When it comes to backcountry forays in Alaska, unique conditions can play big roles in adventuring.  When conditions are just right, or exist as they rarely do ... it's good to seize such opportunities and log a memorable adventure.

Crust skiing is a classic example of this.  When conditions are great, you want to take the opportunity and experience it, because you never know when your next chance will be.  The Twentymile Valley is a good example.  When crust skiing is available there, it is a great trip to a beautiful place that people rarely visit.  But then the weather gods can decide that the Twentymile Valley is theirs, and not yours... and for several years straight there can be no crust skiing there.

Besides crust skiing, I have jumped on other unique backcountry access opportunities.  For example: Ice roads, groomed snowmobile freight hauling trails, trails set for dogsled races, inter-village trails made by basketball team travel, snowmobile trails left over from club rides to remote areas and trails made for moving mining equipment.  Being an opportunist and not letting unique situations slip away leads to fun trips and lasting memories.

A unique backcountry opportunity showed up recently at the Knik Glacier this year.  Here there is a place called the "pinch point".  It's where the Knik Glacier pushes up against the Western Chugach Mountains.  Due to the random result of ice, rock and water battling each other, the landscape of the pinch point changes every year.  If you can get through the pinch point, you can often travel to Lake George and the Colony Glacier, by bike or ski.  I did this trip on skis in 2018.

Usually snowmobilers can't make it through the pinch point.  But this year some snowmobilers took a battery-powered hammer drill and chipped away ice and frozen mud so snowmobiles could squeeze through the pinch point.  As a result, there was a rare snowmobile trail from the pinch point to Lake George this year.  A unique opportunity that I, and others, took advantage of.  You never know when this trails like this one will happen again.

Pinch point

Ice climbers at the pinch point area

Here is a live recording from the 'Cruststock 2026' crust skiing kickoff festival in Portage, Alaska this year ... click HERE to listen.

This was an epic event.  Until it got out of control.  Then it got even more epic.

It started out with skiers hanging out, listening to great music, singing along and dancing around.  The band Stonegrind was there and did their hit song "Git Yer Crust On".  Timo Kilo joined them for his new song "My Skis Are On Fire!".  Good times.

But then the fat biker girls showed up and the party started spiraling out of control.  They were doing shots of Red Bull and vodka mixed with tire sealant.  Seriously.  Tire sealant.  That's nuts.  They were screaming, roughhousing and beating up skiers for fun, shooting AR-15s and riding their bikes over cars and trucks.  I now have a nice dent in the roof of my truck from them.  Thanks girls.  Woman fat bikers are sure a wild crew.

Then the ebike fat bikers showed up and the shit show began.  The fat biker girls gave them some tire sealant and vodka.  And they had a stolen Red Bull delivery truck.  A bad combination.  Soon they were doing donuts with their ebikes on the crust snow and spraying the band and crowd with snow and dirt.  They were doing wheelies and jumps off the stage into the crowd.  And they were flying their drones and dropping cans of Red Bull filled with pee and flaming bombs of moose poop mixed with diesel fuel all over the place.  It was insane.

Here are some pictures I took for proof that I am not making this shit up ...

Wow.  Lots of craziness.  How did crust skiing and crust fat biking get here?  I just don't know what to say about it all.

Except maybe ..."Git Yer Crust On!  Git Some!"

My wife and I have had a remote cabin in the Susitna Valley for 32 years now.  That's a lot of waving.  Waving?  Read on ...

The modes of transportation we've used over the 3 decades to travel the 30 miles or so to our cabin are: boat, snowmobile, ATV, truck (only once in 1996), dogsled, ski-joring, cross country skiing and fat biking.  I did my first fat bike trip to our cabin just recently.

As we are generally friendly people, whenever we pass a traveler (or they pass us) ... we wave.  Usually we get a cordial wave back.  Occasionally there is no wave back.  That becomes a black mark.  And it usually results in my wife or me uttering: "What a dick!"  Ha!

