Fast learners — Kids conquer the trails in youth skiing program

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Eight-year-old Oliva Botirius’ stream-of-consciousness play-by-play was going as fast as her skies were Saturday as she launched herself down an incline at Tsalteshi Trails.

“Yeah, a hill!”

“Look out below!”

“Hey, no cuts!”

“Woah, don’t fall, don’t fall, don’t fall!”

She didn’t, making it to the bottom in a blur of matching purple snow gear, hardly any ski pole flailing, and brown curls flopping in the breeze. Once she coasted to a stop at the bottom of the hill, she plopped down to her knees, but made sure everyone in her learn-to-ski group knew it wasn’t an accident.

“I didn’t fall. I did this on purpose. ’Cus I can do this,” she announced, as she started scooting herself backward.

A few loops over on the trail system behind Skyview High School, the mighty Snow Leopards were sizing up a hill of their own. The kids had been at Tsalteshi Trails Associations’ learn-to-ski program long enough that their first reaction to hills — “We have to go down that?” — had been largely replaced with the desire to see how much momentum their 4-foot-tall bodies could accumulate.

Coach Robin Nyce was waiting a little ways down, calling out encouragement to try to snowplow — point the tips of their skis together to slow descent — or some other technique.

They dutifully followed instructions, whether it was a snowplow or hunching over their feet and grabbing the tips of their skis as they slid down the hill. But some were mystified about the point of maneuvers that made them go slower.

“Why did we do that? I could have gone down that way faster on my own,” said 6-year-old Tyle Owens.

That’s a far cry from the beginning of January, when the kids’ ski program started.

“We had a couple of little, little ones like, ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to go uphill,’ and, ‘I don’t want to go down hills,’ but now they’re doing it. The ones who have never even skied before are cruising. It just takes getting kids out moving on skies and they figure a lot out on their own,” said Laura Pillifant, with the trails association board.

For older or more experienced skiers, the program is a chance to get instruction and practice with their peers, instead of just their parents.

“We take them out skiing, you know, with us, and they kind of complain a lot and they don’t really want to go,” Pillifant said. “Being in the program, they haven’t complained once. They’re out there skiing hard and having fun and coming along really well.”

Marc Johnson, a parent volunteer, said he was excited when he heard about the program. Not only does it teach kids a new skill and gets them to enjoy the outdoors, but it’s helpful for school ski programs, as well.

“It gets kids started at a young age, like they do with kids in Anchorage,” he said. “They have a pool of talent when they get into middle school and high school there.”

He said the instructors have been doing a great job of tailoring the program to the kids and their ability levels, even coming up with games they can play to keep it interesting — like sharks and minnows and a scavenger hunt.

“They make it fun for the kids to get them excited about skiing so they want to keep doing it,” he said. “They’re having a great time. Even when they crash they get right up and they’re laughing.”

Johnson’s daughter, Leah, 8, is hooked. She said she plans on being on the Kenai Central High School Kardinals ski team when she’s old enough.

“I think the trails are the funnest part,” she said. “The hills are really fun because you go so fast.”

This is the first year for the program, which was scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday nights, plus four Saturdays, from Jan. 6 through March 7. The trails association got a grant to buy 30 pairs of combination skis — waxable skis that can be used for classic or skate skiing — for kids to rent out. Next year it hopes to add poles to its stock of rental gear.

Kids start with the basics of how to wax skis, put on the boots, skis and poles, and the all-important tricks for how to stand back up once you succumb to the unavoidable combination of gravity and slippery, awkward footwear. Kids are grouped by ability level, so the more experienced skiers can work on higher-level techniques, like step turning around corners, while others practice the basics of just get getting going.

Originally, the plan was to teach four weeks of classic skiing and four weeks of skating, Pillifant said, but weather, trail conditions and ability levels have dictated the program’s progression more than initial planning.

“The younger, 6- to 8-year-olds, the beginner beginners, if they can get standing on their skies and moving any way they can, they don’t distinguish between the skate and the classic,” Pillifant said. “The older ones, they know skating is faster so they’re kind of starting to press coaches, ‘Come on, let’s go to skating.’ But the classic is just a lot of fun and they need to know that, that’s for sure, if they’re going to continue on.”

Pillifant said she’s thrilled with the response to the program, with 43 skiers ages 6 to 12 signed up (plus one 13-year-old with two younger siblings in the program). Along with the kids came a platoon of volunteers, which has been crucial in wrangling, much less teaching, so many kids.

“It’s been overwhelming the response from people and the help that we’re getting. It takes a lot of people not to leave someone on the trail or take a skier back to warm them up or help with cookies and hot chocolate,” she said.

Organizers conscripted a group of coaches — David Michael, Adam Reimer, Gigi Banas, Pillifant, Sara Hepner, Nyce and Denise Harro — and have had even more people step up every week to help, including Bill Holt keeping the trails groomed, Kelly Keating bringing a lighting system, Dr. Justin Moore and SoHi skier Jordann Nelson helping coach, parents and Skyview High School coaches and skiers helping wax, and Mary Helminski bringing cookies, cleaning up and helping with whatever else is needed. The community has also pitched in with donations when needed, Pillifant said.

