Kikkan Randall

Kikkan Randall



Erika Klaar & Becca Rorabaugh

Labels: eagle glacier, photos

Bobby Miller


James Southam & Erik Flora

Labels: eagle glacier, photos

Of course, this is what it looked like most of the time up on Eagle Glacier last week.

Labels: eagle glacier, photos

I love being on the glacier, it changes constantly. I realize that I might be waxing a little too poetic but it's like a symphony of white. The clouds dance around, swoop and swirl. The light changes throughout the day and you can look out across the glacier and see the cloud shadows (the echoes, if you will) spread out on the snow. Beautiful. I think I spent the entire time this week I was out skiing thinking to myself that if I could be anywhere in the world right now I'd be right here skiing on Eagle Glacier.

Casey Fagerquist out grooming in the piston bully.

Labels: eagle glacier, photos

Kalysta Schmidt & Erika Klaar making a water concoction.

It's not ALL skiing up on the glacier. Due to the fabulous winter we had some wintry weather on the glacier (that's right, I mean we were kicking on HARDWAX). It also meant that the snow hadn't started melting into water yet so we had to make some. Luckily there's some very talented chefs in our group. That also means that I went five days without showering. Which, actually, I was fine with. I mean, showering is just one more thing to do during the day and if you can skip it without feeling guilty why not? At the same time though, the first stop after coming off the glacier was to a gas station where Taz & I practically ran into the bathroom... to turn on the faucets and wash our hands lengthily in warm, running water. For drinking though, there's not much better than fresh snow-melt! Things were starting to melt by the end of the week so next time we go up there should be lots of sun melted snow so we won't have to do any coaxing.



Peter Kling clearing the snow that had blown in through cracks out of the wax room.

Labels: eagle glacier, photos

We made it up to Eagle Glacier Wednesday afternoon in time for a short ski that evening. Then skiing twice a day Thur, Fri, & Sat and one long ski Sunday before coming home. More later!

Labels: eagle glacier, photos

LAV & Kik

I was scrolling through archives looking for more photos of Eagle glacier to post while I was gone and found this post that I had saved on blogger back in February and then forgotten about. The photo is one of the many I got from Andy Fecteau in Estonia.

Labels: photos

Where I am right now. But I think with a lot more snow than in these pictures!

Labels: eagle glacier, photos

It was a big day for the stadium this morning. We did a mock team sprint, basically 2x3 laps of the sprint course except that we tried to emulate a team sprint so we had about equal rest between intervals and 30minutes between sets. (We all started each interval together instead of tagging off.) It was a good workout, Manu did all of them with us and Mali Noyes jumped in for two near the end also. The boys had a little bigger field which included some of the Sun Valley boys for one set. (Sun Valley is driving home today so they didn't want to do the full workout.)

Garrott Kuzzy



It feels like we have a lot of spectators when we're training around here with all the coaches from our teams and others milling around taking lactate and video and timing. This was the first time I've done lactate this year and if you're into the number here they are:

pre first set: 1.1mmol
post first set: 9.3mmol
pre second set: 1.4mmol
post second set: 9.0mmol
15min post second set: 2.0mmol

I'm no physiologist but I would say that I was recovering well but hopefully with some more speed training my post-interval lactates should increase.

Labels: 2010 Venue, photos

Susan Valaas & Laura Valaas

Saturday was the Apple Blossom parade! I'm posting pictures from the Wenatchee airport but now it's time to board!



Laura Valaas, Stephanie Wade, Tyler Farrar

Laura Valaas, Stephanie Wade, Tyler Farrar

Tyler Farrar, Slipstream/Chipotle Pro Cycling Team

Labels: photos, wenatchee

Looking down into the Wenatchee Valley from Horselake Rd.



My dad & I went on a mountain bike ride on the sage hills trails... back among the sagebrush and wildflowers!

Peter Valaas

Labels: photos, wenatchee

Jeff Ellis put together this sweet video from our ski on Wednesday to Skookum & Spencer glaciers!

And then we got a TON of snow on Friday:

14" of fresh snow on April 25th

Labels: alaska, photos, video

Becca Rorabaugh & Taz Mannix in front of Mt. Williwaw.
Sally Johnson making a traverse after we found ourselves a little higher up on the hillside than we wanted to be.
Diana & Sally Johnson approaching Williwaw Lake

I'm not sure what they were looking at, but there is a pretty sweet little icefall behind and between Sally & Diana.

Labels: alaska, photos

Jeff Ellis
Kate Fitzgerald staying hydrated in front of the Spencer glacier.


Skookum
to the right of previous pic

I need to quit being so greedy with my panoramic attempts. The Skookum glacier struck me immediately as an oversized playground. Huge rolling hills, drop-offs, valleys... fun, fun, fun!

