We have had an incredible crust skiing season here in South Central Alaska. A record-breaking amount of snow, followed by a lots of sunshine and freeze-thaw cycles during April and early May. You couldn’t have dreamed up a better crust recipe. Nearly every crust skiing hotspot was in-season starting in the beginning of April, and some of them are still going strong as we close in on June!
I had big ideas about cashing in a lot of my vacation time to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But in the end, there were just too many real-life issues and responsibilities for me to essentially play hooky for a month. I have to say, I think I’ve dealt with my lack of adequate crust fixes quite well. And by that I mean I haven’t killed anyone yet.
So I only got out for a handful of crust skis this spring. But they were all great, and most of them took me to places I’d never crust skied before. The first one worth posting about was a loop I did in Anchorage. I got the idea after doing the long commute loop in January and then seeing Tim’s crust ski from Oceanview to Westchester. I decided to do a loop down Campbell Creek to the coastal flats, around the flats to Westchester Lagoon and then up Chester Creek to complete the loop. I was able to stay off-trail and on-crust most of the way along Campbell Creek. The coastal flats were amazing skiing, especially the stuff on the north side of Kincaid. There is something really cool about skiing along a few feet away from where the ocean is lapping at the crust’s edge. Getting back up Chester Creek kind of sucked, but even there and through the university area I was able to find intermittent spots of crust along side the trail.
I didn’t take my camera on this one because I didn’t think I’d be going anywhere interesting or remarkable. After all, I was in the city the whole time. But man, I was wrong. So many cool areas on this ski. For me, the added benefit of this loop is that I could park right at my office on the Campbell Creek trail, so everyone thought I was hard at work all morning.
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