The Last Glacier Camp

I was so fortunate to have Patrick fly out to visit me for a couple weeks! On his first day, I dragged him out for a 3.5 hour rollerski around Anchorage in the rain. We saw a handful of moose and unlike Sadie and I, Patrick was not scared and would ski right past them tapping them on the bum with his pole while Sadie and I would take our skis off and take a scenic loop around the creature. It was a good Alaskan rollerski for sure.

For our first week, he joined the APU team as well as a few athletes from Sun Valley for our last glacier camp. I will be honest, I was starting to think Alaska was pretty sweet as my previous 2 glacier camps were full of sunshine and awesome skiing, but I was reminded that Alaska is crazy. We had some bad weather for this camp. We maybe saw the sun for half a day up there and the rest of the time it was blowing snow like crazy. It was full on winter up there. Now, I can't complain too much because I was still skiing in August which is really awesome and I was enjoying time with Patrick, but it did take an extra bit of motivation to get out the door everyday when you would wake up to wind and snow pounding against the building. I was able to reach my goal of training hours for the week, making it a decent week overall and I certainly gained some toughness out there. Here are a few pictures from the week, and yes, I did enhance them on my computer so it does look a little sunnier than it was, plus we only took pictures when the sun was trying to peek out.....

Fresh snow surrounding the building

August camp provided some new twists. As a result of very low snow and an earthquake that happened during girls camp, a bunch of new crevases opened up all over the glacier.......

so we were required to ride down to the trails and back up in the back of the Pisten Bully. This was great for the one working that the sun sorta peaked out for, but was really rough when it was blowing and raining or snowing.

Patrick and me soaking up every bit of Vitamin D we can

A beautiful sunset from up on the glacier!