FYI

The reason there haven't been any posts in the past week or so is because I'm busy riding a motorcycle across North America.

And unless I'm grossly mistaken, Canada isn't on the interweb so there likely won't be any UAA Ski Team blog posts for another week or ten days when I return to civilization in Alaska.

In the meantime, here are a couple of today's sights.

Tropical Training Camp

A bunch of UAA skiers have recently been in Maui, Hawaii, doing a little tropical training to kick off the summer training season.  There was some biking, hiking and swimming, but I'm pretty confident there wasn't any hillbounding with ski poles or rollerski time trials up Haleakala.

Pati, Tim, Davis, Synnøve, Mackenzie, Lucky

Mackenzie & Synnøve

Synnøve, Mackenzie, and the race marshal

Sunrises bring euphoria to some. For others, melancholy.

Synnøve, Mackenzie, The Black Knight, Lucky, Tim Williams, Étienne, Bella Andreini, Pati.

May is the best month of the year...

...because you can do winter stuff and summer stuff on the same day.

Training conditions are good at Archangel Road...

...as you can see by these photos.
The trail was groomed this morning.

Look at the size of that bee!

First Training Day of the Year

Yesterday was May 1 and according to Lucky, this meant it was the first training day of the year.  To celebrate, Lucky brought me to Hatcher Pass for some crust skiing. When we got to the parking spot, we found we weren't the only ones who'd gotten up early for some training.

Eric Packer, Lukas Ebner, Reese Hanneman

There was some climbing to get to the Snowbird Basin.

Snowbird Basin - our turnaround spot

There was good skiing on the lake.

It was this warm.

Normally on an outing such as this with Lucky, you'd expect to hear that distinctive crackling sound of  breaking carbon fiber, as Lucky's skis and poles disintegrate around him.  But he made it all the way to the turnaround spot without a single broken ski or pole!  Truthfully, it was a little spooky and I started wondering if perhaps the earth had tilted on its axis or if Jupiter and Mars were in alignment or something, because something just felt wrong!  But then about 100 meters into the return trip, the world was set to right again when I heard the comforting snap of a Triac pole, and knew everything was normal and the apocalypse was, in fact, not at hand.

Eric Packer; Team Stratton; a little norpine action.

It got a little soft in a couple spots near the end of our trip.  Here's Lucky doing his "moose" imitation.