HatchYourTrax

What follows is a mid-winter, in-flight contemplation of the past year making life work in Alaska.

Somewhere high over the decomposing remnants of granite rock near the California/Arizona line, above the lonesome desert ridges and salt flats of the southwest, a seemingly indifferent landscape instills something inspiring and contemplative in me.   I realize it’s the first time in a few months I’ve really been able to take stock of my winter, the time on the planks with snow underfoot, my neglect of ski brethren and the realization that this winter has been a harsh one. Harsh is a relative term, and one not only used as a way to describe simply snow conditions or the weather. No, harsh is the reality describing every facet of the past year of my life.  Of course, I still have my health, the support of an amazing woman, great friends, and in general the amazing life I live every day, so really what do I have to complain about?  Nothing I guess.

I’ve worked harder the last year of my life than ever before.  In some ways I’ve attained amazing things and in others I feel robbed, and burned out.  I finished a master’s program in April, started a new business, tried to support my wife’s new business any way I could, pushed for the statewide progression of trails in Alaska, all while juggling the daily shitshow that comes with attempting to live life to the fullest.  That means a life full of expectations both good and bad while admitting that things are changing and moving along at exponentially increasing rates the likes of which, as a young child, my father’s warnings could do no justice.  He was right.

Deadlines, commitments, aspirations, sweeping realizations, they’re all part of life; even our most basic motive for escaping to slide on snow or pedal our bikes.  In a rare and upsetting way, each week since the end of November has gone by without even a hint of an update on my website, and seeing that it’s now mid-February, it kills me.  I’ve had but a few ski days, and honestly, hell, I can count my backcountry days this season on less than 10 fingers.  That’s garbage, pure nonsense and it sucks.

The compass of life is beginning to swing.  It still holds true north, but my bearing has changed. Instead of the defined path I thought I had chosen, alternative routes of existence never thought possible are panning out before me like the view of a hidden valley from a high peak. I’m choosing to walk the path, undefined as it is, through that newly discovered valley. For me, it’s about accepting those changes that we like to pretend are out of our control. Out of our control? If only it were that simple. I’m done believing it. We are in control.  WE choose the life we want to live, and to admit this is to begin to understand how precious and amazing our days spent in the mountains are.
No matter how we look at it, there’s far too little days spent in the mountains skiing powder. Far too many shoulda, coulda and woulda’s. But what about those other days?  How do we fill our time out of the mountains? This is a question people should think about long and hard.  It can’t just be about selfishly getting after it and chasing pow? Those days we spend at home with the family, or earning those extra bucks, or putting in the extra free time to help make your community a better place, those are the things that make my days on the mountains matter. It’s a hard days work that lets you really feel the drop of a knee into boot deep blower.  It’s paying off a stubborn bill that earns you a high five and ear to ear smiles with your closest buds after a thousand feet of Rae Wallace darkness. And, it’s getting your shit together, rolling with the punches of life and sharing that 6 hour tour with your partner. Its knowing not many couples can experience this kind of relationship, or what kind of love that is.  That’s the point of this update.

This past year has been hard, and it’s taken its toll at times, and I should expect nothing else.  This life chosen is not without consequence, and for the first time, I’ve lost a bit of that youthfully exuberant prospect of constant vagabond transience, of looking beyond the horizon of the chugach range to future hypothetical residences, or the next big adventure.   Maybe that constant tickle in our brains stems from the reason that, Alaska is, at its core a transient place, and I say that with no slight to friends who we love, who have left, and who plan to leave.  It’s just the facts of life here in the 49^th state.  It’s so amazingly difficult to suppress that overwhelming feeling of movement, of lingering American manifest destiny, of peaking over the next hill.  It’s a part of the human condition, and something that’s brought us to the far ends of the earth, to the very mountain ranges we love to play, live and often die within.

