Arctic Valley

A couple of our new friends, Ian and Kara, who recently moved up to Anchorage about the same time we did, went downhill skiing with us this past weekend.  There are a handful of ski slopes relatively close to our home (within 30 minutes or so) and we wanted to try them all out.  The most recent one, Arctic Valley.

The unique aspect about this mountain is that it is completely non-profit and run strictly by volunteers.  It's on the military land and only open on the weekends.  The volunteers get free skiing, hence the incentive for giving up your time to run a lift or two.  And since it's a pretty low budget ski mountain, the slopes are not groomed. Ever.  All the fresh powder accumulated throughout the week is game to those few visitors it receives on the weekends. 

There was a lot of fresh powder this past weekend - well over a foot in some spots. 

This created an uncharacteristic amount of large moguls.  I'm pretty sure I got air born on every turn.  And a few times I would voluntarily just fall over because my thighs were burning so bad from trying to maneuver all the bumps!

It is no easy mountain.  The majority is rated black diamond. 

Fabulous for the new skier like myself.  Hah.

I will say that until this day, I had not fallen once while downhill skiing.  However, I can now say that my fear of completely wiping out and/or face planting it is forever gone.  More than once the front of my skis would hit a deep snow bank and make an abrupt stop...while my body did not.  It was thrilling.

Views from the top.  Stunning.

Another unique experience was the T-bar lift. Typically these take you to the "bunny hill".  Not this one. It takes you ALL the way to the top of the black ski slope.  This was way more challenging than I thought.  My first go around I made it about 100 feet before my skis got tangled up and I wiped out and I had to beg some poor kid to pick up my poles on his way down.  Again.  At that point, I wasn't surprised.

On my way up!

Me...on the ground. Like usual this day.



Riding tandem on the T-bar lift.  It was hilarious.  In order to get off the "bar" Matt literally had to shove me to the side...I hope the view brightened some body's day behind us.  And I think Matt may have slightly enjoyed that.

Laughing all the way up....

Alyeska Downhill Skiing

Matt and I get days off work.  They are just rarely on the same day.  So we did some pre-planning and decided to take Friday off and have a day together - no chores, no house remodel, nothing.  We slept in and headed out to Girdwood to enjoy some breakfast and downhill skiing at this resort.

Alyeska Resort
Girdwood, Alaska

The beauty of this particular day was that the top of the mountain had gotten 51 inches of fresh snow in the last week, the sun was out (how I miss the sun!), it was in the 20's (that's warm, people), and it was a Friday morning so there was nobody there.  The conditions were perfect.

You can see how all the lifts were not so full...

We opted to stay on the lower part of the mountain, because a) I'm still trying to get my downhill skiing groove on and b) it is like $25 a lift ticket. Much cheaper. No point in shelling out the big bucks to be miserable coming down the whole mountain.

Did I mention it was awesome not having to fight a crowd?

Matt was excited! 
Notice how there is no line at the lift behind him.



The views were pretty good if I do say so myself



Taking it all in half way down the mountain



Doing our best to get the background. 
It didn't really work very well.

I actually had a ton of fun once I got the swing of it.  Maybe next time we'll venture to the very top...maybe.

Crosscountry Skiing Powerline Pass

It has been frigid here. And I'm not just talking about I-live-in-Alaska-cold, but unusually consistently below zero, no snow harsh, brutal weather.  It's been terrible.  Just going outside my hands would burn from instant freezing.  Taking Mocha for a walk was torture, even she would do her business in record time so we could go back inside - of which we are thankful.  The worst part...well, let's say, a bad part...was that there was no fresh snowfall for about 3 weeks.  It caused all the existing snow turn to ice, which made for outdoor sports a no-go.  Until....

We finally got some cloud cover which made it "warm" up to the 20's and a couple days worth of snowfall. A long time coming. Naturally we come out of our cacoon and threw on the skiis. Matt spent a good part of Friday downhill skiing Alyeska...while I sat at my desk at work (I'm not bitter at all)...and Saturday we ventured out to a trail familiar to us from the summer while hiking and enjoyed some crosscountry skiing with some friends.  Then we headed back to their place for some slowcooker white chicken chili (yum!).

Other than my hair freezing and the life-threatening slippery roads on the way to the trail (ok..they weren't that bad), we had a blast!  I think I found a new hobby to help keep me slightly sane during these long winters!

Enjoying our new skis bummed off a co-worker of Matt's moving back to the south.
Worked out well for us!

 

Our good friends, Ann and Chad, with their dog
I was sad we didn't bring Mocha.