Anyone who thinks cross country skiing is a staid and boring sport ought to go skate skiing in Kodiak's backcountry. I'm here to tell you it is way more exciting than downhill skiing. Nothing beats screaming down a hill, completely out of control, on ridiculously thin skiis with no metal edges for sheer terror. The trick to descending is to get the snowplow and sideslip moves down pat, and use them shamelessly - that and trying to contour around the hills and mountains as much as possible.
Anyhow, skate skiing is what I've been doing the last couple of days since the snow crusted over. I cruise around on top of the crust. The cross country skiing is not very good near the parking lot so I have been skate skiing up where the snowmobilers go behind the ski chalet. It is a brutal climb (over 800 feet of endless skating up, up, up), but once on top it is pretty flat. I've posted 2 pictures from my skate ski yesterday. The top one shows the view back towards Pyramid after the skate up was complete, while the second shows the view back towards Buskin Lake and Barometer Mountain from near where I turned around. Today I did the same ski (looking for my truck key that had fallen out of my pocket), but the light was very flat. It made it hard to see the bumps and holes. Patrick
1 comment:
Patrick-
I love the pants too- and especially the camera- my favorite is the wide shot where it combines two vertical photos because it gives it the crazy view but the photo comes out in a size that fills the computer screen. Only problem is that if there is a person, they can't be near the middle, or they come out looking like a monster (it is actually fun to mess around with- though when I do it to Rose she doesn't think it is quite as funny as I do). I also like how light it is- my old camera weighed 3x as much.
Two questions: do you know dates when the spring archaeology Karluk trip will happen (when Rose would go)? 2- Did you ever get Rob Baer some meat?
Oh, and here is a message for Zoya- Obama!!!!!
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