November 22, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving.

We are just hanging around the condo today. Our plans for the holiday fell apart yesterday. We were supposed to go skiing, but almost 4 feet of snow fell yesterday on top of the 2 feet that fell the day before. At low elevations, it has been warm and rainy. We have almost no snow left on the ground in Anchorage. So the ski resort got 4 inches of rain at the base and unbelievable amounts of wet heavy snow at the top. The heavy snow is sitting on top of the light fluffy stuff that fell previously. It is a recipe for serious avalanches. The resort is closed today and tomorrow.

We didn’t find out the bad news until after our turkey was in the oven for our Wednesday evening Thanksgiving dinner. We had our dinner last night anyway. Today will be leftovers.

Alaska is still an interesting social world. We were invited to several Thanksgiving dinners. People are always trying to form extended families for holidays. Last night we even got an invitation from one of our ski friends who heard the resort was going to be closed. We decided to have a quiet day by ourselves instead.

The ski season got off to a spectacular start. Well, Saturday had its problems. Only the upper part of the mountain was open. This meant riding the tram up and down. This meant parking at the hotel instead of the day lodge. The first clue that things were going to be a problem was the parking. In the springtime we have to park over there, but we can usually park in the first lot. We drove by the first lot, the second lot, the large third lot, and then to a back lot that I never knew existed. We parked and changed our boots. It was snowing and we were surprised to see about 8 inches of snow in the parking lot.

There is a shuttle bus from the parking lot to the tram base, but by the time we got to the pick up point, it didn’t seem that much further to get to the tram base on our own. The parking lot and walkway were covered with fresh snow so I just skated on my skis the whole way.

When we arrived at the tram base, we saw something we have never seen before. A line for the tram extended out into the driveway. We waited almost 45 minutes. We arrived at the top and popped into our skis. As we began to ski away, a ski patroller announced that the chair lift was going to have to close down for repairs. She recommended that we wait there until they had a better idea of what was going to happen.

We waited a couple minutes before they announced that they would be running a different chairlift that would give us a shortened run. We headed down the mountain toward the lift. The snow was skied up on our route, but it was deep and soft. We quickly remembered the general concepts of skiing. We arrived at the lift just as they opened the ropes to let people on. We hopped right on and took another run, this time heading for a less traveled route. We found pockets of deep snow, especially on the steep narrow chute that lead back to the lift. There we found the longest line we have ever seen for a lift at Alyeska. We waited again. As we neared the front of the line, they announced that the repairs were completed on the main lift. Most of the people headed off to that lift. Since we were close to the front, we waited and took the lift back up. The main lift has much more capacity so the lift lines were tolerable the rest of the day.

The snow was incredible for the opening day. It was up over our knees in a few places. Since we were only expecting a few inches of snow, we did not have our powder skis. Our lack of skiing fitness, our inappropriate skis, and my long skate from the parking lot soon caught up to us. Our legs were getting sore. Not wanting to wait in a line for the tram at the end of the day, we headed down early.

Sunday was much better. Fourteen inches of snow had fallen in 24 hours. They opened the chairlift from the day lodge to ease the traffic on the tram. We headed right up the mountain. We found deep snow for a couple of hours. Our legs were ready to collapse. It was some of the best snow we have ever seen. Our technique and confidence was less than perfect, but it was great fun.

We had a project over the weekend. A flat Stanley arrived from Atlanta after being lost in the mail for a couple of weeks. We took our flat Stanley skiing. We tried to get some good pictures to send back, but it was really snowy and cloudy for most of the weekend. We compiled some pictures and provided a quick story of flat Stanley’s visit along with some general Alaska stuff. Our project is listed as a photo journal. Hopefully the kids in Atlanta will enjoy the pictures and story. We did take Stanley to a bar, but you can’t tell from the photos.

Kris started her new job this week. She came home on Monday and thanked me for finding this job. She is really excited about it. Her enthusiasm didn’t seem to slip in the next two days either.