17 may 14 bird to gird

My friend Jo-Ann and I biked the Bird-to-Gird(wood) path along Turnagain Arm on an amazing May day.

23 sep 13 summer highlights

The first snows of the season stuck to the ground today, so I'm inspired to edit some of the summer's photos and post up the highlights.



In June we visited family in Colorado for two weeks, and I biked the back roads of Boulder County with my dad.  The September floods wiped out most of the bridges, and he says we couldn't do any of those rides to Hygiene, Berthoud, or Mead now, or even pedal the bike paths of Longmont now.

Our neighborhood is a popular moose nursery.  This moose cow and her days-old twins spent an afternoon nibbling on the flowers at the back steps.

In June and July we enjoyed perfect summer weather.  One evening we hiked in the Glen Alps area of Chugach State Park near our house.

My bike club pedaled 12+ miles past the end of Eklutna Lake in Chugach State Park for a long weekend.  The weather was fantastic.  Here's my bike on the return loaded with empty water containers strapped to the top of my sleeping bag and pad which are bungied to the rack which holds two panniers with my clothes in 1 and group and my food gear (coffee pots etc) in the other.  Bear spray in the bottle cage, snacks and small camera in the handlebar bag, and water and extra clothes in the daypack on my back (not in picture).

Our sailing weekends were too few but highlighted by sunny days and fair breezes.  I plan to post an album about our time in Prince William Sound this year.

Django was a great boat dog!  He looked this cheerful and excited whenever I brought out his life jacket for taking the dinghy to shore (except that one rainy weekend when none of us really wanted to be outside much)

1 jan 12 more snowy singletrack meditation

2012 begins snowy and cold in Anchorage this year. I resisted the urge to break one resolution on the first day and didn't let the cold stop me from joining a few Divas for a New Year's Day ride. I was glad I started the year with a two hour bike ride on snowy singletrack. I'm pleasantly tired this evening and feel less intimidated by the cold, which is good because winter isn't even half over. And with views like this, who wouldn't rather be outside than inside watching football?

6 jul 11 beautiful infrastructure

Not even a powerline up the middle of it can mar the beauty of this valley on a sunny summer evening ....

Alaska Dirt Divas rode Powerline Trail last evening.

oct 10 best of white rim

It's only been two weeks since the bike ride on the White Rim Trail and already work, duties, winter, and the next trip are crowding in on the savoring of my time pedaling through the high desert and canyonlands. Before I forget everything, I thought I'd record some of my favorite bits.

Sleeping until a late sunrise every morning. Some mornings I didn't rise until I heard Brin call out "Hot Coffee"

The incredible scenery ... pictures will describe better than I can

The biking ... sometimes easy, sometimes technical, sometimes challenging, sometimes impossible. Staying true to the mountain biking motto,"If you aren't walking, you aren't mountain biking."

Somebody else cooked and washed the dishes!

The sense of accomplishment. A storm in September resulted in a landslide that wiped out the switchbacks out of the canyon at the very end of trail. Instead of changing or canceling our trip, we opted to be the first to try a hike-and-bike out of the canyon. Of course, that was fairly easy because the guides carried the bikes on the steepest climbs!

Sharing this wonderful experience with good friends.

You can see more photos and read more stories at
http://picasaweb.google.com/alaskadirtdivas
http://www.alaskadirtdivas.blogspot.com
http://akbikegirl.blogspot.com/search/label/White%20Rim

23 oct 10 white rim intro

After a night of wind gusts that ripped the tent stakes out of the ground and scattered fine red dust through my tent, the rain began at daybreak and I wondered what I had signed up for. After a record-setting rainy, cloudy summer in Alaska, had I really flown to Utah for a guided mountain bike trip in a fall monsoon? I knew we would have to leave the camp site that day and feared we'd pedal 20 miles in winds that would blow us off the White Rim into the Colorado River canyon below.

Soon the rain ended, though, and the guides Brin and Ben cooked a hot breakfast. After a mug of strong coffee and hot french toast, the day looked a little better. The hail storm that followed was brief, and the clouds started parting to blue sky. By noon we were back on the trail for our 2nd day on the White Rim in the Island in the Sky region of Canyonlands National Park.

23-26 sep 10 Eklutna Camaraderie

Once again after a summer of disappointing weather, the Alaska Dirt Divas were treated to a sunny, golden weekend at the Serenity Falls Cabin. Our gamble two years ago to push the weekend later in September has become the tradition and we haven't been sorry yet. We added a night this year to include the Equinox and Full Moon in our long weekend.


Three nights gave us time to explore the canyon by foot one day and relax in the sun another. As always, more food than we could eat, though we tried. Morning workouts by Stacey were a justification for the gorging for some of us. Maggie's tai chi was a welcome stretch and relaxation for some of us who did Stacey's workout.


