Snow

Natalie breaking trail while skiing on the Turnagain arm trail much earlier in the winter after a sizable snowfall. We are on track to have one of the snowiest winters on record. We certainly aren't experiencing Valdez like conditions, but it is the most snow we can remember in a while. We also had the coldest January on record with an average temperature (recorded at one of the warmest parts of town) of 3.6 degrees. Suffice it to say we spent a lot of January BELOW zero. Again, not Fairbanks, but colder than we in Anchorage are used to. So this week as it warmed up into the teens, 20s, and even 30s we were ecstatic! We haven't bothered to shovel the decks as it has been enough to stay on top of keeping the driveway clear. Below is a picture of our smaller deck off our bedroom. The railing is about 3.5 feet tall. The largest pillow we can recall!

Russell trying to give some scale to the size of the berm by our driveway. This is the tallest bit, but it is similar height on either side going down the driveway. It's one thing to move the snow out of the way. It is a whole separate challenge to find someplace to put it. When we work it as a team, I move the snow out of the way. Russell comes behind me to hoist it up onto the 2-3 foot berm. In this way it only takes 30-40 minutes to clear the driveway instead of almost twice that if Russell does it alone. Yeah, yeah, we could get a snow blower or hire someone to plow, but it would rob of us of that great work out, right? These enormous piles of snow, of course, are just begging to be made into snow caves. There is one with four tunnels at the far end of the driveway. Natalie and I came home yesterday afternoon after skiing(me) and swimming (Natalie) and found that Russell had excavated another adventure for the snow.


Here is the entrance to the Hood bobsled run. Above next to Russell and below looking into it.

Liam beginning his run shooting through the tunnel....

Looking down on Natalie as she is headed about halfway down. You can admire Russell's hardwork to build the trench all the way down. He and Liam were outside for about 3 hours yesterday working on it!

Russell and Natalie after a wipe out mid way down. The run didn't work so well with two going down at once.

Natalie at the entrance to the other snow cave. It had to be re-opened after the 12+ inches we got on Friday.


Every year on SuperBowl Sunday Anchorage hosts the Ski for Women. It is a fabulous fundraiser for the local shelter for abused women. Hundreds of women come out to ski a 4K course. Many dress up, participate as teams of friends, mothers/daughters, etc. I've done it a number of times over the past 14 years. The last time was a couple of years ago with a 5 year old Natalie. It was single digits with a frigid wind (as the conditions often are). Natalie and I bailed halfway through because we were both frozen. It is hard to generate enough heat skiing alongside a 5 year old, however tough she may be. I had also participated in earlier years pulling the Chariot with her in it - much easier and warmer! I think everyone was thrilled to have new snow, sunshine, and temperatures in the high teens and 20s. Natalie is a far more accomplished skier now and had no difficulty whatsoever skiing the whole course with me. We had fun picking out our fairy outfits and making our head garlands last night. We dubbed ourselves the Equinox Mother/Daughter Fairy Duo: Autumn and Spring.


Checking out all the other costumes is as much fun as skiing! Some of Natalie's and my favorites:

The Octopi

The Kraken. Everyone thought it was a giant octopus. But, no, it was a representation of the giant mythical sea monsters that would lurk in the ocean and sink ships. Whatever it was, it was a great utilization of a lot of bubble wrap and spray paint.


The Giraffes. This is what I guess you do with a month of subzero temperatures.... craft really outlandish costumes for an hour of skiing!

Portage Glacier

Snow is rapidly retreating in town and around our house. Our snowman from a couple of weeks ago is down to barely a snow hump of a body. But, the cool nights give us the nordic skiers' Spring gift - Crust. A nice crunchy firm layer that allows you to skate ski in the backcountry. We are usually limited to skate skiing on only groomed trails through the winter. A favorite Spring Crust ski is on frozen Portage Lake. It is about a mile or two ski to the face of the glacier. In the summer you could never get this close to the glacier safely, so it is a special treat to ski right up to it. When we did it last year it was windy and the kids and I never made it to the glacier. This year it was gorgeous. Calm, sunny, and although only in the 40's it felt hot with the sun beating off the snow.