There’s a fear of being defined by what we have done, and a constant, incessant focusing on what we WILL do.  We don’t want to peak.  We must move on.  This hypothetical lifestyle is tiresome.  When the time comes to listen to that voice of Kerouac wanderlust, if it comes, I’ll embrace it, but for now I choose, like so many others, to accept this amazing valley, this place Erin and I call home, this community that has become such an integral part of our life, and the amazing life we get to share with all of you, no matter how fractioned and separate the timelines and ideas of our lives are.  I doubt Steinbeck would’ve had much to say about the people of Palmer when pulling off the Glenn highway for a rest at the fairgrounds.  But we know better.

There’s something about this little community that cuts to the core, and part of that is the support I get from everyone while NOT updating HatchYourTrax.  I can’t promise all the updates to be so heady, or even filled with amazing descriptions of ski movie style descents. I can tell you that it’s time to get back in to the groove of things.  If we meet in the hills, or along the path of life somewhere, stop and say hello, slow down and share a moment with your fellow ski brethren. I’m always down to share a smile and a handshake. We’re all in the same boat, just trying to live this simple life the best damn way we know how. Much love and see you all in the mountains

For this week’s update, we’ve got a sweet edit and we’re going to try something new, a guest writer. Those of us in the valley have been hunkered down, attempting to hold on to any piece of sanity not blown away in the wind.  Jared on the other hand, has been getting after it down south.  The awesome part is, the guy feels bad for us.  Of course, not bad enough to indulge in a full body sandblast of glacial silt. good on ya brother. While the low pressure stacks, and you’re prepping for actual skiing, enjoy a little HatchYourTrax love…

I love Hatcher Pass. I ski there every chance I get. Skiing the Snowbird in August, the Lane in September and October, and Hatch Peak in November; overall it’s been a great early season. I hit some rocks and some tundra, but it was good times as usual. There’s another reason I’m optimistic, in spite of the recent “skipocalypse” at Hatcher Pass. It’s because I’ve been rallying elsewhere, I’m a traitor. I’ve been making the journey south to Turnagain Pass. If you haven’t heardThat’s where the snow’s been lately. Yes, I’m still hitting rocks and most of the two feet of “colds moke” is huge blades of hoar, but the high pressure get after-it weekends are fueling me through another darkening season in AK. There’s tons of exploring to do out there, and here’s the clincher, it’s been windless and sunny.

Thanksgiving weekend was a crazy ski-fest, with a broken bone evac mission on Tincan followed by Bluebird POW on the moto side of Turny. It was great to ski and feast with bunches of friends and especially excellent to ski with my Palmer pals up on Seattle Ridge. Sierra was killin it on some new school fat tele skis while Master Bash was streaming Palmer Free Radio from the summit (That’s Big Cabbage Radio 89.5 Palmer for those of you not in the know). Ryan came out to keep us company on our ski tour and treated us to a night in Hope testing out his sweet new sauna. This last weekend I had to go back to Turnagain for my powder fix and I ended up spending a couple of days really enjoying getting some beginner friends out into the backcountry. I have to give a shout out to Joe, Deb, and Adam for spinning some laps with me. Touring with a group of backcountry newbies is a good test of patience and it’s nice to be reminded you can have fun in any conditions. It’s a good time of year to keep it reeled in anyway…there are a lot of rocks out there. We found some great snow and incredible views, and after all, I watched friends experience the joy of some of their first powder turns in Alaska…I always like to invest in future ski partners. I’ll be back in the Talkeetnas soon, but for now, while granite and tussocks sit in the gusts, coated in several inches of frost and rime, I’ll keep finding partners to head south.

Well, good on ya old man winter.  You’ve fooled us all.  As the end of September came to a close, we were all beginning to turn our gaze a little higher to the tops of the mountains.  Lawn ornament projectiles were slowly taken down and put away before the winds rolled in and many of us pulled open the shed to dust off the ski gear. While we began to plan a trip to the bird, a tour up the lane, maybe even an early season tundra jaunt on lower Hatch Peak, well, old man winter had a different plan.

Instead of early season snowflakes, any of them, we recieved early season wind storms, three of them.  When I say “dust off the ski gear” I mean in a literal sense of the term.  Getting a good look at my skis required the removal of  a thick condensed layer of matanuska river silt. I had to remind myself, this is normal, this is winter in Palmer.  Right?

