HatchYourTrax

HYT Lives!!  It’s been a while but I thought it about time for a summer update.  While some folks are still skiing in the mountains I’ve opted to embrace the summer, wear shorts, don sandals and ride my bike as much as possible.  For those of you not in the know, we are working with Beth Skow and the City of Palmer to get a bicycle Pump Track built.  Pump tracks are easy to build, easy to maintain and are fun for riders of all abilities.  You pretty much can’t get hurt unless you have enough skills to go fast.  The more you pedal the slower you go.

Here’s a quick video Erin took this past weekend in Fairbanks at the Pump Track behind Goldstream Sports.  Big Thanks to Joel for hooking it up with the info, the track and the good times!

Fairbanks Pump Track from Erin Kessler on Vimeo.

If you want to learn more about this project, shoot Beth or myself an email.  A cool website to checkout is Leelikesbikes.com.  Lee McCormack builds these tracks all over the nation and has lots of great info.  Beth is an amazing asset to this community and has been on board the whole way.  She’s already presented the idea to the city council and is working on locations and procedural issues.  Without her none of this could happen.  Please let city know how much we appreciate her hard work!

Also…this weekend is the 24 Hours of Matanuska Mountainbike Race out at Matanuska Lake State Park!  Don’t miss it! Should be a great time, on fun trails, with great folks!

There’s a few folks up here taking their AMGA guide final exam, so if you see them at the pass, so hello and give them the lowdown on the area. We’ve been hanging with Marc Beverly the last few days.  Marc is an alpine and climbing guide down in New Mexico and SW Colorado.

The big news is this: HATCHER AVY CYCLE STILL ONGOING. Yesterday Brian and I drove up to the pass and found widespread avalanche activity on every aspect and almost every slope.  Slab avalanches, wet avalanches and point releases were and still currently are happening.  We got out of the car to find a skier triggered hard slab avalanche on the west face of lower microdot.  The crown was over a meter deep.  The slide was remotely triggered from 10 meters above the crown and by the 11TH SKIER on the slope. I knew this skier, glad she was ok.

We don’t have an AVY center here, but I am confident in saying that the mountains are telling us to back off for a bit. Within the hour Brian and I were touring, the main bowl on Fish Peak drained out in a huge slide.  Widespread collapsing is still occuting on all slopes, and some north facing aspects are loaded with over 2 meters (6 ft) of new wind deposited snow. Fractures were occurring on slopes below 30 degrees, and significant hangfire exists on rollovers.

Today, while taking a mellow route on lower gov, we follwed a single track uphill and ran into a guy named Rick.  He only had one pole, and was acting a bit strange.  Turns out he had just dug himself out of an avalanche.  He had toured alone, behind the East ridgeline where he remote triggered a slide from above him on the NE face. He was on a low angle 15-20 degree slope. Rick said a 2 ft wall of snow came toward him from the slope above and he had to swim to stay on top.  Rick is a lucky man. Just because the slope you are on seems safe, don’t forget there’s a whole mountainside above you.

Rick was a Victim…and a lucky man from Erin Kessler on Vimeo.

We left in blowing snow today, and the next storm had just arrived.  Keep your terrain mellow, ski conservative, and go home to ski again. Hatcher is not messing around this week.  All of North 4068 and Bald Ridge slid, 1/3 of El Dorado slid in a slab avalanche.  There are slides all along Marmot, Hatch Ridge, Government, and inside Rae Wallce bowl.  Let the cycle finish.

NWS is calling for temps in the 40′s, raind and snow mix, and sustained winds 15-30 mph with gust to 45.  Same for tonight.

Thats it…I’m calling it.  It’s the dump of the season.  Over 2 ft of fresh Talkeetna goods…and that’s just down low.  Erin and I went in search of some wind protection and high viz.  We did two laps and skied down to the car at 7:45.  It was coming down easiley an inch an hour, and on lap two our skin track was filling in.

The snow is dense, but by no means concrete.  Hopefully the snowpack can adjust to the new snow up high.  We didn’t see any obvious instabilities like yesterday, but it could still be a different story in the high alpine.  Enjoy this non-HD video clip.

Feels like snow, looks like snow.  Holy Shit it’s snowing at Hatcher again!

Spring…How I love thee.  Let me count the ways…6, 12…no wait 20+ inches!

Three to Five more inches forecast for tonight.  So far this storm has been doing right by us and absolutely puking up high.  The snow finally started sticking in Palmer around 5pm, so we’ll see what tomorrow brings.  Weather is supposed to warm up, so watch out for melt freeze crusts…even though there’s wasn’t much snow before this storm, we had some pretty hard ice layers.