Yep, you read the headline correctly, it says hunting... Apparently if you spend enough time in Alaska you will end up going hunting. I got the opportunity to go to the island of Kodiak and jumped on it thinking that I was going to get some razor clams and sleep on a boat for the weekend. When i got there plans changed a bit.

I boarded a small twin propeller plane called a dehavalin dash 8 and we headed out just hours after I was invited for the weekend. With no security of any kind in the terminal and the ability to take a gun with you if you want, it was a popular airline for hunters. The flight was amazing as it flew over the Kenai peninsula in the orange light of a 3 hour sunset. Frozen lakes, massive fields of ice and snow and countless peaks scrapped at the frigid blue sky as we cut a path towards the island of Kodiak. When I landed I noticed that the landscape was far more mountainous than I had anticipated and Kodiak is actually an archipelago. I grabbed my bag and headed across the parking lot to a second airline called island air where I hopped on an even smaller plane with 5 other people including the pilot and copilot (max capacity) headed for a remote fishing village called Old Harbor. I was to stay with a native alaskan family who were extremely warm , welcoming and gracious. They brought me to their home and gave me a huge dinner after we had just met. It was fantastic and I headed out to their lodge to stay the night right on the bay filled with humpback whales who didnt care that it was winter and most likely stayed there because they couldn't bear to leave such a beautiful place.

We got up early before the sun the next day and had a traditional salmon breakfast called sikyuk and headed out to the boat for a day on the water. It was cold, but we had plenty of warm windproof clothing to keep us as warm as if we were sitting on the couch watching a fire at the lodge. Our original plan was to "dig some razor clams" at a beach south west of our location, but high winds and bad weather sent us in the other direction. We trolled the shorelines looking for deer as they grazed on the grasses of the mountain sides. They were well camo'd as their dark brown coats blended well with the grasses of winter. Once we spotted some we took the skiff ashore and began to climb the mountain. I was within about 200 yards of my first buck as I layed down in the grasses and let out a yelp to get his attention and to my suprise I was sucessfull! I have never been hunting before and the extent of my experience was shooting pigeons that were crapping on my car in Tucson with a bb gun. Seems like I as a pretty good shot though as it was a quick and painless. I climbed the rest of the way to find him in the snow. I dragged him all the way down the mountain in a waterfall....not the best route down but pretty much my only choice as the rest was too steep and filled with small brush and trees. Good thing I had on gore-tex or I would have been soaked. Once we were finished with the field dressing we put him on the skiff and headed back to the boat. I have to say that even though hunting is necessary to control populations of animals and it is done in a humane way I think that it really isn't something I want to do for fun. I am willing to do it for food though and I figure it's probably a lot better than buying a bunch of farm raised meat at the store. I could think of better things to do with my time for the fun aspect of life.

We headed out to sea and set the skate line to see if we could catch some fish. It was a long line of hooks anchored to the bottom about a hundred feet down. A buoy marked it's location as we headed to a remote cabin to find some four wheelers in the woods to take us to the bear! We arrived at the cabin to find that the four wheelers had the seats torn to shreds by the bears in the area and the keys missing so we decided to just hike to ocean beach. We made it about halfway there and had to turn back for darkness. No bear on this trip to the shore. I would see my first grizzly later on that night. Huge! and thank God running in the opposite direction. We returned to the skiff to go back to the boat and pull the skate line but on the way we ran into some seals and sea lions and an otter. The skate line had quite a few interesting creatures of the deep attached to it as we hauled it aboard. Nothing to keep though so we set it back out and headed back tot he deer hunt. I ended up getting 3 deer on the weekend and look forward to the smaller grocery bill for a while.

The night was great as I slept like a rock from all the climbing and stalking of deer on the mountains. I also was glad to get back to the town for the banya that waited for us at 160 or so degrees in a short cedar lined shack on the cliff. It was a cultural family sauna on steroids... it got so hot inside that it baked the cold of the days wind straight out of you. Inside the hut was a steel wood stove surrounded by rocks, the stove had a giant pot of water on it and the men splashed the rocks over and over until it was so humid you were dripping, with each splash the temperature inside seemed to rise 10 degrees driving you to the floor for some cooler air to breathe. We lounged in there until we couldn't stay awake anymore talking about the day and all the fun we had.

The next day was a blast as it was super sunny and warmer with a great dinner of salmon from the night before and another fantastic breakfast we headed back out to sea... We stopped at some black sand beaches and pulled the skate again to find halibut and cod attached to it this time! Good eating for sure!

After a fun filled weekend of adventure I rushed to make the flights home and don't think that I will ever forget my first visit to Kodiak. I learned alot about history of the area dn the people that live there, the aleuts, even picked up some words from their language... Enjoy the photos but they just don't do it justice!

Gingerbread House Bonanza

Ben, Kevin and I went to the Captain Cook Hotel the other night to check out the giant Gingerbread Town on display.....mmmmmm, it smelled SO good. Pretty cool stuff, made me hungry!



I tried to take a bite :)

Happy Birthday Puppies!!!!!

It was the puppies 2nd birthday yesterday, and to celebrate, I found some sweet K2 Phat Luv skis on Steep and Cheap, just their right size too!!!!!! They had a great birthday as you can see them kissing me in the picture below.

OK, just kidding, duh. I had to splurge and get them for myself as they were about 70% off the price. Love them, they have a sweet design, including a Pink Ribbon supporting breast cancer on the back. And SUPER light. Eeeeeeeee!
Now for the best part, for an early Christmas present, Ben bought me some Black Diamond Fritschi AT bindings!!!!!! Wicked sick!!!! :) So excited to use them.

See the sweet design swirling through your eyes???????!?!?!?!?!?!?

The Pink Ribbon :)

See me on your local sweet-pow slopes whizzing by with killer style (ok only if you're in Alaska, and give me a couple years to develop the whizzing and killer style).
HAPPY BIRTHDAY PUPPIES.....AND MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ME!! :)

Turkey Day Skiing!

For Thanksgiving this year, we decided to head up to Hatcher's Pass (where we were last year with Brian and Vanessa) with Kevin and the puppies to do a little tour skiing. Kevin was awesome enough to let me borrow his AT skis and Ben was trying out his new split snowboard (which he did himself, he did REALLY good). It was raining and crappy everywhere else, and Alyeska was closed due to avalanche danger, but Hatcher's was high enough for it to snow. We hiked up to the Independence Mine then up farther to the caretaker's houses. Then blindly skied all the way back down to the car (the light was so flat I fell in 3 holes having no idea they were there). Then we had our well earned Turkey Feast at the Lodge near the Parking Lot. It was a gooooooooooooood Turkey Day.

The puppies were SOOOOO tired, they were postholing it all the way up and down, at times you could only see their ears pokin out of the snow. They LOVED it