Heaven in November

Cory and I went skiing in West Mail on Teton Pass Sunday. What unbelievable conditions for November! The powder was fluffy, soft, sweet, light, forgiving, springy and oh so fun! I'm not sure whether Cory and I or Zippy and Oscar had more fun ... we're all powder hounds.

A lesson in winter

Here's the next installment of my Excursions column ...

When Karen Colcough and I go out for a day in the mountains, we don’t go skiing, biking or hiking – we go adventuring.
Perhaps it’s a sign that friends no longer send us off with wishes for a fun day.
Instead, as we set off for Sleeping Indian Thursday, we got: “Good luck,” from one friend, and “when do I call the cavalry?” from yet another.
I’ve never been up the iconic mountain before, but decided I wanted to go sometime during fall – when the days were long, the skies were blue and the ground still sprouted green.
As each weekend came and then went, filled by activities other than ascending Sleeping Indian, the days shortened, the skies greyed and snow drifted over the ground.
But since Karen and I were adventuring, and not hiking, the change in weather hardly seemed relevant as we rumbled down the Elk Refuge road toward what we hoped would be a trailhead.
Karen maneuvered her Subaru over a road built for high-clearance trucks until we reached a steep, unmanageable hill and were forced on to our feet.
Only a few minutes after we began walking, we came to a fork in the road. The map seemed to indicate one way, but Karen – who had been up the mountain once before – seemed to remember going the other way.
“I’m OK with going this way, even if the mountain is over there,” she said, pointing the opposite direction toward the peak.
I laughed at the absurdity of the statement, and then willingly followed her lead – after all, that’s what adventuring is all about.
We wound over paths stomped down by hunters that eventually turned into elk trails.
After about an hour, it was evident we had altogether missed the real trail leading up the south side of Sleeping Indian. But studying the map revealed that if we continued to climb up, we would eventually crest the mountain’s broad shoulder.
We linked our way through the woods and around rocky precipices, climbing toward the peak we periodically glimpsed through gray and grimacing clouds.
A few hours later, post holing in knee-deep snow, breathing damp air, we broke free from tree line.
“I hope we get some more wind,” Karen commented.
I had a kite strapped to the side of my backpack that we wanted to fly in the mountain’s gently sloping, wide-open flanks.
Little did we know…
As we pressed on, late-fall conditions turned to a mid-January type of blizzard. Whipping wind and thick snow battered my nose and cheeks. My fingers went numb as I pulled on all five layers I had brought with me.
Karen and I convened on an exposed ridge and I adamantly voiced my opinion: time to turn around.
Karen was suffering from mild hypothermia herself, and I didn’t have to do much convincing.
We retreated swiftly and carefully. The cloud ceiling had lowered, leaving us in a void of soft white, and the wind had nearly covered the tracks we made just a few minutes prior. Using a rock outcropping to keep our bearings, we found our way back to tree line.
Crouching on a foam pad in a thicket of trees, I shoveled cold spaghetti into my mouth while, while Karen put on extra layers and got out her expeditions mittens for me to wear.
A few minutes without moving and were chilled to the core. My hands were rendered useless, so much so that I couldn’t buckle my backpack.
We gathered up, got hiking, and armed with the expedition mittens, my fingers began to tingle the satisfying and painful way fingers tingle were they unthaw from a deep freeze.
Soon I had enough movement in my hands to unwrap a chocolate bar.
“How many people can say they literally need chocolate?” I said to Karen jokingly, as we savagely devoured the hazelnut milk chocolate.
We retraced our footsteps over hills.
Fortunately, Karen was hiking with poles, and in the fading evening light, we used her pole plants to distinguish our trail from elk trails. We had also, wisely, drawn arrows in the snow at indecipherable forks to point our way.
Soon the last light of day disappeared and our vision narrowed into the beam from our headlamps. Stars sprinkled overhead and an orange crescent moon drifted in and out of clouds.
Spurred on by gravity and cold, we found our way down, arriving to the car and an ice-cold beer at 7:30 p.m.
After successfully four-wheeling our way back to the graded and flat elk refuge road, we called our skeptics, er, friends, to let them know that another Karen and Amy adventure had drawn to a safe and happy conclusion.

Five years of ramblings

Happy fifth birthday blog! Wow! Hard to believe that this site ... started on a total whim ... is still chugging along, churning out strange black and white characters (I'm referring to the alphabet) that tell the stories of strange colorful characters ... who live in the high mountains or far flung lands ... splattered by photos that have frozen memorable moments ... the moments that have linked my way on this journey to find out ...

In honor of five years, here is my very first blog post, dated Nov. 14, 2005.

It's not that I'm scared to go, I'm scared of what I'll leave behind

Here I am sitting at my desk in Anchorage, Alaska with the cold winter air pressing through the windows. This week I am planning to go to the new Warren Miller film with a bunch of friends, a tradition that has always marked the coming of winter. Thus it is strange to realize that in a little less than two months I will be stepping on a plane that will take me south... take me off to new adventures, places and people...take me to Guatemala.

I stopped today and asked myself why exactly I am leaving this place that is my home. This place that has wide open bowls for backcountry skiing, full moons over the Chugach mountains and the dazzling northern lights.

The answer is simple. To learn and grow.

When I think of the challenges ahead I feel both scared and excited. It's like this breathless emotion that makes my lips smile and my heart sink simultaneously.

So far I have done a fairly good job of keeping the fear at bay. It helps that I have been to Central America before and that I spent three months as an exchange student in Argentina in high school. This time I know what I'm getting into. This time I know that I am going to place where I will know no one and not feel completely at ease communicating even the basics.