“Everybody is just going crazy with helping us,” she said. “You think ahead of time, ‘Oh dear, I’ve got a lot of places to be already,’ but it’s just way different than most things that you have to be at. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s going very fast.”

Death-defying leaps — Man survives avalanche, double parachute malfunction

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

Jerry Dixon had nearly died many years before, and he was about to have another close call, but the irony of this newest narrow escape would not strike him fully until hours after the event.

Dixon was skiing beneath clear May skies with his friend, Mike Tetreau, in the mountains west of the Seward Highway near Lower Summit Lake. As morning became a warm afternoon, they climbed from the valley floor to a series of ridges and summits at nearly 4,500 feet elevation. Eventually it was time to head down, and they chose a new ridge for the final portion of their descent.

The final ridge featured several exposed rock outcroppings, and the two men kept a cautious separation between them as they maneuvered just below the rocks. While Tetreau waited, Dixon skied down and then turned left toward the ridgeline. As he turned, he kicked off a small point-release avalanche — a sloughing-off of snow, in this case a foot or two wide — dropping away from him for more than 30 feet.

But Dixon, who had spent a lifetime skiing in the mountains, didn’t stand still. He broke instantly for the safety of the nearest rocky outcrop. As he moved laterally, he heard a loud “whomp” and saw a crack shoot out in both directions from the bottom of the slide he had triggered. The crack was suddenly more than 300 feet long, and then the mountain face below it began to collapse.

As he reached the security of the rocks, the smooth slope disintegrated into a tumble of snow and ice, and spilled downward for nearly 2,000 vertical feet before rumbling to a stop in a wide deposition zone piled high with dense chunks of snow. Had he gone down with that churning mass, Dixon knew, he would not have emerged alive.

“If you were caught up in that, there’s no way you could’ve survived,” he said. “Once again, I was lucky.”

Dixon, a longtime teacher who grew up skiing on the slopes of Alta Ski Area in Utah, pondered his good fortune as he drove home to Seward.

When he arrived that evening, Dixon said, he hugged his two sons, Kipp and Pyper, and then kissed and hugged his wife, Deborah.

“My wife looked me right in the eye and said, ‘You’ve been in an avalanche, haven’t you?’ I said, ‘I set one off. If I was in it, I wouldn’t be here.’”

Sometime in the next few hours, Dixon was struck by the irony of his experience in the mountains. The avalanche had occurred on May 13, 2006, one day shy of being exactly 30 years since the most harrowing experience of his life, the first time he almost died.

It was May 14, 1976, and a 27-year-old Dixon was inside the belly of a twin-engine Volpar as it circled low over Birch Hill, just north of the Alaska smoke jumper base at Fort Wainwright near Fairbanks. Dixon and the other smoke jumpers inside the plane were preparing for their second practice jump of the day, preparing for another season of fighting fires.

Each jumper’s parachute was affixed to a static line that would pull his chute from his pack as he leapt from the airplane’s open door. As the line broke free of the top of the chute, the lower edges of the circular canopy would catch the incoming air and snap it open, buoying the smoke jumper for his descent to the ground.

The nylon parachute canopy was attached to suspension lines that, upon deployment, would angle down toward the smoke jumper’s harness into precise clusters of lines called risers, which the jumper could use for minimal steering.

The jumpers would exit the plane only about 1,000 feet above Birch Hill and would remain in the air for only one to two minutes. The idea was to practice real firefighting conditions, so the shortest jump, with the least margin for error, was preferred. In the case of a real fire, smoke jumpers need optimum accuracy. Extra time in the air can mean extra drift, and extra drift can mean landing in trees or in the fire zone itself.

Up in the plane, Dixon, a fifth-year jumper who had trained in and worked out of McCall, Idaho, stood momentarily in the open doorway, then launched himself into flight.

“Something didn’t feel right,” he wrote for the National Smokejumper Association in 2000. “The risers were tight against my face, and there was no opening shock. I pulled the risers apart and looked up to see a streamer.”

A “streamer” gets its name from its shape. It occurs when a parachute fully exits its pack but fails to open. It appears as a vertical column of fabric and does almost nothing to slow the jumper’s descent. Such a malfunction requires the jumper to take emergency action, and Dixon knew what to do.
He had trained for this eventuality, and he knew that, without a chute, he had less than 10 seconds before he would strike the ground.

Looking down, he located the handle attached to the ripcord of his reserve-chute pack, which was hanging like a small stuffed sleeping bag from his belly. He grabbed the handle and pulled, then punched the pack to release the chute. As the reserve chute shot upward, he turned his head aside and arched backward to avoid being struck in the face.

“The reserve blew past me, hesitated at the edge of the main (chute) and then flowed up alongside it,” Dixon said. “I was stunned to see it clinging to the side of the main.” Dropping at about 100 miles per hour, he pulled apart the risers to glimpse the rapidly approaching ground.

And once again, training paid off: He knew what to do.

