Saturday, September 12, 2015

The Fun Side of Crow Pass

Today's training plan called for a long hike on a high exposed ridge line in the Chugach Mountains. But when the coaches saw the weather - steady cold rain and gusty wind - they called an audible and we ran over Crow Pass instead.

The trip over Crow Pass consists of two basic halves. The first half stays mostly above treeline, and traverses high alpine country on a moderately steep trail. The second half is pretty much flat and in the woods. Dividing the two halves is the Eagle River crossing, a 100-hard splash through swiftly-moving waist-deep glacial meltwater (about a half-mile from its source) at a temperature of about 0.00001 degree Celcius. Today, we ran the first half of the first half of the trail - the best part.

Mackenzie, Andrew, Hanna, Toomas, Manon.


Into the clouds. Andrew, Mackenzie, Toomas, Hanna.
Across the pass.
That's Raven Glacier in the background.




Andrew catching air.

Toomas catching air, but less air than Andrew.

Mackenzie, not catching air.

Our turnaround point at the bridge over the gorge.
Question:  Is Mackenzie catching air now?
ps. Thank you to all of the nordic team for singing Happy Birthday to me today in the van.  You're the best singers I know, and I really appreciated it! Especially Hanna, who sang it in fourteen languages and would have sung in Estonian but Toomas told her music hadn't yet been invented in Estonia. 

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