Hatcher Pass Snow

coldclimb

My wife Tracy and I took Tuesday and spent it in the mountains, hiking up a well-traveled snowmachine highway for her first day of snowboarding ever. I wish I could write up a cool story, but nothing eventful happened this day. The next day, however, an 18 year old snowboarder got lost and died of hypothermia within a mile of where we went up and had our fun. It's always a little sobering when people doing exactly what I'm doing in the same place that I do it die.

I didn't get a lot of cool shots of great scenery, because we were hiking and boarding one of Alaska's most popular snowmachine superhighways, but I got a couple shots to share just for fun.

Here's Tracy on the trudge to the top of Hatcher Pass, a roadbed turned to a snowmachine trail during the winter months. Check out the slopes in the background for tracks of skiers and boarders.




Some others out enjoying the bright sun and great slopes, on a level a little higher than us.




I wanted to hunt up a ptarmigan, but those guys are impossible to find this time of year unless you step on them, so I settled for some tracks of a foraging bird of some sort.




Enjoy!

jeffmeyers

The first one is pretty cool. I like the way the patterns in the snow mostly lead you to the hiker. Nice shot!