“In my life, nothing’s been so clear. All fleeting thoughts were gone. There was almost a calm.
“My training told me to pull in the reserve and throw it out again. I grabbed the reserve lines and started pulling in the chute. Either the act of pulling or the fact that my body was arched so that I could pull harder caused the reserve to deploy. It seemed to explode, and I could actually see what appeared to be dust pulse from the canopy. (Then) the main started to billow and I was on the ground.”

Dixon landed on his back, his helmeted head smacking the ground forcefully. “My back hurt and I was in shock,” he said. “I left my chutes on the ground and walked away.”

Up in the Volpar, some of his fellow jumpers had assumed he was dead. From their perspective, he had disappeared, trailing two malfunctioning parachutes. One of the jumpers approached Dixon afterward and said, “We watched you go below the tree line. Everyone in the plane thought you went in.”

His only injury was a single herniated vertebra in his back, and he said that it was about a year before he was out of pain. But it was five more years before he was ready to jump again.

Dixon had been intrigued by smoke jumping since he had watched Richard Widmark in the 1952 film, “Red Skies Over Montana,” which is about 13 smoke jumpers who died fighting the Mann Gulch fire in 1949.

In his brief career as a smoke jumper, he said he had come to love the camaraderie of the jumper fraternity and the notion that the very nature of their jobs meant they had to rely on each other.
“You never look left; you never look right. They’re your buddies. They’re there for you,” he said. “You never wonder, ‘Will they be there?’”

Such a sense of closeness, of “brotherhood,” made it difficult for Dixon to stay away, despite his narrow escape in 1976. So in 1982 he went back to jump again.

In August 1982, he made what would turn out to be his final jump.

From a DC-3 over the rugged Salmon River wilderness in Idaho, Dixon leaped out and caught a draft that kept him aloft much longer than usual. Instead of fighting it by pulling in his chute for a more rapid descent, however, he allowed himself to drift, taking in the beauty of his surroundings for nearly seven minutes before he touched the ground.

“I was just like a bird,” he said. And that’s when he knew this jump would be his perfect ending.
Back at base days later, Dixon said he went to his squad leader and turned in his gear. The squad leader said, “I’ve never had a jumper in the middle of the day, the middle of the week, middle of a pay period, say he quit and turn in his stuff. Why?”

Dixon replied, “It took me six years to come back from a double parachute malfunction, and that last jump was just so magic. I was floating. I was flying. And that’s how I’ll always remember it.”

Thirty years after the experience over Birch Hill, all these memories would come flooding back once again, and Dixon would also recall his other numerous outdoor adventures — traversing mountain ranges, making first descents of distant mountains and dangerous streams, skiing the route of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. He would admit that he had been lucky throughout his life, but that life was too precious not to be fully lived.

As he is fond of saying, “Every day is a gift, and every sunrise is a new beginning.”

Lost & Found — Skiers’ mishaps don’t dampen enthusiasm for Europe trip

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Sarah Riley got a brand-new set of classic cross-country ski gear during a trip to Europe to race in two ski marathons. Justin Moore got a broken nose. That’s still better than Pete Sprague, who didn’t get there at all.

Three Soldotna skiers planned to travel to the Czech Republic earlier this month to participate in the 50-kilometer Jizerská padesátka on Jan. 11 and the 60-K freestyle Dolomitenlauf in Austria on Jan. 18, but between lost baggage, cultural experiences and a Czech Olympic Nordic ski medalist saving the day, the races weren’t even the highlight.

For Riley, the races were going to be her first ever long-distance events, and she was anxious to see if she could make it through. She did, “despite the airport’s best efforts not to let me ski,” she said.

“Air France lost my skis. They said, ‘We have no idea where your bag is. Whether your bag is full of gold or skies, we have no idea where it is,’” she said.

She called her mom, who suggested Riley call her friend, Pavel Nuc, for help. But Nuc, who Riley met in high school when he was a foreign exchange student, lived three hours away so she didn’t figure he couldn’t help her. Turns out Riley and her mom were both right, and wrong.

When she got to Liberec, where the Jizerská was held, she quickly found out that with 4,800 people in town for the ski races and massive airline baggage handling snafus, she couldn’t find any skis to borrow.

“There wasn’t a rental to be had, but from what I heard, the rentals they did have looked like they skied across gravel,” she said.

She found a woman who considered her situation, then pointed to a guy and said, “This is a nice young man. He will help you.”

His name was Pavel, the same as her friend. He took her to a ski shop owned by a Czech 1988 Nordic ski Olympic medalist, who set her up with all the classic ski gear she needed. The shop’s name was Nyc, but she misread the sign and thought it was Nuc, the same as her friend Pavel’s last name.

“It’s like it was fated to happen,” she said.

The race went well, Riley said, with her finishing in 4 hours, 23 minutes. Her ski bag showed up the next day, so she was ready for the 60-K freestyle Dolomitenlauf. She’d waxed her skis before she left for the trip and had no idea if they’d match the snow conditions. They did — almost a little too well.