Skookum

This is the dumping ground of the Skookum glacier... huge piles of snow from avalanches... wow. I think I've added "avalanche" to my list of things I want to see, just definitely from a distance.

Skookum also had a sweet ice cave but I got reprimanded when I tried to go inside it. I'll have to come back without a coach. Sometimes having someone else feeling responsible for your safety can infringe on your style.

The fake Erik.
What Erik looks like when he's NOT posing for a picture.

Labels: alaska, photos

I got a huge kick out of the frozen-into-the-lake icebergs. They were bobbing around happily all summer and then one wicked cold night and all their fun was over for the next six months. Poor guys



I think glaciers are some of the coolest forms of water so I was pretty much jumping up and down with glee skiing around the Spencer glacier terminus.



It's hard to get a sense of scale from pictures so I'll trust you to realize that the terminus is of sufficient size to be Awe Inspiring.



Glacier blue is my new favorite color.



There was even a glacier cave to explore!

Looking in.

Looking straight up through a skylight.

Looking back out.


psyched to be here.

Labels: alaska, photos

Sally Burkholder

The Burkys were skiing at down by Portage on Monday and invited me to come with them. The perks that come with renting from the Burkys are not to be mocked. We parked by the turn-off to Whittier and skied up along the railroad tracks toward Skookum and Spencer Glaciers. When I say "along" here I mean "in the general vicinity of" I actually ranged far and wide across the valley away from the tracks. There were a few places where the streams were wide enough that there wasn't a snow bridge to cross and we had to walk across on the railroad trestles. I hear Skookum glacier is rockin' right now but we saved that for another day and kept on going toward Spencer glacier.

Sally Burkholder

Burky found some wolf tracks. I followed in hopes of catching them, stealthily stalking, even though we determined they were tracks from yesterday evening, until the wolves decided to cross one of the much wider streams. I did not want to wade, so I gave up on the wolves and returned to hunting down good trees.





The skiing was perfect, the day was perfect, and then we found A GLACIER. I split my photos into two posts and am going to save raving about glaciers until my next post...

Laura Valaas, Spencer Glacier

Laura Valaas, Spencer Glacier

Labels: alaska, photos

When you get the following email from your coach at 8:30pm on Friday you know it's going to be a good Saturday...




"Let's meet at Glenn Alps at 8:15 AM



Skate-classic-touring... bring it all!





Looks like it will be cold overnight and warm tomorrow



We will ski 2-4 hrs... bring a little food-H20




Van will depart 7:45



See you in the AM





Erik"



(if anyone has some good rules of thumb for when NOT to stand under a cornice I'm ready to hear 'em.)

This is where I was stalking a ptarmigin in my stealthiest tuck. Then I hit a soft patch of snow and did a very not stealthy face plant. Next time, ptarmigan, you will be mine, you succulent little chicken of the snow.
The view looking out over Ship Lake.

Labels: alaska, photos

Laura Valaas
Sarah Radonich & Galen Johnston

I'm not sure what's going on here in Alaska but we have another wintry snow storm today. Skiing in the tracks this morning at Hilltop there was just enough fresh snow already that I could follow the tracks without any trouble but the tips of my skis would only occasionally poke through the snow. It's still snowing and it doesn't look like it's tiring out at all. Since there was powder to ski through anywhere anyway we ditched the groomed ski trails and found some single track.

Labels: photos

This is my favorite tree at Kincaid. I suspect I've posted pictures of it before and I'm sure I will again. Do you have a favorite tree?

Labels: kincaid, photos

I don't know if you remember that video I put up of the first snow fall this fall? Well, it looks exactly the same today and has been snowing nonstop since I woke up. This time though I'm going to spare you a really boring video and just put up a picture and I have a new wooden ski figure hanging in my window that Burky made.

Labels: photos

Now that I'm in Anchorage again I've started going back the Mrs. Price's class in the afternoons to help out with her 5th & 6th graders.



Today I talked to them a little bit about what it takes to get into college and why they should go. Then, since they'd been doing Anchorage's standardized testing all morning, we got to go outside for a short recess!



It was a great opportunity after being gone so long to get to reconnect with the kids one on one.



It was also great to see that I was still fairly competent on the monkey bars!

Labels: photos

Getting to meet Vivi before the start of the Ski for Women 1km.



Despite Liz & my best lunges, Vivi beat us by a clear margin.





After the race, getting to meet some of the other local Fairbanks skiers!

Labels: photos, race

This is more a tribute to Jeff Ellis's good photo timing than to my lunging skills.

Labels: photos

Amy Glenn, Laura Valaas, Sigrid Aas

I had a fantastic time racing last evening at Birch Hill. I qualified in 5th, almost 7 seconds back from Stursova so it didn't get off to a very promising start but once we got into the rounds I got progressively faster-- 3:17 qualifier, 3:14 quarter, 3:10 semi, 3:05 final. Huh? Now why can't I just start out by skiing a 3:05? I think Gibbs changed my structure in my race skis between the qualifier and the heats but it couldn't have made that much of a difference.