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still amped on winter, and not so desperate to make the drive to the Kenai yet, but the relative lack of snow does get one wondering. When will it happen? In mid October Jared and I biked up Archangel to a silent and brightly lit fall day,  and I’ve made three tours up the road over the pass, but still, I want more.  I know good things come to those who wait, but if I had a chart of Wait time vs. Ski Desperation, my line would be rapidly approaching the ceiling.

Fortunately, we did get about 4-6 inches of new snow across the high elevations on Tuesday night, just enough to refresh the road and provide my first powder turns for the season.  Yeah, it wasn’t bottomless blower, spines on Rae Wallace or pillows at tincan, but it was pow skiing.  I could feel the speed of the wind against my face and the gentle tug of gravity pulling my legs and skis into each turn, gliding swiftly across the new light density snow.  Right now, I’ll take that 4-6 inches. I couldn’t tour to where I really wanted, but damn it felt good to be making turns in soft, fresh snow.  The line of desperation on my chart backed off a little and that crooked smile on my face now ran from ear to ear. While the skiing could be OH SO MUCH better, it’s nice to be humbled; to get back to that new-born skiing feeling again. Except this time, it was different.

I’ve been skiing for almost five years now, a mere blip compared to some of my friends and acquaintances.  I’m a ski baby. For the first time, it became abundantly clear that skiing felt like home, the turns locking in place by muscle memory without so much as a second thought.  For the first time in my memory of skiing, or returning to skiing, instead of this new exicting experience, it felt the return of an old friend; a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time.  You know, one of those friends where you sit around and share old stories over some cheap whiskey.  That was my most recent day skiing.  I reconnected with my friend “skiing” and had a blast.

I’m ready for more of course, but we definitely need more snow.  Every glance at the snow stake makes me cringe.  We’re all waiting for that little bit of snow to cross the 1’ threshold, and it’s been a long time coming.  What’s holding me over is the knowledge of inevitability, of the fact that no matter what winter will come.  It will happen, and it will surpass my expectations of epicness, at least for a short while.  For now, I’ll take what I can get.  If that’s a tour up the road then so be it.  Let the season begin.

Before I fully close out this much overdue update, it’s important to mention the long standing rumor that it’s too early to slide right now.  BULLSHIT.  There’s not more than 7” across most areas of the upper elevations. Where the snow has deposited in lee aspects and gullies, the snowpack, if you could call it that, is reactive and unstable.  Brian Vaughan decided to give one of these little loaded pockets a look, and it popped on him, releasing with what looks like a 6-12” crown.  Now, a wind slab like this might easily be managed and ski cut during deeper conditions, but as of now, all that’s going to happen is you getting run through rocks in a very thin, non existent snowpack.  Furthermore, if April bowl looks as awesome to you as it did to us, then you’d be very smart to avoid it right now.  April bowl looks deep, and when compared to everywhere else it should be a big fat bullseye indicator to keep your ass out of there.  As a final heads up, this is the time of year that numerous people have died or been injured in April bowl.  I’m not trying to scare anyone, or tell you not to ski April bowl, but use your brain.  I’m going to wait for some more snow and less reactive windslabs before I head up in to rocky terrain.

Make sure to check out the new links on the bottom of the right hand sidebar.  Midnight Sun Yoga Center is Palmer’s newest Yoga Studio offering classes in Yoga, Zumba and Belly dances, and covering all skill levels.  Erin and Ailis have been operating since September 1st, and MSYC has been an amazing addition to Palmer’s growing community of outdoor adventure and enthusiasts!  Check em out.  Also, please please please check out the new website for the Palmer Bike Park planning page, www.bikepalmer.com.  The site will go live on 11/21, but if you sign up now you’ll be updated when the site goes live. Then you can jump right in and provide all the detailed comments you want about features, lines and things you’d like to see in the park.  We’re going to present a comprehensive example of community support to the borough and let them know we mean business.