“I stepped on my skies and they were so fast, I was flying down the course. About 10 K in I was passing people and my ski tip got stuck in deep snow and in less than a second I was like 180 degrees around. I just flipped so fast, but I followed through with the rest of my body,” Riley said.

With her knee wrenched she didn’t get back up to the same speed as when she started the race, but she still finished in 4:01 which put her 17th in the women’s division.
Having an Alaska ski uniform on during the 60-K made her somewhat of a celebrity at rest stops.

“They would yell, ‘Yeah Alaska! Go Obama!’” she said.

People’s overall friendliness was one of the most noteworthy things about the trip, Riley said.

“All the tourism books say to watch out because people aren’t necessarily nice or helpful, but I don’t think I met anyone who wasn’t overly helpful,” she said. “Everybody was just so nice it kind of makes you want to go back. Everywhere else I’ve been they’re not so friendly.”

Interactions with other people were the highlight of the trip for Moore, as well.
“Just to talk to people around the world about politics and history and what’s like in other countries, especially central Europe, which we never really think about,” Moore said. “Every day was like a living history lesson, which Americans don’t get a lot of, so it was probably the best trip I’ve ever done.”

That’s not to say everything went off without a hitch. Moore’s skies got lost, as well. He found some gear to borrow, but the skies didn’t fit and the poles were about 6 inches too short. Luckily, his gear turned up the day before the Jizerská race, although his wife, Orie, didn’t get her bags until the end of the trip.

“Everything she meticulously packed for didn’t show up, but it really didn’t matter. It all worked out fine,” he said. “I suppose the lesson is, carry on everything you can carry on trips like that.”

Having the gear he was used to didn’t entirely make up for the fact that Moore wasn’t completely used to classic skiing.

“It was a four-hour learning event. I didn’t classic ski before this 50 K. I think I practiced for like three weeks, so it was my education,” he said. “Everybody I skied beside had a different technique, so I’d try this technique and try that technique.

“It was fun. I had a really good time. But I think I probably broke my nose. I spent all my time learning how to go uphill and not downhill, so I had four big crashes.”

He got in a few high-speed impacts going down hills in classic tracks surrounded by other skiers.

“I was over my head. I tried to slow down and I was running up on people’s skies and didn’t know how to slow down. Going up I did fine, and on flats, but going down —that was too much. … I talked to people afterward about what to do when you’re going too fast, so I learned a little late.”

The 60-K Dolomitenlauf went more smoothly. Moore saw about 10 broken poles along the course, but none were his. He finished in 3:28, and was resting at the finish line, feeling pretty happy with himself, when his accomplishment got put into perspective.

“About an hour later an 87-year-old man comes in, then right after him a blind skier comes in led by another guy with radio,” Moore said. “That was pretty inspirational to see a guy come in and complete a technical course with no sight. It’s amazing and pretty humbling. It’s like, so what?”

While Moore was getting a new outlook on accomplishment, Sprague was back in the U.S., getting a lesson in overcoming disappointment.

He had planned to go to the Czech Republic for a week do the Jizerská race, then come back to Soldotna so he wouldn’t miss a meeting of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly, of which he is a member. But Seattle is as far as he got. His flight schedule to Seattle changed and he was only able to check his bag as far as Seattle. He got there, but his bag — with his skis — didn’t.

“It never showed up at the time that I had to get on the plane to Prague. I wasn’t going to go there with my passport and my camera and the clothes on my back for a week, which was very irritating and disappointing, to say the least,” Sprague said. “It just seemed like things weren’t working out. A lot of people said I should go anyway. It was a tough decision, but things were just piling up, unfortunately.”

Though he was dissuaded in his first attempt at international travel, it won’t be his last.

“Skiing for me wasn’t the focus, it was the trip and seeing someplace new,” he said. “I’m going to go, for sure.”

Cool advice — Dropping temperatures don’t have to mean dropping activities

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Baby, it’s cold outside. But that’s no reason to stay inside.

Thermometers on the central Kenai Peninsula have registered single and negative digits since last week. But just because the temperature drops off, doesn’t mean outside activity has to.

“We live in Alaska, you know? If you’re gonna live up here, you gotta stay outside. Otherwise, you might as well move out,” said Justin Moore, of Soldotna.

Moore puts studded tires on his bike and rides in the winter. He used to be an avid snowboarder and lately he’s predominantly a cross-country skier. He did the Gatineau Loppet ski marathon in Canada last year, and is training for the 50-kilometer classic ski Jizerská padesátka marathon in the Czech Republic and the 60-K freestyle Dolomitenlauf ski marathon in Austria in January.

He said he tries to get outside and do something every day, no matter what the weather on the peninsula brings.

“It’s better than Fairbanks. I talked to guys up there and they’re skiing in 40 below zero. It’s been 20 below every day, so we have it easy down here,” he said.

The key is to carry plenty of water to combat dehydration and dress in layers for extra warmth to match the temperature — but not too many layers. Overheating leads to sweating, which makes clothes damp and even colder.

