My wife and I needed to get out of Anchorage and experience ... winter.  2 hours north of Anchorage winter was easy to find in the Copper River Valley.  We stayed at the Slide Mountain Cabins and then did a snowmobile supported ski to the north.  I skied up the Eureka / John Lake Trail and then up the Moore Lake Trail to the junction of the Eureka West Trail.  The West Trail, the intended route out, was rough single track and wasn't fun skiing.  So we turned the show around and I skied half way back and my wife the rest of the way.  Great weather and good trails.

A couple of months ago I realized you could ski along the Glenn Highway all the way from Eureka to Mendeltna Lodge.  So being a guy who's skiing goal is to always ski new trails ... this route made my list.  This is a fun ski that parallels the Glenn Highway.  It follows a fiber optic right of way most of the way.  For the most part, it's separated from the highway by enough real estate that you don't much notice traffic (which there was not much of anyway).  This ski was 25 miles.  If you wanted to make it longer, you could add Eureka to Sheep Mountain.

I got word the Mid-Valley Trail Club was making a new trail.  This trail is a re-route of the Susitna Valley Winter Trail.  It moves the trail off of the Susitna River below Susitna Landing to an overland route to the west.  Making this trail was a good decision.  It will be safer for MVTC folks, and travelers alike.  Less dealings with the whims of ice thickness on the braided channels of the Big Susitna River.

Always up for skiing Su Valley trails I have not skied before, I headed north.  I started skiing from Susitna Landing, skied to the Ravine and then out the Neal Lake Trail.  The turn-off for the new trail was easy to find (see picture above).  I skied down to the Deshka X-over trail and back to Susitna Landing for a total of 38 miles.  I met the MVTC folks on the trail.  Nice folks with cabins at Trapper Lakes and with xc skiing and biking connections to Anchorage.  They said they hope more skiers and bikers will use this new trail.  The first groom of this trail had just happened.. so it looks like I inaugurated this new trail with the first ski tracks.

A ski that I had been wanting to do, is to ski Alaska's "Railroad To Nowhere".  184 million dollars has been spent on this 32 mile railroad project, that would connect Houston, AK to a rarely used port at Point Mackenzie.  But the State of Alaska has run into financial trouble, due to the crash of oil prices, so this partially completed rail project may never be completed.  Besides no money to fund this project, there is no longer a viable economic rational to build this railroad.  So here lies ... the Railroad To Nowhere.

I decided to ski this route from north to south.  I started skiing from the Miller's Reach Road, Milepost 32, and finished at the Pt. Mac Trailhead parking lot, near Milepost 1.5.  The northern part of the route turned out to be good skate skiing on crust snow and snowmobile tracks.  The 7 mile undeveloped "Segment 2" section offered a few navigation challenges.  But fast crust snow conditions and my Gaia GPS phone app allowed me to make good time here.  The last 4.5 miles were good crust skating on the rail bed until the train ran out of track, er snow, at the Pt. Mac trailhead.

In the descriptions below the following pictures, I added the estimated milepost (MP, see map) that the picture was taken.

Earthquake spew crack.  Is that an official geological term?  Yeah, sure it is.  I made it up.  And now you've read it on the web.  Of course, everything on the web is true.  So "earthquake spew crack" is now a valid and official term.  Trust me!  ;-)

Our recent earthquake left its mark on rivers and swamps in the Susitna Valley.  The quake shook, agitated, mixed and sloshed water, sand and mud beneath layers of ice.  Where the pressure became too great for the ice, cracks formed and out spewed a dirty mix.  These pictures are mostly from the West Channel / Bell Island area of the Big Susitna River (where, by the way, the crust skiing has been good).

I had heard of, and seen on maps, the Willow Mountain Trail.  It is a trail that starts from the Shirley Towne Road area and climbs up to Willow Mountain on the west side of the Talkeetnas.  So I headed up to Willow, and then up the Hatcher Pass Road a ways, to check it out.  The Shirley Towne Road bridge was damaged in 2012, so you have to access this trail from the Deneki turnoff and the Deneki Meadows Bridge.  The trail ended up being easy to find and follow.  I skied up to tree-line, but turned around as visibility was bad (snowing pretty hard).  Some dicey sections coming back down, thin snow on top of ice.  I hope to go back when there is more light and more snow.

Our winter in Southcentral Alaska has had two El Nino meltdowns so far.  Though wet and rainy weather is not good for skiing in general, in some areas these warms spells have created abnormally good backcountry touring conditions for this time of year.  In areas where there was significant snow depth prior to the tropical hits, the snowpack is now very firm.  Currently, while skiing through the backcountry in these areas, you only sink in an inch or so while using cross country racing skis.

When it comes to backcountry rambling, I always try to visit places I've never skied before.  A while ago I found a helper in skiing new routes - the Gaia GPS phone app.  Coupled with Google Earth, this phone app allows you to navigate by a GPS position that is overlaid on a satellite image.

Often when you are breaking trail through dense woods in unfamiliar terrain, you may not realize that a clearing, and easy skiing, is only a hundred yards off, for example, to the north.  But you may be heading to the northwest.  If only you knew!  Well, now you can know.  Just pull out your smartphone and get a view from high in the sky of where you are and where you probably should be going.

While looking at Google Earth I noticed some neat-looking, long and narrow, beaver-damned swamps at the base of Mount Susitna.  I figured they'd be fun to link up to make a backcountry ski touring loop.  So, I drew an estimated route that linked these swamps together on Google Earth.  Then I uploaded the kml file to www.gaiagps.com and synched the route to my Gaia GPS phone app.  Final step, recruiting my veteran bushwhacking companion, my wife, and heading out on a fun ski outing.

I found that it's pretty easy to escape the Anchorage area snow drought and find winter.  Just drive a couple hours out the Glenn Highway.  I made a trip to Mendeltna Lodge.  Lots of groomed trails radiating out from this location.  And it's a good place to stay (I like the owners Mabel and Russ Wimmer).  A unique ski from Mendeltna, is the trail to Tazlina Lake (above picture).  Though there is not a lot of snow for this area in January, the Lake Louise Snowmobile Club has been grooming trails.  And there is a trail groomed now between Eureka and Mendeltna, that parallels the Glenn Highway.  I had never known of this trail to be groomed before, so I skied part of it to check it out.

A series of Pacific storms, bringing warm temps and rain, obliterated Anchorage's marginal skiing and trashed most all winter trails in the Lower Susitna Valley.  The only good lowland skiing remaining seems to be on the Nancy Lake Parkway.  Here the icy snow has been churned up by a tiller and snowmobilers going to and from their cabins to make for decent skate skiing.  Everywhere trails cross lakes or swamps, the thin snowpack we had got saturated with water and turned to ice.

I don't feel very sorry for myself regarding the lack of skiing on my favorite Alaskan trails.  My problems are nothing compared to problems of others in the Su Valley.  I say this after seeing many common murres that were recently blown by storm winds all over the Lower Susitna Valley ... to, likely, their impending deaths by starvation.  Very strange and unpleasant to witness.  Here is a story about the murres.  More ... .