Crust skiing the Moose Pass to Portage route is one of the more challenging crust skiing routes in the Portage area.  You have to start early and keep up a good pace to cover 34 trail-less miles before the crust turns soft on you.  This route is also challenging because you have to know how to get from the Grandview Valley to the Placer Valley, which is tricky due to route finding and steep travel through dense hemlock forest.  I only knew of this route being crust skied once before, when Tim Miller and I did it north to south in 2004.  So this ski trip, with Cory Smith and Benji Uffenbeck, was probably the first time this route had been crust skied south to north.  It's a long and tough crust ski, but it sure passes through some beautiful country.  Check out Cory's pictures!

I hadn't skied to the Spencer Glacier in a few years.  So, I figured I ski to it and check out the new pedestrian bridge over the Placer River.  And also - I'd check out the north side of the Spencer Glacier.  There used to be a glacial-dammed lake at the mouth of a valley in this area.  But due to rapid glacial recession, the lake that was there in the late 1990's is a lake no more.

There is only so much information about winter trails in Alaska that you can gleam from maps, the Internet, online forums, emails and conversations with people.  A lot of winter trail information is "tribal knowledge".  To gain this tribal knowledge there is only one way ... and that is go to to the location you are wondering about and see and learn for yourself.

My wife and I took a couple of days to ramp up our tribal knowledge of the trails to the south of the Petersville Road.  Here there is a maze of trails, seismic lines and rivers here that connect this area to the Upper Yentna and Skwentna area.  After a couple days of taking turns riding a snowmobile and get some great skiing in ... we now know how to connect some of the dots.  And this tribal knowledge will be the source of future ski trips on these trails.

When I was in this area with my wife a week before (see previous post), I was surprised to find a connector trail from the Petersville Road, just before the Peters Hills gap, to the Lunchbox Hill Trail.  This connector trail is not on the Curry Ridge Riders trail map.  When I saw this trail, it quickly registered that a good ski loop could be had here. 

The next weekend I went back to the Kroto Creek trailhead in Petersville to ski this loop.  I skate-skied up the Petersville Road, took the cutoff to the Lunchbox Hill Trail and then climbed up the dog-leg to the spine of the Peters Hills, where there were good views to be had.  I then skied the flowing, fast and fun, and mostly downhill, Lunchbox Hill Trail to the East-West Express Trail.  A couple of miles down the East-West Trail I picked up the classic ski trail that Eric Schmidt grooms for the Denali View Chalet.  This trail was a unique, scenic and fun way to end up the last 7 miles of this loop.

The previous weekend there were high winds on the Peters Hills.  At the start of this attempt there were again stiff winds, and I was worried that they would keep me off the top of the ridge.  But once I got to treeline, good luck came and the winds died off for the day.  So from then on it was pleasant skiing on a beautiful spring day in Alaska.  For those that have skied the Curry Ridge Riders 46 mile "Super Loop" (EW Trail - Safari - Tokositna - Chulitna Bluffs), this "Lunchbox Loop" is definitely worth putting on your list for trail skiing in this area.

I had heard of the Curry Ridge Riders (CRR) snowmobile trail to Lunchbox Hill in the Peters Hills.  I wasn't sure about the trail layout to get to this place.  So I headed up to the Kroto Creek trailhead with my wife and a snowmobile to do some trail research.  We took turns skiing and driving and figured out the lay of the trails (it's a bit different than the CRR map says).  We didn't pick the best day to do this.  Winds up on the Peters Hills were screaming as air raced towards low pressure of a Gulf of Alaska storm system that was moving in.  Below the high wind zone was good skiing.  The trail from the East West Trail to the Peters Hills, when you went with the wind, was so nice we backtracked and did it twice so both of us could ski it.  Now that I know these trails, I plan on going back and skiing a long loop to Lunchbox Hill and back.

I had this idea of doing a 50 kilometer crust ski in Anchorage.  The idea was to ski the coast from Oceanview Bluff Park to Westchester Lagoon and back.  Last year, with our record snowfall, would have been the year to do this.  This year the skiing along the north coast of Anchorage was not that good.  I skied the coast until 2 miles before Westchester.  After making it to Westchester Lagoon I skied the Coastal Trail back to Pt. Campbell, and then crust skied along the coast back to Ocenview Bluff Park.  It was a good long ski, but not quite the route that I had hoped.

Several years back I skied up Gravel Creek with Tim Miller and Cory Smith.  We lucked out on that trip, there was a snowmobile trail that went all the way back to the glacier.  That was a fun ski, so I decided to give the next valley to the east, Glacier Creek, a try.  I started at the Hicks Creek parking lot on the Glenn Highway and skied up the Matanuska River on snowmobile trails.  When I got to the start of Glacier Creek, I classic skied up old snowmobile tracks to where they turned around.  The tracks ended about a third of the way up the valley.  Continuing on via racing skis in 2 foot deep powder wasn't appealing, so I turned around and headed to the Matanuska Glacier.  It was fun checking out the snout of the glacier on snowmobile trails that glacier viewing tours use.  A nice day of skiing to places I had never skied to before.