Anyway, after 32 years of "keeping score", this is my unofficial tally of wave-back percentages based on the mode of transportation we are using:

Dogsled - 99%
Fat biking - 95%
Boat - 85%
Ski-joring - 80%
ATV - 75%
Snowmobile - 75%
Cross Country Skiing - 66.66%

Takeways:

Dogsled is the highest score, likely because dogsledding is an iconic Alaskan activity.
Fat biking ranks high because everyone that passes by you has ridden a bike at one time in their life.  It's relate-able to everyone.
Boaters are generally friendly, because the Big Susitna River is a powerful glacial torrent and boaters have to look out for each other.
Dogs elevate ski-joring over xc skiing because most everyone cherishes dogs.
Snowmobilers and ATV'ers are mostly friendly folks.  Yeah, there are some dicks.  But most are out in the backcountry for the same reason we are.

And last comes the cross country skiers.  In general other travelers are friendly to xc skiers.  But not overly friendly.  XC skier presence on backcountry trails is less than it used to be.  A lot less.  Fat bikers have taken their place, and more. 

Oh well.  I'll keep waving.

This year the Mat-Su Ski Club has been grooming the Plumley/Maud, Mud Lake and Jim Creek trails off the eastern end of Maud Road.  This is the first year this grooming has been done.  There is flat terrain here on lakes, and on Jim Creek.  But the coolest section, IMO, is the wooded trail that runs from the Plumley/Maud trailhead to Mud Lake.  Rolling terrain through nice forest. There is limited parking (3 vehicles) at the Plumley/Maud trailhead.  Better parking at the Mud Lake trailhead.  These are all multiuse trails: ski, bike, foot and snowmobile.  For map and conditions, check here: https://www.matsuski.org/mssc-trail-report

I like this area because it is "pluton country".  Pluton's are intrusions of hard igneous rock formed by magma being forced upwards through the earth's crust.  In this area, through the Castle Mountain earthquake fault system.  Over the last 20 million years they have survived glaciations and have become unique, rocky bumps in the Matanuska and lower Susitna valleys.  The most visited pluton is Bodenburg Butte.  The Plumley/Maud Trail goes past Burnt Butte (pictured below, center) and other plutons.  Plutons stretch from the Sheep Mountain area to the base of Mount Susitna.  I've been up 7 Mat-Su plutons (Lion Head, Bodenburg Butte, Burnt Butte, Knik bridge butte, Palmer/Matanuska River mini-butte, Dinglishna Hill, Chedatna Pluton) , mostly in winter on skis or snowshoes.  Fun mini-adventures.

This year I took a detour from cross country skiing ... to the world of fat biking.  Well, the detour has been a lot longer than expected.  Why?  Because of fun.  As a very late to fat biking person, it has been great fun experiencing an Alaskan outdoors activity that I knew little about.  Have spent a lot more hours this winter holding a handlebar instead of ski poles.  But it's all good.  Being excited about new adventures is the goal.  No matter what your mode of adventuring.  I should get back to posting ski trip pics before long.  Maybe. 

I have done several fat bike trips to the Knik Glacier this winter.  The takeaway: I think I am done with skiing to this glacier.  Fat bikes roll over rocks that can catch your skis and knock you to the ground.  And on the glacial outwash plain you travel to get here, there is usually thin windswept snow and endless river rocks.  No worries about rocks with a fat bike.

This Subaru (zoom in to see it) shows that you don't have to bike 15 miles to get to Inner Lake George this year.  You can drive 12 +/- miles to the Knik Glacier 'pinch point', park and then continue on by your mode of travel choice.  To get here you drive off-road trails from mile 8 of the Knik River Road or from the Jim Creek trailhead in the Butte area to the Knik Glacier Lake.  Then you drive down the steep slope of the terminal moraine to the lake and drive on lake ice to the pinch point.  A lot of trucks, jeeps and ATV's have made this trip this year.

