Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Mount Marathon here I come!

I just found out that I got into this year's Mount Marathon mountain race! I won one of the thirty open slots for the race. For those of you who do not know Mount Marathon is pretty much the State Championship of mountain running. It is 1.5 miles from sea level to the top of Mt. Marathon (3022 ft) and another 1.5 miles back down. The down is super crazy! For example it took last years winner 35 minutes to get up and 11 to get back down. Here is a picture of the mountain. You can just make out the course on the scree.


If you can't make it out, I went ahead and edited the picture. I think it is pretty crazy that you can see the course from down in town (or out in a boat in this case).



Other than getting into Mt. Marathon I've been pretty busy with school. Last weekend Thomas, Casey, Karl and I planned on camping out in Turnagain and getting a bunch of tele skiing in. It was an interesting adventure to say the least. I'll tell you about it when I can get my pictures loaded.

For more information onMount Marathon check out these links.
Seward.com
Mount Marathon - Wikipedia

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

OIA!!


WOW!! Life IS good! Only in Alaska, especially Anchorage. Today was one of those days where you are just jazzed on life, and you can't possibly see how anyone could have any more fun.

This evening Karl and I busted out to Peak 3 for some freshies after school. April has been really good this year; we have been getting dumped on. Today we got a good eight inches of snow in town. I just had to get out after my test this afternoon. Karl and I left the car at 7:15 (PM mind you, OIA) and and started skinning up Peak 3. There was at least a foot and a half of new snow up there! Thankfully someone had already busted out a skin track up the mountain. On the down side this guy wasn't the smartest peanut in the turd. His skin track was straight up, not very forgiving for those with bad skins. On top of that he was out by himself on a day with A LOT of fresh snow. I watched him ski a stupid line through some rocks, setting off a small avalanche (or a large sluff, however you want to look at it). After watching that Karl and I decided to stop where we were and ski down the more gentle portion of the slope. After consulting with Lars and Kristina (who we ran into out there) we decided to ski the skier's right side of the bowl, which is less prone to sliding. WOW! It was pretty epic skiing. The snow was waist deep (granted we were tele skiing and we were squatting down a little). Lars was saying it was the most snow he had ever skied on Peak 3. Sadly the batteries ran out on my camera ran out at the top and I couldn't get pictures of Karl skiing down. But I'm planning on heading out tomorrow morning and getting a few runs in before class at 1.


Karl skinning up just as the light was getting sweet.


Wow! Anchorage is awesome!


The view from where we started down. Shortly after I took this picture an eagle flew over head. It was really cool!! Too bad my battery died (those darn dramatic batteries always dieing on us).

Karl

Made it up. Hurry for the white stuff.


And off into the sunset.