And yet I am still choosing to go.

At this juncture in my ramblings I am struck by this idea: it's not that I'm scared to go, I'm scared of what I'll leave behind. In addition to my beloved Alaskan winters, I will also be leaving so many amazing people- people that make my days wonderful. That's hard to reconcile!

I can't help but wonder how this experience will change my thinking? I highly doubt that it will change the core of who I am but I am almost certain that it will change some of the ways I think about and approach the world. But how? I guess that is why I'm going... to find out how.

To life's beauty and goodness,

Amy

'Tis the season

Rather than procrastinating (my usual habit), Cory and I spent Saturday "concrastinating" (my new word for the opposite of procrastinating) ... and went out to the forest in search of a Christmas tree. Gently falling snow and finding the perfect tree - robust but with a hint of Charlie Brown - made for a fabulous day. Saturday evening, after hanging a few ornaments and threading a string of lights through the branches of our tree, we really got into the season's spirit by watching A Christmas Story. 'Tis a happy, happy time of year.  

You know you're an Alaskan if ...

I recently spent a full two days organizing and moving into my new room here in Jackson - great digs, with great room mates. In the process I came across a scrap piece of paper where I had been jotting down all the things that make Alaskans unique. So here it is, my top five list for:

You know you're an Alaskan if:

1) You're on a bike path and a passerby tells you, "There's a mom and a baby" - and you know that, of course, they're referring to a mom and baby moose.

2) You buy your dipnett at a drive thru on the Kenai Peninsula.

3) Your daily commute takes you past a road sign that points the way to a correctional center, a landfill and a campground - three adjacent facilities (the Hiland Road exit).

4) You're more fascinated by state politics than sports, because after all Alaska politics are practically a sport.

5) You don't bat an eye at the Bed, Bath and Beyond customer service sign that has "bush orders" next to "wedding gift registry."

Cruisin' along the Tetons

Yesterday Cory and I took the bikes for a cruise through Grand Teton National Park. This time of year the inner loop road is closed to all but foot, bicycle, roller blade and horse traffic, and locals flock out to enjoy the serene setting and spectacular scenery - without the summer tourism mayhem.

99 percent stoked

 (Editor's note: this is the latest installment of my Excursions column, written for the Jackson Hole News&Guide)
 
Face shots or core shots? That was the question running through my head as I unearthed skis and skins, beacon and boots, and probe and shovel.
It was 10 p.m. at night and I was trying to decide if the idea of skiing the pass after this year’s first snowfall was just plain ridiculous, or ridiculously wonderful.
Always the optimist, and one who never says no to a good adventure, I decided to run with the latter.
Plus, I’d already told my friend Martha Williamson that I would meet her at 6:30 a.m. for a pre-work dawn patrol, so I was what one might call committed.
I found fresh triple-A batteries in the bottom of my gear bin, loaded them into my beacon, flipped it on and felt a surge of excitement as the screen displayed 99 percent — like my beacon batteries I was 99 percent stoked to start a new ski season.
Miraculously, from ski fever, I woke up the next morning 10 minutes before my alarm went off at 6 a.m., and practically jumped out of bed.
Zippy, my pup, and I rendezvoused with Martha. In my 15-year-old sturdy, sometimes surly Subaru, we chugged up Teton Pass, headed for Edelweiss bowl on the south side of the pass.
To our surprise, we found a jam packed parking lot at the top of the pass, and just barely managed to squeeze in. As we got ourselves ready — taking longer than normal, rusty from the summer months — Zippy wriggled with excitement.
“C’mon guys, what’s taking you so long, don’t you know it’s ski season again ...” he urged with every inch of his body, nose to tail.
Finally, we were off, skinning for a short distance, before making the first drop of the season — over a patch of grass into an oh-so-buttery glade. Knee-deep powder made for hero turns.
As I floated on the delightfully soft snow, dropping my knees into tele turns, every inch of my body said, “hell yeah, this is what life is all about.”
Martha put that feeling into words, when on the next skin up, to the top of Edelweiss, she said, “Work is always better after a morning of skiing.”
Dense fog and crystal clear sunshine danced with each other on top of Edelweiss. Zippy floundered in the deep powder, gaining little traction in his lanky legs, but nonetheless grinning floppy ear to floppy ear. Martha and I spied our lines, and one at a time, jumped into the bowl below, literally shouting for joy at the apex of each turn.
We took a bet and won — we got a few face shots and not a single core shot, or for that matter even scratch to the bases of our skis.
Down the gut of Edelweiss, we cruised, our legs amazingly strong despite the summer ski lull.
We almost got away with a remarkably fall-less, flawless first day on skis ...
But while setting a skin track back to the parking lot, my skins totally detached from my skis. Snow had gummed onto the bottom of them, rendering what little stickiness they had left useless.
I tried twice to reattach my skins to my skis, with the idea of proceeding gingerly, before I conceded to boot packing.
Thankfully, we only had a couple hundred feet more to climb ... because boot packing in fresh powder ain’t no easy task. I was panting as loud as Zippy by the time we topped out on an established trail that would take us back to the parking lot.
(Note to self: reapply glue to skins before next outing.)
By 10 a.m. we were back at my car, delighted by our morning.
Not bad for a first day, and not bad for October, we thought in chorus.
A few words of wisdom: while Martha and I avoided core shots, the early season snowpack is extremely variable. Hidden rocks, logs and other obstacles abound, so proceed carefully. Also, backcountry skiing has many hazards, most significantly the hazard of avalanches. If you ride the pass, make sure to take with you the proper equipment and know-how.