Alpenglow Skiing

A couple of weeks ago, Lea and I headed to Arctic Valley and the Alpenglow Ski Area to get in a day of cross country skiing.

Anchorage was in the middle of a prolonged cold spell. For a week and a half we had cold and clear days and nights with no new snow. Temperatures were in the range of -15 to maybe a high of 5 degrees. This particular day was brilliantly sunny with clear views all the way to the Alaska Range.

We initially set out with the goal of skiing in Eagle River, but decided to stop in Arctic Valley (just north of Anchorage and partially on the land of Fort Richardson) because it would be sunnier. On the way up the valley we stopped to look at two bald eagles that were roosting in a tree.

Alpenglow Ski Area has a single lift. Volunteers run the area and after a few hours of work you get to ski for the day. Imagine a co-op ski area. Lea and I, however, were cross-country skiing, so we just headed up the valley.


The snow had been scoured by high winds and it was hard as concrete which then broke in places to reveal facets underneath. It was a bit hard going, but the sun and exercise pulled us along.

We followed the creek up until we reached the saddle looking over the edge of the valley into the next valley north. It was fantastic. We could see the valley with Eagle River and the snowcapped peaks of the Chugach marching off into the distance. We had a quick lunch of smoked salmon.

The ski down was treacherous. Neither of us have metal edges on our skis, so we partially skied down and mostly just fell. Still, it was more than worth it for the exercise, sun and breathtaking views.

PICTURES: http://picasaweb.google.com/jack.r.mckenna/AlpenglowSkiArea

Skiing in Girdwood

The Anchorage area has one proper ski resort: Alyeska. It's about the size of Alpine Meadows (more or less) and situated down Turnagain Arm in Girdwood. Girdwood is a cute little town in a valley off the arm and has some pretty good restaurants. The resort (or "the Mountain") has a fair number of lifts and some pretty decent runs.

The weekend of the 26th/27th, some friends of Lea's threw a combined 30th birthday party in Girdwood. Paula and Diana rented a good sized cabin (house) and invited a bunch of people down to ski, eat and hang out.

Saturday we drove down and hit the mountain. It would have been perfect, but it was COLD. It was in the high negatives or low single-digits at the base. As you went up the mountain, the air warmed slightly. In the sun at the top of the lifts it was almost 14 degrees! Lea and I met up with Jeff and Geran at the top of the tram and skied a few runs. As it got colder, we decided to take a break at the lodge and get some hot chocolate.

Brendan was sitting in the "sitzmark" (the lodge) and holding down a table that people would just cycle through. He joked that it was like he was running a talk show with a rotating guest list. Once we'd warmed our toes to the point where we could feel them (no joke, it was really cold), we headed out to get in a few more runs before it got too dark.

After our last run we headed to the truck and found the cabin. It was really nice. There was a downstairs area with several bedrooms. Most had bunk beds to maximize bed space. The main floor had a large kitchen, a living area and a huge dining table. There was a deck off the dining area and the hot tub was around the back. Then a loft above the kitchen had two more beds and another bathroom.

Saturday night was great. Everyone brought food and we had a never-ending meal. People sat in front of the fire, played with legos, ate, made trips to the hot tub (where your hair would freeze), and talked. There was a game of twister played that looked more like a sumo match. Eventually everyone collapsed into food coma.

The next morning we had another large meal and people slowly filtered out. A group of us headed for the Bake Shop, a breakfast place at the foot of the mountain. Their cinnamon rolls are very good, but my favorites are still the rolls at the Roadhouse in Talkeetna.

After calorie loading, Lea, Brendan, Jeff, Paula and her boyfriend, and I headed out for some cross country skiing. We started off in moose meadows, but Lea and I branched off and took the trail out to Winner Gorge. The trail went through the trees and wound around and went up and down a good amount. It was great. We got passed by a guy on a snowbike (mountain bike with extra-fat tires and metal studs). Eventually it got a bit too icy and steep for our skis, so we walked the last half-mile or so.