“I’m usually overdressed, which is not good,” he said. “I always worry about falling on the outside loop or a moose catching you and you’re stuck, so I end up wearing too many layers and paying the price, I think.”

Moore said the coldest conditions he’s been out in is biking at minus 35 degrees, which was more like minus 50 with the wind chill.

“I survived, barely. It was a difficult ride. No gears would change,” he said.

On Sunday, Moore was freestyle skiing around Tsalteshi Trails behind Skyview High School in comparably balmy 4-degree weather. Skyview cross-country ski coach Kent Peterson and Skyview skiing alum Tommy Honer, now a freshman at University of Alaska Anchorage, were also out circling the trails.

Peterson said the ski team isn’t allowed out at minus 10 or colder, but the weather doesn’t keep him inside when he’s skiing on his own. He’s skied at minus 18 before.

“The nice thing is when it’s cold it’s really pretty out,” Peterson said. “… It’s kind of cool, you’re outside doing something when everyone else is inside hiding.”

The flip side is if he got hurt, there’d be no one around to help. That’s why it’s a good idea to ski with a friend. Two people can also check each other for the telltale white patches of beginning frostbite on faces, where it’s difficult to feel it happening. Dressing in layers was the skiers’ main advice, including wind briefs for guys and different thicknesses of underlayers depending on the weather. As a general rule, synthetic materials are better for active pursuits, since cotton gets soggy with sweat and loses its insulating abilities.

“They say cotton is really bad, but I still wear cotton socks,” Peterson said.
“You just said your feet were cold,” Honer pointed out.

For heads and faces, warm hats, headbands, neck and face gaiters and balaclavas are options, especially if an outdoor enthusiast doesn’t have nature’s insulator.

“I never wear that stuff when I go out and ski when it’s really cold. Facial hair helps,” Peterson said.

Keeping skin covered is important to protect against frostbite, especially in windy conditions. Skiers sometimes smear petroleum jelly on earlobes, cheeks and noses, or cover them with tape. Glasses or goggles keep eyes from getting cold in the wind, and there are products — like the oh-so-appealingly named Cat Crap — that can be smeared on glasses to keep them from fogging up.

“The best way to get warm is just go outside and do your activity,” Honer said.
Once someone gets going in an activity outside, keep going.

“The most important thing is to not stop,” Peterson said. “If you stop, you get cold, or get sweaty and then get cold.”

When someone is attached to a team of dogs, stopping can sometimes be a challenge. For mushers, it’s important to bring warm, trusted gear.

“The first thing you need is appropriate gear,” said Ashley Irmen, with the Peninsula Sled Dog Racing Association. “With any cold-weather situation you need to be well-equipped and have your gear tested and not just go out in 30 below with something you’ve never tried before and go, ‘Hey, this doesn’t work, I’m cold.’”

Irmen, of Sterling, has been mushing for four years now, after an acquaintance got her hooked on it. She’s been out in 30 below to 35 below zero before. She prefers dressing in a wool base layer, since wool insulates even when wet, and a synthetic or down parka. She brings extra gear in case of emergencies, and checks the weather before she leaves.

“Make sure you have what’s appropriate and know how long you’re going to be out and what weather you are going to face and plan for it,” she said.

That advice holds true for any outdoor winter activity. For snowmachining, there’s one important addition:

“If you’re going to go out on a machine, make sure the machine is in good shape,” said Nolan Compton, of Soldotna, with the Caribou Hills Cabin Hoppers. “Make sure everything’s in good condition and just be prepared if you are going to go out in cold temperatures, it’s always good to not go out alone.”

Specially designed snowmachining parkas and gear mitigate wind chill, are durable and breathable with zippers to control body temperature, and they’re padded in case you’re riding rough, Compton said.

Having a properly fitted helmet also is key. Anything below minus 10 can be difficult for snowmachiners because it’s tough to keep helmet visors from fogging up. Compton has been out in minus 30 on a search and rescue team around Eureka and said the lack of visibility and fogging issues make the ride uncomfortable.

But as long as gear holds up and safety precautions are met, cold is no reason to limit activity.

“I’d rather it was cold than warm any day,” Irmen said. “You live in Alaska. You’re cold nine months of the year. You better figure it out if you’re going to do outside stuff, you know?”

Marathon travel — Area skiers to race in Europe events

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

For a trip halfway around the world, ostensibly to do a 50-kilometer ski marathon, these skiers have relatively little concern for how they’ll do in the race.

A handful of central Kenai Peninsula cross-country skiers will make a cross-global trek to the Czech Republic this winter to compete in the Jizerská padesátka 50-K ski marathon on Jan. 11. Some will stay and ski the Dolomitenlauf on Jan. 18, a 60-K freestyle ski race in Austria. Both are part of the Worldloppet Ski Federation, a series of 14 cross-country ski marathons in 14 countries.

The trip is centered around participating in the prestigious and grueling marathons, yet the skiing doesn’t rate particularly high on the list of reasons why people are going.

“For me, it’s just kind of secondary. I’ve never really done any traveling outside the U.S. It’s just kind of a good opportunity, a good vehicle to travel and experience some good things,” said Pete Sprague, who’s skiing the Jizerská.

