Hope

Well the summer is dwindling down here in AK, both because we start school next Monday and because the weather is cooling off. So with that in mind we decided to hit the road this weekend. Hope was our destination. It's a small, actually tiny, town across the Cook Inlet from Anchorage where mining was once a way of life there. Now it survives on tourists money. Needless to say, there is some very fantastic scenery.

Sadie and I had to do an overdistance workout on Saturday so we decided to run on a trail that follows the coastline. Scared as we are, we had our bear bells out, but were shamed into putting it away as the boys made endless fun of us. As we began down the trail however, we passed about 10 piles of bear poop in the first 1/2 mile of trail, and they all looked fresh. So, we got the bell back out and began conversing about anything and everything we could think of (luckily, that's not a hard task for either of us). We made it a ways out this trail, but the trail became very overgrown and our fear of bears in combination with the millions of spiderwebs we were plowing through led us to turn around and start heading back. We met a nice Russian couple on the way back that asked us if we had reach the end of the trail. We explained that our fears had gotten to us so we turned around. He took one look at us and said "bears? you guys are so loud, you won't see a thing." We laughed and kept on our way. Less than a mile from the finish, we heard something in the bushes so we stopped and started yelling, it was most definitely a bear. It seemed to be running away, as it should, so we stopped yelling for a moment, but then it began to run again, this time it sounded like it was running towards us. So again we put our hands up and yelled some more. The bushes were thick so it was hard to tell how big, what type, which direction it was going or anything making it all the more spooky. Unsure of which direction was the safest, Sadie convinced me we should head backwards to her boyfriend you was hiking just a little ways behind us. We slowly walked down the trail, yelling and hollering until we reached Jo. Then all of us set forth again, hoping that we did a sufficient job in scaring the bear away. We kept up some hollering and made it through without any encounters. Sadie and I were very pleased to have survived our first bear incident. I was thinking that I had kept my cool and didn't get too scared, however, the evening all I did was dream about bear attacks so clearly my fear lives on.

After that nice adventure, Sadie and I decided to get some culture so we checked out "downtown" Hope. There was some square dancing going on in the Social Hall and many people fishing in the stream. We went to the museum and learned a thing or two about the gold rush there. Both of us came to the realization that Alaskans are all a little crazy because they have descended from people that decided it would be a great idea to move from the lower 48, probably the eastern half, all the way to Alaska. Growing up, we were taught the hardship people took crossing the country on the Oregon Trail, but that seems an easy task compared to those that ventured up here.

Sadie and I on the trail



Looking across to Anchorage and pondering why I drove 2 hours around the Cook Inlet when I could have swam



Sadie's first fish!


It was a great weekend to get out of town and see some sights. Now we are back to intensity week here in town before heading back to the glacier next week.

News

During the first few days of Girls Camp, we had a reporter from the Anchorage Daily News follow us around and put together a piece about the glacier and APU.

Here is the video
and here is the article that goes with it. Enjoy

Glacier 2-Girls Only

7 days, 25 hours of skiing, 15 girls, and just 1 small building on top of a glacier.....sounds a bit daunting

I won't lie, I was skeptical about the 2nd week of Girls Camp, that's a lot of girl in a small space, add in some serious fatigue and tired bodies and you've got a recipe for disaster. Turns out this week was the best week I've had this summer, for sure! Girls Camp was AWESOME. The first few days provided some nasty weather, but as the week went out the sun came out and we skied a lot. When we weren't skiing, we cooked some gourmet meals, watched lots of chick flicks, played some fun games, and did some singing, dancing, and guitar playing. Everyone was just exstatic about the success of the camp and the power of training with that many girls. I believe everyone, myself included, was reminded of the power of a team. We are all in the process of brainstorming what it means to have that many fast girls together, what we can accomplish, what we need to do to keep the momentum rolling and how we help to motivate the rest of North America to train and push themselves in a team environment. I believe this camp will most certainly be happening again and after the plethora of pictures that have been going around on the internet there will be way more girls pushing to get an invite to this camp. So with that, some pictures from the week on the glacier!


Nothing like spending hours following someone better....



and getting followed.
Spent many hours skiing with old teammates and catching up! Missing Dartmouth all the time




We had 3 cook crews and every group cooked twice. Without the boys there our meals tended to have less meat and more rabbit food.





The A Star is the helicopter that flys us up. It fits 4 in the back and 2 in the front.





