Posts Tagged ‘cache mt cabin’

It is supposed to be cold..

Wednesday, December 11th, 2013

I am blessed with a fairly flexible schedule, and a very understanding wife, so when I found myself with a Monday and Sunday free of major commitments I started planning an overnight cabin trip in the White Mountains NRA. The Whites has some of the best hut to hut skiing and snow biking (and walking it turns out) around – a nice trail system, wonderful views, and relatively few people. The plan was to head to Cache Mountain Cabin, with one group coming in the “long” way on bikes, and the other coming in the short way, ~20ish miles, on bikes and skis. The morning of the trip we were down to three bikers and one skier, Tom. As Tom, Remus the dog, and I headed out of town we got a call from the other bikers, who were planning on coming in from a different trailhead and going in the long way, saying they were turning around, as it was raining. Rain in December is pretty uncommon in Fairbanks. Tom and I decided to try our luck, so we headed out, planning on checking out the trail, and turning around if things were too miserable. We arrived at the trailhead, and the weather, while warm, looked pretty nice, and the trail was firm, so we headed off. Tom started off walking as the trail starts off steep..

I started off pushing, but eventually things flattened off and I started riding. The trail was nice and firm and the biking was great, though a bit misty.

And warm..

After 7 miles or so, the trail splits, and unfortuteatly most of the traffic appeared to be going the other direction, and the trail got soft. Not too soft though – it was still ridable and fun, though not fast. There was also a huge downhill, which is always fun.

After a couple more miles of biking I found myself pushing up a big hill, wondering how Tom was doing. The skiing looked to be pretty fast, and I was thinking he would be catching up soon. The answer soon came in the form of loud and distant cursing. It was dead calm, and as there are almost no trees so sound can carry a long way. After one more bout of cursing I decide to wait for Tom and see how he was doing. Eventually I gave up waiting and started walking back.. eventually Tom arrived. Apparently the around freezing conditions made skiing very difficult – it impossible to get any grip on the icy surface of the snow for forward motion on the flats and uphill, and stopping was next to impossible on the downhills. The cursing I heard was Tom’s last two attempts and skiing downhill, before he gave up on skiing and started walking. I asked him if he wanted to turn around, as we where about half way, but he wanted to keep going – even though the skiing was aweful, it is so very rare to be out in the Whites in December, in bairly freezing, calm conditions. Bad skiing, but still a fantastic day! He walked most of the rest of the way in, skiing maybe 4 miles of the 19 (ish) miles into the cabin.

I walked up the hill with him, then continued on. The biking was fun, though slow, and there was a fair bit of pushing. By the end of the day the slightly over freezing temperatures made things a bit soft and squishy. I got to putter around Cache Mt cabin drying off the bike and de-icing everything before Tom arrived, and then enjoyed a evening of talking and goofing off.

The next day it was +20f, the trails were setup bomber for biking – fantastic biking.

Biking past some of my footprints from pushing on the way in made my day.

The skiing apparently sucked still, and Tom enjoyed a nice long walk out.

Thanks Tom for a fantastic trip! Hope everyone is enjoying winter!

PS – For those of you who say I don’t post enough pictures of myself, here you go:

(Yes, I felt like a complete idiot taking this photo!)

The White Mountains Loop

Friday, February 19th, 2010

On a sunny and warm Sunday morning, Ms Marsh, Tom, and I set off to do a leisurely ski of the White Mountains 100 course. Our plan was to ski the first day to Crowberry Cabin, then on to Windy Gap cabin, then out. This would make for two fairly mellow days and one longish day, approximately 26 miles, 34 miles, then a 40 mile day – all very doable. I was really looking forward to the section from Cache Mountain Cabin to Windy Gap Cabin, as I have never traveled this area before and was told it was quite beautiful. The other factor is that I would probably end up doing this section in the dark and would like to have some idea about the trail before attempting to blast though it at high speed by headlamp.

The first day started quite pleasantly, with a fast trail and wonderfully sunny and warm weather.

It was a bit too hot for Remus, alas. He is really only happy in sub 0f weather.

We zoomed down the trail and eventually stopped for a bite to eat at Moose Creek cabin. We passed two snowmachiners on the trail and a solo skier, but other wise we had the trail to our selves. The trail was super smooth and fast and made for fantastic skiing.

Once past Moose Creek cabin the trail climbs up a ridge and winds though a several year old burn and offered us fantastic views.

We reached Crowberry after a little under 7 hours of skiing which included a fair bit of stopping and goofing off. This was my first trip to the new Crowberry cabin. Its a new design without a loft, but it is quite spacious and has tons of room. We had a fantasic evening reading varous magizines including a road bike racing magazine that seemed quite out of place. Tom amused us by reading excerpts from a snow machining pamphlet, which espoused the many virtues of snowmaching (creating world peace and curing cancer, for example).