“I’m just doing this to do it and we’ll see how it goes. I’ll feel good if I just cross the finish line, and if I don’t cross the finish line, that’s OK. I’m in Europe — life is still good,” said Sarah Riley, who’s doing the Jizerská and Dolomitenlauf.

Sprague, 58, has skied the 50-K freestyle Tour of Anchorage ski race several times, and has run nine marathons in his life, so he’s not concerned with the Jizerská distance, he said. He’s not as practiced with classic skiing, since he usually only does it when it’s particularly cold, but he’s not changing up his regular winter skiing pursuits to train for the race.

“I don’t want to focus on the race, I just want to focus on the experience,” he said. “I’ve never been outside of North America, so I’m just looking forward to seeing a different part of the world and just using my passport a little bit. That’s going to be focus of the trip.”

It will be a quick trip for Sprague, sandwiched in between meetings of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly, of which he is a member. He’s never missed a meeting and doesn’t want to start now, so he’s just going for the Jizerská and coming back. But he expects to see his fellow Soldotna-area skiers before he leaves.

“We’ll meet up at least for the race, probably for a beer afterward,” he said. “The Czech Republic is supposed to have good beer, so I may stop for one or two over there.”

He’s also looking forward to seeing Prague, which he’s heard is spectacular.

“And it’s almost spelled like my last name,” he said.

Riley, 31, has done a lot more traveling, but a lot less skiing than Sprague. She’s been through Europe and Japan, although this will be her first trip to the Czech Republic and Austria. It will also be her first long-distance race of any kind.

“I don’t know what I’m doing. I mean I do, I know how to ski, it’s just a bit more than I was thinking it was,” she said.

Riley grew up in Minnesota classic skiing with her mother, and learned to freestyle ski on her high school ski team. She skied a little in her last quarter of college and has kept her gear with her since, including when she moved to the Kenai Peninsula six years ago. But the longest ski race she’s done was in high school, probably about 5 kilometers.

“I thought, ‘Oh, I’m in good shape.’ I don’t know if I am, we’ll see. All I know is I’m in the fifth wave and I may or may not make it,” she said. “I’m not planning on going all out, just pace myself and do what I can to keep up with the pace.”

She’s been running and increasing the distances she skis to get ready for January.

“Once I warm up I feel like I can be out there for quite a while. I’ve been enjoying it. I haven’t been sore afterward. Actually, it’s been really enjoyable,” she said.

The 60-K Dolomitenlauf course is relatively flat, so Riley isn’t too worried about that. The Jizerská, on the other hand, has a 750-meter climb spread over 5 kilometers in the first part of the race.

“I’m a little concerned about that. Since it’s classic, if my wax isn’t right I’m going to be in a world of hurt,” she said.

Even if that’s what happens, Riley’s world of hurt will be tempered by the fact that she’s in a new part of the world.

“I like to travel, so I figured this would be something else to do besides going to a city and seeing the sights, and you get to meet people with similar interests. That’s the most fun of traveling, finding people on same track as you and hanging out,” she said.

That sounds about right to Sprague, as well.

“I’m just racing to experience it all, or skiing to experience it all,” he said.

Crazy for the climb — Backcountry skiers try mountainous feat: 3 volcanoes, 3 weekends

By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part story about three seasoned outdoor enthusiasts who begin a quest to take on three Cook Inlet volcanoes over the course of three long weekends.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, although most of their friends thought they were nuts.

It was a Thursday afternoon after work in May 2006, and the onset of Memorial Day weekend was in the air. Buddies Tyler Johnson, 32, and Rory Stark, 37, had a free Friday and a good weather forecast in front of them, so they decided this would be a good time to climb and then ski down a volcano.

They targeted 10,016-foot Mount Iliamna across Cook Inlet, and sketched out a rough plan of attack: Drive down to Ninilchik, launch their 16-foot Achilles inflatable from the beach, motor nearly 50 miles across Cook Inlet and far up into Tuxedni Bay, work their way inland on foot until they reached snow, and then start climbing on skis with skins.

Simple enough, they thought, despite the fact that neither of them had been there before. It would be an adventure. And Johnson and Stark, both veterans of the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic, were accustomed to adventure and thinking on their feet.

“Me and Rory, we’re trying to find people in Anchorage (where both men live). We’re like, ‘Hey, we got good weather for three days. We’re gonna take the boat across,’” said Johnson, a 1995 graduate of Skyview High School. “Nobody wanted to take the boat. Everybody’s like, ‘You’re crazy, man. Nobody’s gonna go across in your 16-foot boat. Come on!’ So when we left town, it was just me and Rory.”

Of course, all of those doubters back in the big city didn’t know about 35-year-old Craig “Chunk” Barnard, a carpenter, handyman and extreme-skiing enthusiast living on the Kenai Peninsula.

“Rory was like, ‘I know this guy, Craig. He’s down in Cooper Landing. He lives in a tent. We’ll stop by and see if he’s there,” Johnson said.

