My goal is to always post new ski trips on this website, routes that I haven't skied before.  So, as usual, no trip report updates will be made here until I ski something new.

But ... there are 17 years of trip reports on this website, so there is plenty of content for you to peruse to get ideas for your future Alaska backcountry cross country skiing trips.

Stay healthy ... and don't let the 'rona bomb land on you!

Sand rolling!?  Wait!  What?!

Yeah.  Sand rolling.  Roller skiing on a beach using roller skis with monster-tires.

Roller skiing on a beach?  Monster-tires?  Huh?

OK, here is the story, in chronological order:

1)  20 years ago I made some monster-tire roller skis for skiing the flatter xc skiing trails, like the Mize Loop, at Kincaid Park.  I used them off and on.  Basically they were clunky … but they were entertaining and I got a good workout using them.  But then I stopped masters ski racing and focused on backcountry cross country skiing.  And my monster-tire roller skis got lost in our garage.

2)  July of 2019. I was at Kalifornsky Beach on the Kenai Penninsula.  I had a really fun time riding my mountain bike on this beach of hard-packed sand.

3)  June of 2020. I was reorganizing our garage and I found my old monster-tire roller skis.  I then remembered how much fun mountain biking on Kalifornsky Beach was the previous year.  And I wondered if these all-terrain roller skis would work on that beach.

4)  October of 2020.  I brought my monster-tire roller skis to Kalifornsky Beach.  Skiing sand on these roller skis worked out ok.  But I would rank it as a 6 out of 10.  Doable, but not high on the fun factor. Speed was a bit slow, though it seems like sand rolling would be a valid training option for ski racing.

But training for xc ski racing is not my thing these days.  So I skied on them for a while, then put them away and went beach riding on mountain bikes with Tammy, my wife.  Much more fun.  Always neat to try new stuff.  Now I can add sand rolling, or sand roller skiing, to my life’s skiing experiences.