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This July, my friend Thad and I traveled through Gustavus en route to
Glacier Bay. We had no clue about getting around Gustavus, so we
couldn’t play it cool. We just had to admit we didn’t know what was up.
I liked Gustavus, nonetheless, mostly because it felt like an interior
Alaska town, but on the water. The other thing I liked is that
it had a gas station, general store, hardware store, a pizza place, and
nothing more.
What else could anyone want?

This blog is not about that trip. Instead it is about the second trip to
Gustavus. Amy and her “sweetie” Ben, have a cabin there and needed some
help. I didn’t know what was in store for me, but I did know that I
liked Gustavus, I like to hammer nails, and Amy seemed like a good
person. So I met them at the airport and loaded the supplies and Max,
the dog, into the Cessna.

Max, hanging in his doggy bed.

Max didn’t care about the take offs, he didn’t care about
landings, and he didn’t care about turbulence…nothing made him look up.
Once we got to the cabin, he settled in to his favorite activity of doing
a lot more of nothing.

Saturday we worked on the cabin and at night we played gin. It was fun
but Amy was acting unstable. She got very happy when she won and very
sad when she lost. Ben and I decided that we’d play it safe and let her
win. I had visions of the McCarthy masacre, so I was glad to sleep out
in the bunkhouse. That night I locked the door.

Sunday I worked half the day on the cabin and the remainder of the day I
biked to Glacier Bay for a hamburger. It was pretty uneventful, except
I thought I saw some girls on bikes way in the distance. Cool, I
thought to myself. But as the miles passed beneath my wheels, no girls
appeared. Mirages maybe? Nah, it was more likely bears crossing the
road. Have I been in AK for too long? If mistaking bears for girls is
a sign, then yes.

After riding back from Glacier Bay, I headed to the pier to catch the
sunset. Not bad.

Gustavus pier.

The following day we finished up what we could on the cabin and got back
in the Cessna and headed back to Juneau over the pass near Point
Excursion. Now that was spectacular!

Sometimes the truth hurts figuratively, sometimes the truth hurts literally, and on some special occasions it does both. This blog is about one of those days.

The day began when my friend Myron and I went skiing one not-so-early morning and we picked up some hitch-hikers who were here to take a heli-ski guide course in Haines. Obviously, we were not going to punish these guys and make them “ski” with us. Just in case they needed a place to stay, I gave them my number.

The next day, their ferry was canceled because of rough seas, so I told them I’d be happy to go skiing with them…and give them a ride in the process. I was VERY excited because they were into backcountry skiing, and I’ve been looking for people to ski the backcountry with.

So we put on our gear and check out some of the possible runs from the base of the mountain. I figure this cool, especially since they keep mentioning the cliff band up there. Great, they’re saftey conscious too…this is going to go super smooth.

The ski up was amazing. Sunny, cool, and gorgeous! The snow was fantastic, deep and soft. As we get further up the ridge, we begin to talk about where to ski down and figure out where that cliff band was, presumably to avoid it. As we continued, there was more talk of the cliff band, more than was necessary to avoid it…I thought. Whatever, no one would look for a cliff band to ski off, right? So we find a spot and it becomes clear, that we are indeed looking for the cliff band in order to ski off of it!

Oh yay! I can barely hold my own at the ski area and now I’m standing on top of a mountain getting ready to drop into god knows what….fucking great! Tim (who is at 500x better than I am) and I found another way down, but it was still really steep and filled with small spruce trees, which were tight enough to make it difficult to turn. I jump turned my way to the bottom and waited for Dan.

Dan dropped, and somehow recovered and skied out of it and I was damn glad I followed Tim. Anyway, I did my best to keep up those two and got more worked on the way down than on the way up. I’ve been up there a couple more times, but now I steer clear of that cliff band. Wide open glades for me, thanks!