Russell pulled both kids in the sled and I used the Chariot to shuttle lunch, extra clothing, and the kids skis. There were many other like minded skiers there and 4 other families with young kids. We played and skied around the back part of the lake by the glacier and hung out in the sunshine for several hours before heading back. By 1:00pm when we started back it was no longer crust but heavier wet snow. Still, the skiing was great. I could at last keep up with Russell for a bit. It was flat, he was pulling 100 pounds of kid, and he'd broken a pole so had only one. At least now I know how to adequately handicap him if I need to!

The pack of kids, dogs, Chariots, sleds, and skis.

Natalie and I doing races - her rules, of course. I with no poles and her with no skis.

View of Portage Glacier from across the lake.

Denali

Russell has made 4 trips to Denali this summer. He did several science courses that take place in the park, but also did a pack raft trip with our friend, Jeff Pickett. Just prior to our family trip to Denali he and Jeff rode the bus into the park to float down the Savage River drainage. It was a wet, cold trip, but both Russell and Jeff enjoyed the spectacular scenery.

Jeff at the beginning

Brief blue skies as they camped at the top of a pass.

A cold, wet Jeff before descending down to float the river.

Russell returned to retrieve the kids and I and we went into the park to stay at an established camp at Teklanika. There were canvas wall tents with bunk beds, all our meals were prepared, our own private van, and an incredible naturalist, Martha, who taught us and the kids all variety of things about Denali. We did a great hike up through the tundra and I was really proud of what troopers both kids were. It was cool, overcast, often drizzling, and they were having a wonderful time. It did help, I'm sure, that periodically Martha would pull out some new nature game for them to play or sit down and read them a book.

Liam loves Forget-Me-Nots, our state flower, and gets very enthusiastic when he finds them. Natalie had to break out her own camera and take a few pictures of them as well. We saw four of the "Big Five": Moose, Caribou, Dall Sheep, Bear. No wolves on this trip. Many other animals and birds as well. When Russell recently returned from his 4th trip Liam wanted to know if he had stayed at the camp with the puddles. The puddles and mud were a huge hit with Natalie and Liam.

Admiring the Forget-Me-Nots

Story Break

Spotting the Dall Sheep

Hike on the Teklanika Drainage

Teklanika Mud

Juneau Hoods July 4th Visit

Kevin, Aleria, and Atagan went with us to one of our favorite hikes out of Girdwood. It is an easy 1-2 mile walk to a hand tram (Liam kept calling it the hand stand) across Glacier Creek. The July 4th Girdwood Forest Fair was also going on so we explored that as well. Actually, since the Forest Fair is right next to a really fabulous playground, the kids played and Aleria and I explored the Forest Fair in more depth.

We really loved getting to see them this summer albeit only briefly. They took the sunny weather we were having home with them to Juneau and left behind their rain for Anchorage to enjoy the remainder of the summer!

Cousins

Liam on the firepole

Kevin and Atagan

I write the blogs, but except for a few pictures here and there, this is my photographer - in action:

Sweet as a Lilac

Busy as a Bee

Memorial Day at Cooper Lake

We rang in the summer with a camping trip to Cooper Lake with our friends, Gary and Heather, and their girls, Tazlina and Marley. Natalie, Taz, and Marley had their own tent and, of course, had a blast together. We did a similar trip with them at Cooper Lake 4 summers ago before Liam was born. It was the first time camping with both kids that both were asleep before 10pm. It was the easiest camping trip with kids we've had since Natalie was born and gave me great confidence for the summer trips ahead.

We did get a visit from a bear at our camp the second morning. Probably a young adolescent checking things out. We successfully scared him away from our tents and kitchen area but he skirted the camp and exited above our camp to munch on sedges across the creek from where I did the dishes. The kids were all very interested in the bear and surprisingly none of the girls were too concerned about being in the tent on their own. I think they were too tired the second night to think about it.



Gary and Heather taking the 4 kids out for a paddle on the lake.
Marley (5), Natalie (6), and Tazlina (7 - almost 8)
Liam engaged in his favorite past time while the girls were off exploring.
Exploring the shoreline.
View of our camp.