“So we stop in Cooper Landing and we start driving down Craig’s road, and there he is, walking from the liquor store with a six-pack. We’re like, ‘Craig, hey, man, you gotta come.’ And he’s like, ‘All right, all right. Yeah, yeah. Hey, can I call my boss real quick?’

“So he calls his boss and leaves a message and tells him he’s not going to show up to work Friday and Saturday.”

According to Barnard, the “invitation” from Johnson and Stark was more of a command.

“We walked into my tent, and they told me what I need and what I don’t need,” said Barnard, 35. “And what I don’t need was ice axes or crampons or ropes. So they just kind of quickly shuffled some gear into a bag for me.”

That rapidly, the three of them were on the road, heading south.

“That’s how it started, completely off-the-cuff, no planning whatsoever,” Johnson said.

They brought no maps and no GPS. They brought no mountaineering gear — just backpacks, skiing gear, some food and alcohol, and their boat.

“We had four days of food,” Johnson said. “We had some Taco Bell. I think we had, like, one thing of Mountain House, maybe, but we just stopped at the fast food.”

They purchased a stack of cheeseburgers from McDonald’s and took advantage of the “10 burritos for ten dollars” deal at Taco Bell. “And that worked out really well. That was our food for the whole trip.”
They arrived in Ninilchik in the early morning.

“We barreled off across the inlet at 2 a.m., and it was pretty rough going across, and then we had to go up Tuxedni Bay,” Johnson said. “We didn’t quite know where we were going, you know. We just knew we had to get somewhere up into Tuxedni and see how far we could get.”

Barnard had been on Iliamna before, just the year before, and had a general sense of the best route to take. In 2005, he had been part of a three-week, fly-in trip onto Tuxedni Glacier, and from there he skied the mountain, eventually reaching the summit.

Based on Barnard’s experience, Johnson and Stark planned to run as far into Tuxedni Bay as possible to reach the glacier flats, but the upper reaches of the bay eventually became too shallow to continue. They beached their boat and dragged it above the high-tide mark, then hoisted their gear onto their backs and began a slow trudge up the heavily bear-traveled mud flats of Center Creek.

They planned to follow the Center Creek drainage into the high country, eventually crossing over a rocky ridge before dropping down onto the Tuxedni Glacier, which they would follow to the base of the actual mountain.

That Friday evening, about 18 hours after leaving Ninilchik, they stopped at about 5,000 feet and made their first camp. None of them had slept since Thursday morning, when they’d awoken to go to their respective jobs: Barnard as a handyman and carpenter, Stark as a pilot for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Johnson as a civil engineer.

The next morning, they were on the move again: up the glacier to the mountain’s southwest flank, and from there to the sulfur-smelling summit of the volcano.

“We had to pick our routes, and there were some crevasses, but the crevasses weren’t that bad. It was more the avalanche conditions we were a little concerned with,” Johnson said. “We picked our way up (the main mountain) in six hours, and then the ski down was like 30 minutes.”

They reached the summit early Saturday evening and soon returned to their Friday campsite for the night. On Sunday morning, they skied off the snow of upper Center Creek, then walked the mud flats back to their boat.

“We got down to our boat, and it didn’t get mauled,” Johnson said. “There’s just circles of bear tracks around our inflatable. We heard that the bears like to take swipes at those boats over there, so we thought for sure something was going to be wrong.

“So we launched it. Nice weather. It was like glass coming back.”

They arrived in Ninilchik in the middle of the Memorial Day weekend fishing flurry.

“We beached the boat on Ninilchik beach, and there’s probably a thousand motorhomes all lined up there, and these people were there, and they come walking over,” Johnson said. “They were just blown away. They’re like, ‘Where’d you guys come from?’ And we’re unloading our ski gear and stuff. They just couldn’t believe it.”

By Sunday evening, all three men were home — satisfied, and yet not satisfied.

Johnson said that when they had packed up in Ninilchik and were driving north, they were all thinking the same thing: “Man, that was absolutely, unbelievably the best trip I’ve been on in a long time. And so we’ve gotta do all three now.”

The Redoubt and Spurr volcanoes were waiting.

First tracks — Skiers get early chance at powder

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Amid the chorus of groans and complaints that arise when snow falls, there can be heard a few other sounds — the scritch of a plastic ski scraper peeling off the summer’s protective coating of wax, the clatter of poles being retrieved from storage, snippets of conversation speculating whether there’s enough powder down or if Bill has groomed yet.

Last week’s snowfall was just enough to suppress the mud and detritus on Tsalteshi Trails behind Skyview High School with a fresh layer of white.

“This is our number one activity in the winter. We pretty much look forward to it,” said Terri Springer, of Soldotna. She and her husband, Brian, were skiing at Tsalteshi Saturday afternoon.

“We talked to some friends who skied last night. We were shocked it was in that good a condition, so we grabbed everything this morning, hit the wax and drove over here,” Brian Springer said. “Bill did a great job getting these trails ready.”

