The rangers of Denali State Park have been working on a 15 mile winter trail between the K'seugi Ken campground and the Byers Lake campground for the past few years.  They have been routing the trail, removing downed trees, excavating sidehill ramps and brush-mowing the trail.  This year they finally got to the point where they could run a Piston Bully 100 over it ... and a great winter multi-use trail (ski, bike and snowmobile) came to fruition.  The rangers say they hope this winter trail will become a yearly feature of Denali State Park, for years to come.

You can ski this trail as an out and back or a point to point trip.  One thing you should realize ... this trail is not flat!  There are some flat sections.  But there are some big climbs ... like the section just to the north of the K'seugi Ken campground and on the south-side of Byers Creek.  Also, the bridges over the creeks are temporary snow bridges. This is a cool winter trail that folks should consider putting on their list.

 Lower Troublesome Creek crossing.

March in Southcentral Alaska, and still hardly any snowfall this winter (especially in the areas where I was hoping to log some new ski trips).  We've had a very unusual winter of warmth and record low snowfall.  Long term forecast is for more of the same.  Sadly, it's not looking good for getting in many new skiing forays this year before we're off to other adventures.  My view of this winter can be summed up in one word: unimaginable.

 Erik Packer developed a web app, named TextMeTheSnow, that will text you when snow is on its way.  Pretty cool.  Give it a try!