Winner Gorge is a deeply cut canyon that Winner Creek has made. It looks fantastic. I can only imagine what it's like in summer, with water cascading through, but in winter it's full of ice and snow with windows through to the flowing water below.

We headed back on the wider road to avoid the pitfalls that we'd narrowly escaped on the trail. Although we did miscalculate somewhat and instead of coming back out at the lodge, we ended up at the airport and had to walk back to the truck.

Note: the top two pictures were taken with my cell phone.

Moose in the City

There was an article in the NY Times today about a study being conducted in the Yellowstone NP and Grand Teton NP areas on how local moose are moving closer to the road to calve. Joel Berger, the study's author, thinks that moose are choosing to calve near the roads because grizzlies, recently making a population comeback in the area, are less likely to approach highways due to their association with cars and people. Also, wolves were recently reintroduced to that area, and so the moose have been adapting to increased predation. Yellowstone moose are compared to Alaskan moose, which are much more bear savvy.

I find this interesting for several reasons. First, it corresponds to the increased presence of moose here in Anchorage during winter. During the summer, most of the local moose population are up in the Chugach. Come winter, they move down into the city. So while moose still have to watch out for cars (a major threat) they don't have to contend with bears and wolves as they would up in the Chugach.

The second part of this that I find really interesting is the discussion towards the bottom of the interview. In my study of public land law in law school, one large topic was how to deal with the increased movement of people into the areas around parks and national forests. As people move further out into the urban/wildlands interface it increases stress on the environment (development and transportation) as well as brings increased risks. The main issue in California is fire suppression. It is a huge burden on the federal and state governments to protect people who build in areas that have a naturally high fire danger. We all end up subsidizing building in those areas through our tax dollars that pay for fire suppression. Another risk of building out there is discussed in this article: wildlife interactions. That's not a problem in California, because we've killed all the big predators there, but in Wyoming (and here in AK) where they have grizzlies and wolves, it's another story. Here is an excerpt:

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Q. How has the greater Yellowstone ecosystem changed in the 13 years you’ve been working there?


A. In terms of the wildlife, the big difference is predators. Before the wolves and bears came back, moose populations had climbed inexorably high. The moose battered down the cottonwoods, willows, aspens — and we lost a lot of migratory songbirds because we had these extraordinarily large moose populations. It’s been a real positive thing to see how predators checked some of that. The other change is more people. People are putting up vacation houses in these areas nearby, but they are sometimes antagonistic to the animals whose habitats they are moving in to. We used to live near Jackson Hole, and some of our neighbors would get really upset because the moose were eating their horticultural plants. Others would be terrified that wolves or coyotes might attack their pets.


Q. Can you blame them?


A. Listen, if you’re going to live in the wilderness, you’ll have wolves and bears and cougars. We have to find a way to tolerate them and live alongside them. If we’re going to ask Africans to tolerate elephants and ask Panamanians to bear the burden of jaguars, then we Americans ought to be able to tolerate our own wildlife. It’s not like we’re growing any new wild places.

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These risks from living closer to open lands are not going to go away and are part of a larger debate that needs to be had. It gets brought up in the West every time there is a large fire in an urban area, such as the fires last fall in Southern California. In my view, it is much more expensive, both economically and environmentally, to live in wild areas. Economically, people don't have pay the full costs of living in their location. The cost of fire suppression is astronomical, but that cost is not paid by those that live in the danger area. Instead, because of the huge amount of federally owned land, those fires are put out using public funds. So there must be some way, either property taxes or insurance premiums, to make people who choose to live out in the woods internalize those costs.

Environmentally speaking, diffused living is actually less healthy than concentrated development. There have been numerous recent articles about how smart, dense development is one of our best defenses against global warming because of reduced transportation costs and decreased footprint. The spread of people out into the wildlands only exacerbates pollution and increases human/wildlife contact. And we all know which side wins in that battle (ask the grizzlies that used to be extant in California).

Find the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/science/12conv.html?ref=science