Enjoying Winter

After 10 days in Hawaii what better way to embrace the cold again then ski a 30K race! Natalie skied the 2.5K option with Russell and Liam (in Chariot) as her back up team. Lot of hills and a rather exhausting race, but it felt good to do it. I can't say I've really "trained" this year. But, I have been able to do more skiing this year than I have since Liam was born. A combination of Liam and Natalie being older and the job change. I skied once a week with a group of other women and our coach, Holly Brooks, until Holly made the Olympic ski team. We were all very excited for her and it was fun to watch our Anchorage contingency on the US Nordic Ski team in Vancouver. To say nothing of getting to say your coach is an Olympian!

We got some warm weather shortly thereafter that made for great snowball/snowman making.


Granny Sue and Granddad arrived the beginning of March. I did a 50K race called the Tour of Anchorage. The kids greeting a very tired Mom at the finish line. It was a stupendous day to ski as you can see from the sky!

Natalie and Liam perched on top of the snow mound that Russell fashinoned into an enormous snow cave/fort for them. Three entrances and big enough for Liam to stand up in! It was fun until it collapsed this week.

Russell's parents, aka Granny Sue and Granddad, enjoying some great Spring cross country skiing as well during their stay with us. There is the faintest view of Denali on the horizon.

Liam loves to go skiing, as you can see by the grin. "I'm a good skier," he likes to say as he goes chasing after his big sister.

Liam, Granny Sue, Natalie, and Granddad enjoying the trails at Hillside.

We had a party for Natalie's sixth birthday. She decided she wanted it to have a tropical theme. She drew picture of all sorts of animals and things associated with warmth - red-eyed tree frogs, dolphins, coatimundis, coconuts. There was clearly a theme of her memories of Central America which was cool. She taped these drawings all over the walls (TWO WEEKS before her birthday). There was a lot of excitement to say the least. She has such a small kindergarten class and with it being at the tail end of Spring Break we invited the whole class taking a gamble that half wouldn't be able to make it. I lucked out and was right. Nonetheless, with our other non-kindergarten friends, we still had 15 kids at our house. Controlled chaos and fun.

Granny Sue was very obliging to do over 90% of the construction of our homemade monkey pinata. Russell and I must assume responsibility for his scraggly looking limbs. Russell gets to take full credit for his climbing harness suspension. Liam watched the construction all week, but we neglected to tell him that it gets brutally destroyed by a bunch of kindergartners.

Natalie's classmate, Eli, taking his turn at the pinata. Eli broke his leg sledding down a hill at his home. Enforcing my personal belief that sledding is one of the more dangerous and frightening things that our kids do. But, so is jumping out of a car window to get away from a wasp.... But, I digress. Liam watched in silent horror as each child attempted to beat up the monkey. But, when head and limbs started flying off he lost it and fell into sobs. He finally told me between sobs that he needed to go upstairs and didn't want to watch any longer. It took quite some time for him to get over it. I felt terrible for not warning him. I can totally see how confusing it must have been for him, especially as tender hearted as he is! However, the other 14 kids had a ball and greatly enjoyed our monkey.

Russell and my last "date" together taking advantage of having his parents in town. We skied up a valley close by in Chugach State Park. With the sun on the snow it was so warm we ditched gloves and skied in thin t-shirts going up. But, when we got to North and South Suicide Peaks and Windy Gap, it was cool and windy and otherworldly. Russell has continued going on such ski outings numerous times in the past few years. I think it has been years since I've back country skied more than a few miles! Although I feel nostalgic for the baby stage from time to time, I am definitely feeling the liberation of getting beyond it and having the time to enjoy it. Having the youngest turn three definitely does feel like a bit of a turning point in getting to do a few more of the things I/we used to do.

We may, if we're lucky, have a few more weeks of skiing on the trails in and around town. But, we are fast headed toward Break-Up season. Lots and lots of mud and slush. Spring here is not tulips and daffodils, but rather pot-holes, rubber boots, and many carwashes. Long live our remaining snow! Happy Spring.