I don't advocate taking a car or truck here.  But I'm not one to judge others' adventure pursuits.  If you've done the risk analysis and feel good about doing this ... then great.  I'll be wave to you from my fat bike as you drive by.  I've got to admit ... this seems like some hardcore 'Subie jockey' action.  A long ways out in a low-clearance vehicle.

December 2025 in Southcentral Alaska was brutal.  Cold, relentless wind in the Mat Su Valley and hardly any snowfall.  The 4 inches that fell in late November constituted our meager snowpack in the lowlands for December.  This wind-ravaged, thin snowpack made for un-fun skiing on backcountry trails in the Su Valley.  But not all was bad.  These conditions made for some great fat biking.

I am a late-to-the-party, newcomer when it comes to fat biking.  And the good thing about that is everything about fat biking is something new to me.  It's easy to maintain your winter "stoke" when you have a new and fun outlet should your traditional game, xc skiing, become "stoke challenged".

My favorite fat bike trails are the endless "winter trail" singletracks in the Far North Bicentennial Park.  Many of these singletrack trails only exist in the winter.  They are narrow, challenging and lesser-used trails that take you through country you wouldn't even think about traversing in the summer.  Marshes filled with tussocks, swamps, beaver dam backwaters, dense black spruce groves and moraines and woodlands that are trail-less in the summer.  Makes for fun exploring ... while you get a good workout.

Bottom line:  The long, snow-challenged periods of the last two winters have taught me a lesson that many Alaskans have known for a long time.  And that is that a fat bike, with studded tires, is a good thing to have in your quiver of outdoor adventure gear.  Thanks to the fat bike, I find myself caring much less about skiing conditions being bad.  Because I have a fun option to go with until skiing conditions improve.

The Trailforks app has most all of the FNBP winter singletrack mapped.

I was following some winter singletrack in the Far North Bicentennial Park and found myself next to an abandoned, clandestine camp (see above picture).

This camp reminded me of an event from 35 or so years ago that happened near this place.  Friends and I were doing some orienteering training in this area.  We'd choose a position on a map, and then race each other to that point.

Everything was going well for me, until I sprinted through some spruce trees with my head down looking at my map.  Just then ... BAMM! ... I ran into something and got stopped dead in my tracks.  Everything turned black.  I was confused for a second.  Did I just pass out or something?  Did I run into a net or trap?  Then I realized what was going on.  I had just run into a wall of thick black Visqueen (plastic).  I had run into the back wall of a huge shelter made out of a log frame with black plastic draped over the logs.  I walked around the edge of the shelter to see if anyone was there.  Smoke was drifting up from a fire pit.  But no people were present.

So as a PSA to those that build these secretive and remote camps ... they may not be as secretive and remote as you think.  Because you never know when a fat biker might put in a winter singletrack trail right behind you.  Or when some dude out running in the woods will blindly crash into your shelter.

Tok, Alaska.  Click on this picture and check out the temperatures.  Brutal!  Fairbanks went 32 days with temps never above 0 F.  It was the 2nd longest subzero stretch on record for them.  Way colder in the Interior.  But over a month long cold stretch in Southcentral, Alaska.

This summer a new bridge was placed over the North Fork of Campbell Creek, on the utility right of way to the south of the Chugach Foothills subdivision in the Muldoon area of Anchorage.  The creek crossing here has a long history of slippery rocks and wet feet.  I was told this is a temporary bridge and that it will be replaced in a couple of years with a larger bridge that will allow forest fire crew trucks to cross it.  The maps below show the location of this new bridge.  And they show a 10 mile loop on multiuse trails that I like to do on bike and skis ... that will now be drier thanks to this bridge.

... when instead of waiting in the dark for the rivers of Southcentral Alaska to freeze up and backcountry trails to come alive, you might as well head south if you can.  Reasons to go ...

 Warmth

 Big trees

Watching UFOs crash