Eklutna Traverse

Like two weeks after doing the bomber traverse, Drew left again for another week long ski tour.  This time he did the Eklutna traverse.  More glaciers, which means more skiing while roped to other people, which was understandably a little more difficult.  Less experience, a bigger group, and not the nicest weather made it perhaps not quite as fun as his first trip, but he still loved it so I guess that's what counts.  

They did group dinners on this trip.  They voted on what to eat each night.  If your dinner sounded good than you got to cook it sooner and then you had less to carry for the rest of the trip.  So Drew spent the whole week before the trip dehydrating different things and buying already dehydrated peanut butter and everything else.  He really wanted to create a lightweight but good meal for backpacking.  I got to try everything and let him know what was best.  In the end he made pasta carbonara, tomato basil soup, and these little chocolate and peanut butter pudding layered desserts.  

I'm glad he went on these two trips because before he went on them he was so upset that it was getting lighter, upset that the snow was starting to melt, etc etc.  He hadn't had enough of winter yet.  Skiing for 7 and 8 straight days seems to have gotten him the fill he needed to make it until next year.  Now he is all about the kayaking season.  And just in time too, he went and dug the boats out of the snow this past Saturday.  A few pictures from his trip:

Spring is coming!

Planes landing on the glacier below.

Rest day with mini avalanches in the background.

Their last day they were trying to descend in severe wind and white out conditions.   You can just barely see 4 little black marks on the hill.  That's the second rope team making their way down.

Bomber Traverse

Wait!  I am going to post at least one post in April!  I promise!  These are going to be largely picture posts, but Drew has been taking some gorgeous ones, so here you go.  Drew went on the Bomber Traverse at the end of March/beginning of April.  It's a ski tour at this time of year so he was basically backpacking but on skis.  He was gone for 8 days and did a really good job of leaving me with lots of Tupperware to keep me eating while he was gone.  He even left me a list on the fridge with ideas for what I could have for different meals.  It lasted me the whole time he was gone and went pretty well.  I worked a lot while he was gone...maybe too much.  But it's nice when you get the paycheck!  So I'll post some pictures from his trip.  I will have to bug him to get some of himself when he exchanges pictures with the other club members.  He had beautiful weather, got along with the group of 5 really well, and came home pretty sunburned.  I know 20 pictures is a lot, but I had to cut it down from 160.  I feel like I'm sorting through wedding pictures or something!  Enjoy:

This is the first hut when they found it...

...and here it is all dug out.

This trip went more or less, ski to a hut one day, spend the next day skiing and hiking around the hut for fun, ski to the next hut the next day, and so on.

Too steep to hike with skis and skins.

Probably the nicest hut out there.  All these supplies have to be helicoptered in or carried in.  

Love the scenic shot with the outhouse.

Yay for downhill!

Drew's new friend John.

Hut #3

Since these are MCA huts and it was an MCA trip, the huts got a little repair work done on the rest days.

Love that our days are getting longer...

John after digging to the door.

An avalanche they set off.

Hanging in the hut.  Seems like they did a lot of reading on their off time.

Alaska in snow...so pretty.

Ice Climbing Festival!

Sorry I only post when I have sweet pictures to share, but really doesn't that make it a whole lot more interesting?  This weekend we were definitely sad to have to miss out on General Conference for church, but we were pretty pumped to participate in our first Mountaineering Club of Alaska event- Ice Festival 2011!  I was kind of on the fence about going but I am SO glad I went because it was so much more geared toward people like me than our last climbing club was.  There was a lot of instruction and people on my level and I was super pumped that the group we were in was almost all girls!  So we learned a lot, had a lot of fun, finally camped in Alaska (for the first time since we moved here!), and met a ton of cool people.  Oh....and we also hit a pretty big milestone just as we drove down the dirt road to Matanuska Glacier:

It's so weird to see 2 at the beginning of our odometer now!  But I'm glad we were in the car for it together.  We got pretty excited.  Good thing there were no cars around us since we were in the middle of nowhere Alaska!  The first day we did a lot of instruction and practicing techniques that got us more comfortable with trusting our crampons and technique and stuff.  At the campsite that night there was a huge bonfire that was a lot of fun too.  The next day we went back out on the glacier and spent the day trying out some real climbs.  The whole thing was a whole lot more positive than my first ice climbing experience (which many of you have heard detailed accounts of... :) ).  Here are some pictures:

Some parts of the glacier were covered in dirt or rocks so it just made the whole thing looked striped and beautiful.

Matanuska Glacier at sunrise.

Walking out to the glacier. Our group was the Crazy Eights!

Matanuska Glacier

Drew and some of the others in our group setting the anchors.

Me walking down after a successful climb.

Wearing tons of puffy layers is not very flattering....especially from behind.

I look kind of like a marshmallow, but I'm warm!

 Aside from the instructors, there were only 2 guys in the group.  Drew of course did a lot better than me but also is a lot more daring than me.  A few times he gave me little scares falling off the overhang.  I couldn't even look!

This was one of the times I was worried.  He ended up having to leave his tools in the ice and be lowered down.  He was doing such a hard route though, I'm so proud of him!

Like I said, one of the best parts was all the great people we met.  We have really found that people in Alaska are generally really friendly.  We suspect some of this is because there are so many transplants that everyone is always looking to meet new people.  Our group got along well and was a ton of fun.  Our 2 boys complained a little but everyone else seemed pretty jealous that they had managed to get in the group with all the twenty-something women.  Drew also found it really funny how when girls ice climb together they all cheer each other on and congratulate each other when they finish a climb and high five, whereas boys climb together and yell things like, "Just walk up it you wuss!" at each other the whole time.  It's funny but true. :)

I loved getting to know these girls!

Our group shot.  We ended up with only a busted knee and a scraped up forearm for injuries.

We are really enjoying our time in Alaska now that we've gotten in the swing of things and Drew isn't working 24/7.  This week we are moving to Anchorage so we'll see how that changes things.  I'll try and post pics of the new place soon!