Go Play Outside!

JAY'S RANDOM MUTTERINGS ON THE THINGS TO DO OUTSIDE IN ALASKA, POORLY SPELLED.

Having received my long awaited Fatback, I was very, very antsy to get it out on the trails and give it a spin. I had taken it out on the local trails for several hours of riding and since it was working well decided to take it along on a trip out to Wolf Run cabin in the Whites. The trail conditions report did not bode well, but I assumed (wrongly it turned out ) that with the new snow and the nice weather folks would be out on snow machines enjoying themselves. On the off chance things didn’t pan out I waxed up my skis and tossed a backpack in the back of the truck. This turned out to be a good call. Heike, Christie, Tom, and I headed out of town and off to the trailhead fairly early Saturday morning after a quick stop for coffee at Alaska Coffee Roasters. The roads are much improved now, but still a bit slick so the driving was slow at times but we arrived intact – hurray! The trail leaving the trailhead looked great, so I packed up the bike while the two skiers (Heike and Christie) got ready to go, and Tom the runner took off down the trail. Eventually I got my bike packed and headed out. The first 5 miles or so of the trail were fantastic – hard and fast with a slight dusting of snow. I took it pretty easy getting used to the bike’s handing while fully loaded. Alas, at mile five things got a bit slower – there is a side trail here that heads out towards the Tolovana River, and all the traffic appeared to be taking the side track, with a single snow machine track heading down the trail. The trail was still rideable, but marginally so. Alas, after several hundred feet the snowmachine turned around and that was the end of the packed trail. The rest of the trail had about 5″ of snow on top of a breakable crust on top of a bit more snow, then a packed trail – good for a bike stand but not riding.

The options were to push the bike another 18 miles or head back to the truck and get skis. I was not thinking the 18 mile push-fest in followed by another 18 mile push out the next day was a good first over-nighter on the bike, so I returned for the skis. Tom joined me and we headed back to the truck while the skiers continued down the trail and off to the cabin.

45 minutes or so later I left the trail head again, this time on skis. 4 hours later we caught up with Heike and Christie who had the good sense to bail on the original plan and had stopped at Colorado Creek cabin. The trail between Colorado Creek cabin and Wolf Run cabin appeared to be completely unbroken – it would have been a long hard slog with a couple of tricky route finding sections, so bailing was a good call – we also knew the cabin was unreserved mid week and were fairly sure we would not be putting anyone out. Regardless it was very nice to step inside out of the wind into a warm, bright cabin. We had a relaxing evening goofing off and talking, and after a night’s sleep and a slow morning, headed back out on the trail.

The ski out was much faster as our tracks were mostly still intact and we were back at the trail head surprisingly quickly. Near the end of the day things cleared up a bit and we got some wonderful views of the surrounding hills and the mid afternoon sun.

A big thanks to Christie and Heike for breaking trail and doing all the cabin chores – it was very nice to ski in with all the work done!