Rose showed me how to balance rocks. We stacked rocks into cairns on a dry stretch of river bottom one afternoon. She is able to stack off center yet keep the weight balanced through a center plumb line. I was just happy to achieve a little balance in the autumn sun with good friends.

Here are more photos from the weekend:

fall 09 highlight #1 eklutna

Despite the fall seeming long and seamlessly transitioning from a beautiful summer, I've hardly felt like I had the time to process my photos of it or write about it. So now as the rains wash the last bits of color from the trees, I will attempt to record my personal highlights from a golden September.

In the top three was the Divas 3rd annual weekend at the Serenity Falls cabin beyond the east end of Eklutna Lake. The weather was just as beautiful as last year, only warmer and with less termination dust on the mountains. We also filled the cabin both nights with Divas, which doubled the turnout from past years. Like last year, we hired the concessionaire to take firewood, wine, water, and other heavy consumables out for us the day before. That left us with our personal clothes and overnight gear, group kitchen ware, and most of the food that we would eat.

The fun was being together -- shimmying across log bridges, playing rousing games of Yachtzee and combat-style Sporks, enjoying good food cooked on a woodstove, trying to finish off 4 5-liter boxes of wine, relaxing in the sun by a pond, pedaling under the golden fall leaves and bright blue sky. We were blessed.

more photos from the weekend are on my photo page:

26 September 2008 Eklutna Gold

We gambled and it paid off. My friend Jo-Ann reserved the Serenity Falls Cabin at the far end of Eklutna Lake months ago and weeks before she fell and tore her rotator cuff. After surgery at the end of June, she asked if we'd mind if she pushed the cabin reservation back from the 2nd weekend of September to the last. That's pushing winter in these parts but how can you say 'no' to someone who's hallucinating on pain killers and not going to bike all summer? She thought she could be back on her mountain bike by the end of September. We rode out in a pouring rain a year ago September so how much worse could it be if we postponed?

We also froze last year with a small supply of wet firewood. So I was up early on Friday to deliver dry firewood to the concessionaire, Dan, who could motor it 12 miles out to the cabin. The lake was shrouded in fog and Dan reported it was 31 degrees. Paul and I returned to the trailhead at 1:00 to meet Jo-Ann, Rose, Bev, and Gloria . Bikes, trailers, and panniers were loaded for two nights at the cabin. Paul was just along for a daytrip. The morning fog had burned off and the clear blue skies allowed the sun to warm the air.

In a summer that had few consecutive days of sun, we didn't think the weather could last. But it did. We took advantage all we could. On Saturday we hiked toward the glacier until the trail disappeared at a cliff and the only route necessitated crossing the glacial river. Back at the cabin, the rest of the crew and more daytrippers arrived. We all grabbed a spot on the sunny back porch and ate a leisurely lunch until the sun went behind the mountain. After dinner we walked down the road and along the river and returned to the cabin for dessert and star gazing, the first of the fall.

On the ride out on Friday, we felt so grateful and lucky to be biking along the lake in the sun and fall gold. We said we were blessed, we were fortunate, we were being rewarded for sticking it out through the rain the previous year and the dreary summer of 2008. We were still saying all of those things on Sunday when we biked back out. The Saturday crew left before Rose, Jo-Ann, Gloria, Bev, and I. We all seemed reluctant to leave this weekend that still seemed unbelievable. After we loaded bikes and gear into the cars, we walked down to the lake edge to sit in the sun just a little longer.

We are blessed, we are fortunate. We have good friends, good health, kind husbands waiting at home, and we bike in golden Alaska.

To see more photographs of the weekend in Eklutna:

• my new photo gallery
• Divas blog (at least 2 entries)
• alaska bike girl
  
  

20 September 2008 Golden Fall

There have been just a few good things about the rainy summer

• the grass didn't grow much so Paul didn't have to mow twice a week, more like twice a month
• the seeds, seedlings, and transplants at my restoration project thrived with the constant rain
• and the fall colors have been absolutely spectacular and seemingly endless

I haven't posted any fall colors on this blog, so I looked at the Divas blog to see if my memory is right. Did fall really last all of September? And indeed, yes, by the second week the dogwood was a deep red in some parts of the woods and the birches were starting to turn yellow. In the third week some leaves were falling while other birches were just hitting their stride. Even in the fourth week, as the ground was carpeted in golden leaves, some birch trees were just starting to shift from green to yellow.

Those bike rides, and others commuting home from work or around the park on weekends, were like riding through liquid golden energy. I felt an energy that only comes after a long period of darkness. Even though those Diva rides were often cloudy and moist evenings, the golden leaves substituted for the sunlight I've craved all summer.

For months I kept wondering why staying in Alaska all summer had seemed like such a good idea in previous years. But on those bike rides, I couldn't stop saying to myself -- you live in the most beautiful and amazing place in the world.

Back in the spring as green up rolled across southcentral Alaska, a colleague commented that for two weeks in the spring, no place in the world is as beautiful. I'd have to say, for the month of September, no place is as golden and rich with life.