Alpine Air is our faithful band of helicopters and pilots and Chandra (2006 Olympic Gold Medalist from Canada) provided us with live music throughout the week.


We have a serious drying room up at the glacier! Its pretty wet up there between the soft snow, occasional rain storm, and training a lot. When we come in we leave all our wet stuff here to prevent mildew problems in the building and to get a couple training sessions out of our clothes.



Lots of Rudy Projects!




Nothing quite like a team!!!

What to do with an afternoon off

During our first week of girls camp, we did manage to get some free time. I took advantage of some incredible sunshine and headed to a very small port town named Whittier with my visiting Dartmouth teammates Sophie and Ida and our local guide and Dartmouth teammate Eric. In order to get to Whittier you must travel through a railroad tunnel that is about 6 miles long and because it was built for trains, it is only about as wide as a train making it a one way tunnel. It is therefore only open for about 15 minutes every hour so timing is everything. We were a little behind schedule on your way to the tunnel so we had to do a little bit speeding and were lucky enough to just barely make it before they switched directions!


The tunnel





Everyone in Whittier lives in this building or a newer one that is close by. There is a couple ticky tacky tourist shops, a couple place to get fish n chip and ice cream and a bunch of fishing boats and thats about it. It is on the north west part of the Prince William Sound so there are barges that bring supplies up and then they are loaded on the train to bring further north.





Sophie spotted a seal





Me, Ida, Sophie!



A traditional Alaskan fishing boat





Eric and his ladies





Hey Char, look, it's your boat!





Dartmouth represent!

Girls Camp

The first week of Girls Camp is coming to a close. We have completed a week of dryland and are enjoying a nice day off before we fly to the Eagle glacier for some skiing! It was awesome having a big group here. We did all our afternoon workouts together as well so the Alaskans took us to some new trails and I was able to check out some cool places in the comfort of a group large enough to scare off any bears or moose! Kikkan also surprised us with sweatshirts and named us the North American Training Alliance and created a cool logo that combined a star for the USA and a maple leaf for the Canadians. Here is a glimpse of some of our workouts:

Lots of bright colors in the groups, Thanks Rudy Project for all the support and keeping us safe!

The North American Training Alliance!

10 minute level 3 intervals, don't get in our way!

Nothing compares to following one of the best in the world for 1 hour into a strong headwind, thanks for pulling me along Kikkan.

We did a cool double pole session along the coast, it had some epic views and a gnarly headwind, on the way back....

Check back for a report on the glacier and the going ons in Park City where I will head to have some fun with my parents during my recovery week.

Video

The U.S. Women's Team launched a video challenge this summer in which girls teams were supposed to make a 3 minute video of their summer training. The U.S. team arrived in Anchorage this past weekend to start our joint APU/U.S. Team camp and as a result we have gotten to view some of the videos. There were over 20 girls teams that entered! I am very pleasantly surprised by the number of girls training groups out there and that they were all so enthusiastic about showcasing their hard work. Anyway, take a look at our video.

So far, girls camp has been really fun. I am so psyched to have my friends and old teammates around. There has been a good deal of laughing and gossiping! As APU is showcasing Alaska, we have been going on some new trails which, as the newbie, I have really enjoyed, not to mention, the power in numbers has made me much less scared of all the deadly wildlife around. Today on our rollerski, we probably passed about 20 piles of bear scat, but no bears. Turns out, 30 girls on rollerskis wearing fluorescent clothes seems to be enough to scare all the bears away and maybe a few tourists too.

My First Glacier Camp!

Have you ever imagined yourself being helicoptered up to a remote building full of beds and food, sitting on top of a glacier with the possibility of skiing on groomed trails in the middle of summer? I sure never did, but once I heard of the possibility, moving to Alaska didn't seem half as bad. I have spent much of the past two years with injuries all of which where caused by non-skiing activities. With this in mind, spending one week each month on snow, I thought I might stand a chance of training a lot without getting injured. This was enough to convince me to move to what I still view as the middle of nowhere, Alaska. I have just returned from my first week on the Glacier and I think it was worth the journey to Alaska.

Skiers have sought on snow summer training on the Eagle Glacier for many years now. The military, biathletes, and the US Ski team have all had part in the project over the past 30 years or so. APU was fortunate enough to take over in the more recent history and have spent many weeks each summer training hard and making various repairs to the place.