Trying to make the most out of a stretch of clear weather, I went back to the mid-Susitna Valley two days after my last ski (see below).  This time the plan was do do a loop from the Rabideaux Creek parking lot out to Parker Lake and back.  Trail conditions ranged from great to crappy.  Great was the groomed Susitna Valley Winter Trail.  OK - was the Amber Lake Trail seismic line - lots of double-poling.  Fantastic was the Oilwell Road and Parker Lake Trail skiing.  Crappy was the open swamps between Moose Creek and the Neil Lake Trail.  The Mat-Su Borough Amber Lake - Trapper Lake map said there is a trail between Moose Creek and Trapper Lake.  But this trail petered out and I had to skate old snowmobile tracks south to the Neil Lake Trail.  From there it was good skiing back to the trailhead.

My wife came along on a snowmobile.  It was fun having her along, and that's why there are a lot of pictures of me skiing.  The stretch from Parker Lake to the Neil Lake Trail was a navigational challenge.  After Parker Lake we got off course a bit.  Thanks to some friendly Parker Lake folks at Poor Boy Lakes - we were put back on the right route.  By the time we got to Neil Lake we were a bit behind schedule.  And my wife needed to get home because she had to get up at 4:00 AM the next morning.  So I had to hammer the last 30 kilometers of this loop to finish it up.  I was beat at the end, but glad to pull off a new loop and see, and learn, new places and trails.  Surprised to only meet 6 snowmobilers all day.

When I skied to Neil Lake last year, I realized that there was a logical ski loop in the mid-Susitna Valley that needed to be skied.  I waited for good weather this year and then headed to Susitna Landing to do this new 50 mile loop.  From Susitna Landing I skied the Susitna Valley Winter Trail (SVWT) to the Neil Lake Trail and then on to Neil Lake.  My wife came along on a snowmobile, so I stopped at Neil Lake for a while so she could get some skiing in.  From Neil Lake I skied 20 miles down the Deshka River to the Deshka Crossover Trail.  From there I caught the SVWT again and skied it back to Susitna Landing.

Conditions were good the whole loop.  The wind had died down from the previous days and the trail surface was primarily frozen granular snow, which made for fast skate skiing.  The only part of the loop that had any soft snow was from Neil Lake south on the Deshka River to the start of the "cabin zone" at Mile 17 or so of the Deshka.

This is a ski route that I have never posted on this web site.  But I've probably done this loop, or a variant of it, 30 or more times.  It's my go-to loop for when conditions are "OK but not great" and when I'm in the western Susitna Valley.

I'm always up for trying new variants of xc skiing.  You probably figured that out if you have visited this web site a few times.  This year I gave a pair of Hoks a try (see review).  They are fun "ski shoes" for backcountry bushwhacking.

I like these skis because you can take them places that are hard to reach in any other manner.  Take for instance Bell Island in the Big Susitna River - a swampy, brushy and densely wooded area that is surrounded by a powerful glacial river.  In the non-winter months, travel here is near impossible.  But when a good snowfall hits, you can take the Hoks out to places like this and float over the downed trees and brush that you would have to fight through in the summer.

I always thought Bell Island was completely flat, that it was a shifting outwash island near the mouth of the temperamental Big Su.  But recently my wife and I happened across an old, moss-covered glacial moraine near the middle of this island.  Since the last ice age this moraine has survived the landscape-altering whims of the Big Su.  I wondered when the last time was that someone climbed this remote and jungle-protected knob.  10 years ago?  20?  50?  100?  It would be an epic struggle to get to this hill in the summer.  But it was no problem on Hoks.

Ok, so I lied.  I said I was done with Urban Backcountry skiing for the year.  But then it snowed.  And then a coworker gave me a route idea.  So I had to do one more FINAL loop.  There wasn't much backcountry in this loop.  But the route was significant, in that it traversed Anchorage's most famous neighborhood - Spenard.  The route through Spenard was mostly along the Fish Creek estuary and Fish Creek bike trail, routes that I had never traveled before.  A bit of Spenard road and sidewalk skiing had to be thrown in too.  Once past Delong Lake it was all clear sailing on bike trails.  A nice day for a new UBXC loop.

I wanted to finish my Anchorage Urban Backcountry XC skiing side-project ... and this was the last loop on my list.  I started at Hillside and skied / hiked up The Dome, skied over into the Snowhawk Valley and then down the Snowhawk Trail to the Arctic Valley Road.  Then I skied the military road to the water plant, the powerline to Bicentennial Park and then trails back to the Hillside trailhead at the Abbott Road parking lot.

Most of this loop was on military land, so I logged in and out via their convenient web site: jber.isportsman.net.

I'm out of UBXC ski route ideas (for now anyway).  This was the last logical Anchorage UBXC ski loop that I could think of.  It's been fun!