Summer Blues? Just Go Skiing.

 

 

…Climbers can head to the gym when it’s raining and hang board all winter. Runners hit the track or treadmill in the off season. Bikers spin in the garage. So, here in the dog days of summer, what are we skiers supposed to do?

 

Option 1: Do squats in the garage while visualizing all that ugly green stuff outside dying so snow can fall…

 

Option 2: Drink only lite beer to maintain base fitness while watching your favorite 1970s ski film classic.

 

Option 3: Tune your skis and daydream.

 

Option 4: ….Just. Keep. Skiing…..It might be dirty and bad, but why not?

 

 

 

 

While all of these options offer respite from the heat, there is no salve quite like option 4. If you want to go skiing, just go. You don’t have to count your consecutive months, it doesn’t have to look pretty, and there are no rules about what “counts.” Just enjoy the sun cups, sunburns, and long walks to find snow. You’ll feel better afterwards, I promise. Remember, a bad day skiing is still better than anything else humanity has yet devised.

Over the last few years, I have missed out on making turns during at least one of the mid-summer months, opting instead for fishing, fatherhood, running shoes, and self-control. But such enlightened adulthood never seems to last the whole stretch from late June through October. Inevitably, a couple of windows to winter pull me out of summer’s malaise.

 

I ended July this year tracking down a bit of summer snow in a spot that was entirely new to me, despite a relatively short approach and proximal trailhead. Less than an hour from home and a couple of miles from the road, Eric and I popped out on the blissful snow fields that flank a real-deal AK glacier with plenty of snow for a couple thousand feet of skiing. I don’t know how neither of us had thought to check out this zone for all these years.

A few staple summer runs will be familiar to any skier in Southcentral Alaska. The Jewel, the Lane, the Snowbird, Whittier, and the S Couloir all host snow long after Turnagain Pass melts back to brush. Climate change, however, has made these zones increasingly fickle after Independence Day. Approaches continue to get longer for less. Dirty snow, blue ice, and plain old rocks where snow used to be, dampen the experience….Disappearing glaciers take the summer snow with them.

 

 

 

 

 

As that shift has accelerated over the past decade, some of the allure of skiing in late summer has melted too. Is it worth it? Well, of course it is.

We decided the time to remodel our summer ski destination was long overdue. Surely snowy pastures are still out there, even if the old standards might be lackluster. A magic of Alaska is that this year’s spot wasn’t in a book or even in the lexicon of the community, but still only required a minor adjustment in destination.

 

I’m reserving some specifics because this is not meant as a route guide, but rather a motivational how-to. We left home after I dropped my daughter off at daycare, drove 45 minutes, did a bit of goose necking, until I said, “…hey, I bet that goes!”

A short bit of recon found a climber’s trail through most of the brush, a bit of scree, a small creek crossing, and a final hike in wet shoes to the snow, all of which took less than a couple of hours. Aluminum crampons led us up until crevasses and glacial mayhem marked our run’s apex. The day’s sucker hole even stuck with us just long enough for two laps. The snow was bad, our grins were ear-to-ear. Surely this will tide me over for at least a few more weeks….

So, never skip leg day, Apocalypse Snow never gets old, keep those edges sharp, and long live rock skis.