The Eagle Glacier sits high in the mountains above the town of Girdwood, home to Alyeska Resort and lies about 35 miles south of Anchorage. ()

The "lodge" that we stay in is more of a metal box as the winter weather is exceedingly harsh up there. This makes maintenance an endless task so there are always projects going on around the glacier led by our coach, wax tech, and various other helpers. However, it still provides a great hideout for training. There is a very adequate kitchen with two stoves, giant refrigerator, and huge pantry to make sure us hungry skiers are always well fed. Bunk rooms make up the sleeping arrangements and there is a living room to socialize and watch movies and a small space with a few weights to keep up on our strength training over the week. The goal of the week is always to ski as much as possible. For me, as a newbie, this meant trying to get 4 hours of skiing in a day.

The pond that we rely on for water supply



A typical day meant waking up at 6 to get skiing by 7 in hopes that the snow was a little firmer, skiing for 2-3 hours, eating, napping, skiing for a second time, doing some strength training, eating dinner, watching video to work on technique, and going to bed. There is not much else going on up there so it is a great way to focus solely on skiing. That said, we only spend a week at a time up there because not only is it exhausting to train that much, it is close quarters and we wouldn't want to destroy any team bonding that we have done over the week.

The groomed trail and a sunny day!



There is about a 7km loop to ski on that our wax tech grooms twice a day for us. The variable part of the camp is the weather. Weather in Alaska in unpredictable as is, then you throw in being on top of a mountain and things get interesting. I apparently lucked out as this week we had a few sunny days and a fews days in which we were in a cloud, but only one rain storm. The sunny days are to die for. The views are incredible and it is a surreal thing to be skiing in the middle of summer on top of a glacier, it never got old. Being in a cloud was interesting as well. It provided some distortion as I would loose track of where I was on the course and suddenly the hills seemed shorter and the track less monotonous, but the downhills became a little tricky as you couldn't see more than one foot in front of you. We had very warm weather which was nice for training, but meant that the snow never froze so the skiing was very mushy and challenging making for some extra tired legs.

Me and some of my new teammates

I had a successful camp, training the most I ever have in 1 week! My knee didn't cause me any trouble, only blisters got in my way as the snow is so wet it is hard to keep your feet dry! I spent a great deal of time working on technique as every coach as different ways of explaining things and different philosophies on the best ways ski. I feel like I have already become a better skier and am looking forward to the next camp.

The most exciting part was our exit. Most people hike off the glacier to save some money instead of taking the helicopter down. However, a group of us with nagging injuries were instructed to take the lift down. We were planning to leave this morning but a storm was predicted to move in so we were unsure of our departure time. We went out for our last training session yesterday when our coach came ripping down on the snowmobile to tell us that the helicopter would be arriving in 30 minutes. However, the storm had already hit as rain was falling and the wind was howling so we scrambled back up to the building to pack our things. Because the storm had moved in, the helicopter wasn't able to get to the building so our coach got a call saying it was landing down glacier. Every minute that the heli runs, gas is burning and so is our wallet so we scurried around in the storm loading a sled and attaching it to the snowmobile before piling on and heading into the fog. We were driving very fast looking for the heli and trying to avoid falling into a crevasse, it was nothing short of a great hollywood scene. I spotted the helicopter through the fog and our coach was able to get us loaded in. We took off and the wind was so strong we were bouncing all over the place. We had to take a longer route back to Girdwood to avoid flying over high peaks so we got a scenic trip, but I was shaking with nerves the whole way. We were flying so close to the ridges trying to stay protected from the wind and we certainly got our money's worth on this ride, however, I was very thankful to land safely on the air strip.

APU just bought a new Pisten Bully (grooming machine) for the glacier. Getting thing up there is tricky however. Getting the machine up there required it to be broken into pieces and the hiring of a special helicopter that could carry the pieces. It was an exciting day for all when the helicopter delivered the pieces. This is the cab being brought up one afternoon.



After spending a week surrounded by rock and snow, everything seemed very green in town and I keep catching myself forgetting to flush the toilet as we have to conserve water on the glacier we must follow the mantra "if it's pee, let it be, if it's poo flush it through." But it is very nice to have a few days of rest and recovery. We ran into a teammate grabbing some dinner who was not on the glacier who had been charged by a brown bear that day and after pulling into our driveway we were greeted by 2 moose, reminding me again of all my fears here and that Alaska is a wild place. Back to reality in Anchorage!

At the end of this week, the US Womens Team is arriving for a week of dryland training and then another week on the glacier. A few of my Dartmouth Teammates will be joining and I could not be more excited to have some friends coming to visit!


You can always click on any picture to enlarge it!