“Bill” would be Bill Holt, in charge of trail maintenance at Tsalteshi. With barely 3 inches of snow down last week, and despite the fact that it was only Oct. 14, he ran grooming equipment over Tsalteshi’s 14,000-plus meters of trails. This is only the third time in the 13 years he’s been grooming at Tsalteshi that he can remember being able to ski so early.

“There were two years in a row when you actually started skiing on October 15,” he said. “One of those years we were skiing into April without any breaks. They weren’t always good days, and sometimes it’s marginal, but it has happened before that it’s started mid-October.”

There were some bare patches over the weekend, especially under large trees and on the slopes overlooking Skyview with direct sun exposure, but overall the trails were covered and skiing great, the Springers said.

“As good as the trails are out here, I don’t think many people have gotten the word yet. There aren’t many tracks out here yet,” Brian said.

Holt estimated there were only five or six people a day skiing Friday and Saturday.

“You can almost tell who’s been skiing from the tracks,” he said. “I’ve been having some e-mails from folks who have asked, ‘Is it really skiable?’ and I’ve said ‘yes.’ … The skiing’s actually really good. I had a lot of fun out there.”

It may have only been fun while it lasted, though. Sunday and Monday saw above-freezing temperatures, and there was rain in Soldotna on Monday night. The forecast for the rest of the week calls for highs in the 30s and only slight chances for snow.

“I’m praying that it sticks around. I see that water’s dripping off my roof now. That doesn’t bode well,” Holt said Sunday.

In packing down the snow that fell last week, Holt was hoping to drive frost into the ground and squeeze the air out of the snow so it would last longer than it otherwise would. Even if the trails don’t stay skiable, Holt is hoping the base he created stays at least mostly intact, so when new snow falls it will have something to stick to.

“With a good snow base there we don’t need much more powder, if we don’t lose this, to have really good skiing,” Holt said. “I would think another two inches of snow would be pretty good.”

Very good would be six more inches, and more restraint from motorized winter enthusiasts.

Early in the weekend a snowmachine drove over the Rabbit Loop, which branches off the soccer field, and on Saturday a four-wheeler tore up large sections of the Wolverine Loop — the one accessible by the trailhead on Kalifornsky Beach Road across from the Soldotna Sports Center. Whoever it was took out the fence bordering the parking lot, as well.

Holt spent time Saturday trying to undo the damage, but there wasn’t much snow to work with to erase the tracks.

“It was real frustrating. I had to end up going over it more than I wanted to,” Holt said. “The places where you go over a bump you cut down to dirt.”

The trail is closed to all motorized vehicles. Walkers and dogs also are asked to stay off the trails. Not only do they pose a safety hazard to faster-moving skiers, but footprints can also damage the trails.

“If they go in when it’s soft or after I’ve groomed and put footprints in it, they stay. I can’t really get them out because you can’t cut,” Holt said.

Tsalteshi will host Besh Cup classic sprint races this year, and Holt would like to have a new course built that starts by the football stadium, crosses the soccer field and goes up and down the hill overlooking the field. To do it, he’ll have to cut three more 30-foot-wide tracks traversing the hill.

Besh Cup results are used to determine Alaska’s representatives to Junior Olympic competitions.

“If we get more snow and start skiing there’s probably no way,” Holt said. “I can’t in good conscience drive a Cat over well-groomed ski trails.”

Holt and other workers made improvements to the trails this summer. The Beaver and Raven loops and Blue Bayou were widened in anticipation of extending the trails’ lighting system to those loops, possibly next year.

The base of the Raven Loop, where the biathlon range is, was also rerouted to ease the transition from the massive Raven downhill to heading back up the hill.

“We used to live in Anchorage,” Brian Springer said. “You’d ski at Hillside or Kincaid. This lacks nothing to those. They might be bigger, but as far as beautiful trails and different options, Anchorage doesn’t have anything on us.”

Tsalteshi events

The Tsalteshi Trails Association is planning a busy winter of events. For more information, specific times or to become a member, visit the Web site, www.tsalteshi.org, throughout the winter.

Many of the events are snow-dependent.

• Tsalteshi kickoff orienteering event, Nov. 14 4:30 p.m. Get acquainted with the trails by following clues to different locations on the trails. If there’s no snow, bring running or walking shoes.
• Youth learn-to-ski program for ages 8-14. starting in November. Ski rentals will be available for those needing equipment.
• Adult ski clinics, classic and freestyle, starting in November.
• Race series for classic and freestyle, Tuesday evenings starting in November.
• Annual Tsalteshi Trails Association Board meeting, 7 p.m. Dec. 8 at the Kenai River Center on Funny River Road. New board members will be elected and door prizes will be drawn for new and current TTA members in attendance.
• Wood, Wool and Wassail ski event, Dec. 28.
• Skyview Invitational high school ski races, Jan. 16 and 17.
• Besh Cup races, Jan. 24 and 25.
• Kenai Peninsula Borough School District high school borough races, Feb. 14.
• KPBSD region races, Feb. 20 and 21.
• Tour of Tsalteshi community race, with 15-kilometer and 30-kilometer races, March 14.