After a huge dinner we hustled off to bed, eagerly awaiting the alarm summing us to a early start the next morning (some of us anyway).
The next day turned out to be equally warm and sunny, and after a breakfast of pancakes and bacon we where off. The trail out of the cabin was a continuous drop all the way to Beaver Creek. Tom added a bit more “drop” and had a tremendous crash on one of the downhills that did in one of this bindings. Tom then had the distinct pleasure of skiing the rest of the trip with one floppy loose binding.
The trail got progressively rougher as we headed to Cache Mt Cabin, with lots of exposed tussocks. These sections where fairly short though and most of the skiing was quite good.

We encountered our first bit of overflow shortly after crossing Beaver Creek. It was short and dry though, and was quite fast and fun to ski though. I was using my skinny racing style skis, and don’t get too much edging power on overflow, and so have to be careful. If only someone made stiff, narrow, metal edged (or partial metal edged) skis..

We reached Cache Mt Cabin and stopped in to read the log book and have bite to eat. Several years ago I left a book here as a joke, ‘Develop Your Psychic Abilities‘ and it was still here. Strangely, a another book I had left in the cabin as a joke, “The Instant Divorce”, was gone – go figure.
Past Cache Mt Cabin the overflow got a bit more intense, but was still quite passable.

We were now on a section of the trail that I had never skiied, and I was enjoying exploring the area. This section of trail climbs for 12 miles or so, then comes over Cache Mt Divide, and drops down to Windy Gap. The trail up into the divide offered great views and was not particularly steep until the final sections.

The divide was quite scenic and had wonderful views of the surrounding ridges.

I could have spent days exploring this area, but alas we had still had 14 miles or so to go before we reached the cabin, so we didn’t stop very long.

The trail away from the divide was fast and fun – just steep enough for some high speed skiing but not so steep as to be uncontrollable. We reached soon reached the section of trail called the “ice lakes”, where the trail disappears in small valley with wall to wall ice.

A warning to racers in the upcoming White Mountains 100 race – this section was the only section of the trail that was a bit scary for me. I skied most of it, and was out of control for a good portion of the time. The ice has a slight slant to it, and where it is slushy it is very easy to ski under control. Where the ice is hard though, it is very difficult to slow down. Twice I ended up plowing into alders at high speed when I could not slow down. I would treat this section with caution and ovoid the temptation to bomb it, unless you have skis with metal edges.

Tom and Ms Marsh put on stylish bags and yak-traks on their feet and walked this section.

After leaving the ice lakes, the most fun of trail begin (at least for me) – the trail gradually drops down to Windy Gap, winding though big trees and going over a endless series of woop-a-doos. This made for a very fun 9 miles or so of double poling. Eventually we reached Windy Gap Cabin and crashed for the night. The next morning we headed out, and started out with a long section of ice. I skied this section while Tom and Marsh walked it. The skiing was fun and super fast.

The next 10 miles of trail winded though large trees and crosses Fossil Creek numerous times. The first 5 miles or so was a fun roller coaster with lots of small rolling ups and downs which made for fun and fast skiing.

There were a couple of sections of brief overflow. These were pretty hard frozen and dry making for fun skiing. These sections could be a bit tricky during the race when I am sleep deprived.

The ridges in this area are fantastically beautiful.



This section included one of the more interesting trail finds I have encountered – there was a partially eaten wolf or long legged dog carcass on the side of the trail.

Sections of this trail had a huge number of wolf prints – it appeared a small pack of wolves had followed a creek down to the trail then followed the trail up to the windy gap area. There was a couple of bird kills marked by a large cloud of feather so it looked like the wolves were having fairly good hunting.
Eventually we broke out of the thick forest and into a old burn and soon we were past Caraboo Bluff cabin and on the hilly descent to Borealis Cabin.

Shortly after Borealis-LeFevre Cabin we ran into the BLM trail groomers on their way out to Wolf Run cabin, then to Windy Gap Cabin and out. They left the trail wonderfully smooth and fast.

It was getting a bit late, so we pushed on to the trail shelter, had dinner, and then headed out to the parking lot.

When I reached the parking lot I was greeted by a bunch of Japanese visitors waiting in the parking lot for aurora to photograph. Tom and I made it to the truck first, and waited a while for Ms Marsh to arrive. We had a number of false alarms when we thought we had seen Marsh’s head lamp, only to find it was the aurora watchers taking pictures of things with super bright flashes. Things like the trail signs, trees, the ground, and a pile of straw… there was no aurora to be seen, so perhaps they were making the best of things.

All in all it was a quite fun three days and we got to ski the entire course. Skiing the course is highly recommended for racers – there is no place where anyone with any direction sense could get lost, but there are a few sections were you have to be careful due to ice lakes, overflow, steep descents, and other tricky bits, and its good to get a feel for it before attempting it in a sleep deprived hase.