The Golden Hour

One of my favorite things about Alaska is all of the low angle light. Here are a few pictures from last weekend's excursion.

WHAT WHAT?!

I found these pictures (courtesy of Endless Adventure International's Facebook Photos) of what appears to be an alpacka product, but it looks more like a "packayak" than a packraft. Anyone know what it is, how it paddles/rolls, and where I can get my hands on one?

After doing a little research it looks like alpacka redid the line and have extended the stern's by 11" on all the models and made the bow pointier, but they are still working on the whitewater packraft. So I guess my real question is if this is one of the new alpackas with the extra 11" or a whitewater prototype? Either way it looks pretty sweet.

Secret Stash

After a dry spell in my BC skiing, I was pretty stoked to get out for three days this weekend. Although temperatures have been hanging around -10 F at the ridge tops, the hardy few that have been getting out there have been treated to empty slopes. On Saturday I got out with Jeff, and Ian for a day at Lipps where we only saw one other group of two. The skiing was pretty good considering we haven't had snow for a little while.

On Sunday I got out with Rob for an epic day! We got an early start and skied 4 laps, totaling 6,600 vertical feet of skiing. 5,500 feet of that was nice powder! We were even able to get back to Anchorage by 5pm so that I could work up my first video from my GoPro.



I went back out today to the secret stash that Rob and I hit up on Sunday and did three more laps with Karl, Jeff, and Andy. After a 10 lap, 14,000 foot weekend in the back country I'm worked. Time to recover for the next weekend.

A New Year, a New Adventure

2011 is here, and we are on to a new adventure. I've got a few goals for this next year. First of all I recently acquired a GoPro Helmet cam so I want to get up to par with taking video and really share my adventures with everyone. With the lack of kayaking footage coming out of Alaska, I really want to get some more out there. I've also got a big list of rivers I want to run this year including: Disappointment Creek (in a kayak), the Tiekel, the Kiagna, the Nellie Juan, Upper Willow (I've really got to get in there this year), and last but not least Devil's Canyon. I've also got a couple true first descents picked out for a packraft (no more of this first packraft descent stuff, time for the real deal). I can't possibly invision how else to get into these creeks than one hell of a hike. We'll just have to see what happens. I'll be lucky to get all of that done.

Here are a few parting shots from the last month of the old year.