Cross-country Skiing in Alaska, Part I: The Skiing

                                                                                    photo by Patricia Carlson
Three of the skiers on the Sierra Club cross-country
ski trip  in Alaska. I am the skier in front.

     I have just come home from a week of cross-country skiing in Alaska, with eleven other skiers on a Sierra Club trip. How strange it is to see yellow daffodils and pink-blossoming fruit trees after living in that stark, black-and-white—spruce-trees-and-snow—incomparably beautiful landscape of the Alaskan wilderness.

                                                        photo by Diana Coogle

    Sometimes the only color in that black-and-white world came from skier's garb. Sometimes that world was bathed with color from a blue sky or at sunset or sunrise. 

                                                                                    photo by Patricia Carlson
Sunset, as seen from the chalet

    The skiing, "under the shadow of Denali," as the brochure put it, was magnificent. Denali, North America's highest mountain, was stunning. When she threw off her cloud cape, she glowed white in the day, pink in the sunset. 

                                                                                            photo by Louise Suhr
Denali at sunset, as seen from the chalet

 I skied alongside birch woods and across open plains stretching so far I marveled at Alaska's vastness. I herring-bone-stepped up steep small hills and glided ecstatically down. 

    It was a world apart, those days at the Denali View Chalet, a world where a Russian war on Ukraine, a rampage of COVID, hate and enmity didn't exist. The only aggression might come from the moose who, we were told, were bad-tempered because they are hungry and tired of heaving their large bodies through the deep snow. They are apt to be mean, we were warned in a tone of understanding for the moose's plight at this time of year. 

    My pre-trip anxieties dissolved quickly. The rented boots fit fine. I skied nine miles to the lodge without difficulty and was rewarded with a mug of hot mulled wine. Classic cross-country skiing, in set tracks,

                                                            photo by Diana Coogle
Here you can see, to the left of the trampled snow,
 the wide path cut by the sled, with ski tracks inside it.

was a great deal like the back-country skiing I usually do, and I saw at once that we would have skied very few miles if we had been breaking trail through all that deep snow! I learned new techniques and new terminology for climbing hills when I couldn't place my skis wide enough to herring-bone up them: I could either take off my skis and post-hole up (digging holes with every step) or army-crawl up, on my hands and knees, with my skis in one hand, poles in the other. 

    Coming down was heavenly. 

    Mostly, though, we were skiing on the flat,

                                                            photo by Diana Coogle

—not my best kind of skiing, but, still, I skied nine miles the first day, then six and a half the next, eleven the next, seven the next, and on the last day nine miles back to the trailhead. I skied over vast, snowy fields; at the edge of birch woods; under a blue sky dominated by Denali and the other peaks of the Alaska range, and through magical snowfall.

                                                                                    photo by Patricia Carlson
Skiing in snowfall. I am behind Carol.

Over and over again, day after day, as I skied the trails, I said to myself, never quite beyond awe, "I am skiing in the Alaska wilderness!" It was that much a world apart.

Next week: Cross-country skiing in Alaska, Part 2: Denali View Chalet