I think I kind of like racing in Fairbanks. Everyone has been super nice and it seems that there's always someone in the start/finish area to make sure I get my warm-ups and a hot cup of tea if I want it. And the races have been run very professionally with no glitches. And there was even a cash pot for the winners (Koos won the men's sprint) donated by the spectators!

AND the Northern Lights were out after dinner! Which, in my opinion, made the whole trip to Fairbanks worthwhile, even if the racing hadn't been awesome.

Labels: photos, race

The internet is sketchy so I'm way behind on posting photos-- here are some good ones of Kikkan and me from the team sprint last Sunday.

Labels: 2010 Venue, photos

Another shot of the stadium, a little busier this time. I even caught the infamous Scott on camera (with his back to me in the green jacket) before I found out that it was Scott.

Labels: 2010 Venue, photos

I am certain there's going to be a lot of photographs of this inuksuk pretty soon, but I thought I'd add to the pile. Although I think that this guy might technically be an inunnguaq. Inuksuk are used as directional markers and inunnguaq means an imitation of a person. This is at the entryway to the Nordic/Biathlon/Jumping venue.

Labels: 2010 Venue, photos

Newell and Cook skiing up one of the jumps.

Labels: photos

My analysis of Squamish is that if you were into real estate speculation and had some capital this would be a good place to purchase. It's got a lot going for it and with the Olympics being held here it's going to start getting a lot more international exposure. There's something about having good rocks in a place that makes that place seem so comforting.

(and, yes, I KNOW that there are no rocks in these pictures, you'll have to trust me for now when I say there are good rocks here.)

Labels: 2010 Venue, photos

Callaghan Valley Stadium

If anyone knows how to use iphoto to patch photos together to make a panoramic view, you should tell me.

Labels: photos

Andrea Marie on the Columbia River (don't tell her I stopped paddling).

The snow was mostly good at home... except for this one section I had to stop and walk across!

I should have posted these pictures when I was talking about Wenatchee but, um, I forgot they were on my camera. So now they get to share a post with the lovely Pi! Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter as most people know but what most people don't think about when they think about 3.14159... is that Pi provides a great vantage point to the history of mankind.

The concept of pi existed long before people knew it with even a few digits of accuracy and before modern notation could be used to express it. The problem of "squaring the circle" was one of the first mathematical problems mankind tackled and came up after agriculture kicked in and people started constructing permanent dwellings. An understanding of Pi is a fair way to judge the development of a civilization. A long, long time ago the Babylonians (3 1/8 or 3.125) and the Egyptians ((16/9)^2 or 3.16) had the best approximations for Pi but the Chinese and the Hebrews were also aware of pi and estimating it with 3. Speaking of the Hebrews way back when, I'd like to point out to anyone who things the bible is Truth that our good friend Solomon would have needed almost 31 and a half cubits around his bathhouse, whatever a cubit is, 30 just would not have cut it: And he made the molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and the height thereof was five cubits; and a line of thirty cubits compassed it round about, I Kings vii 23.

Once the Romans swept in (around 200BC), developments in Pi came to a grinding halt in that part of the world and the leaders in mathematical thought were the Mayan, the Chinese and the Hindu civilizations. It wasn't until the 1500's that Europe caught back up with the rest of the world.

Labels: math, photos

Kirsten Valaas, Kristina Owen, Tarn Heath, Laura Valaas
I've been doing a bit of what I call social training which is nominally training but really just socializing-- a lot more talking than actually working hard. Saturday I met up with Tarn and KO for a kayak on the Columbia. We ended up going a little too long and getting stuck out on the river after the sun went down. Being in Wenatchee makes me think that it's summertime and I forget that it can be cold in March. I also forget how soaked you get paddling a surfski, even in flat water and therefore forgot to bring a change of clothes. I thought I'd be fine once I got into the car but halfway home I remembered that I was supposed to stop at the grocery store to get some essentials we needed for dinner. So I ended up doing a quick trip through Safeway in my APU spandex with my entire back half drenched in river water.

On Sunday we skied at Stevens Pass and met up with a lot of the other local ski families with whom I grew up skiing. Afterwards we went to the 59er Diner for lunch and I only had spandex with me. I'm starting to think that I'm spending altogether too much time in spandex.

Labels: photos, wenatchee

It is incredibly beautiful here in Fornebu. And skiing at Holmenkollen this morning was the best skiing I've had since leaving North America. I would love to get to do a long OD out on those trails and spent the first two hours of it getting as lost as possible.



The shoreline. I love being able to walk down along the water. Long walks on the beach- no, but run/walks/meanders on a rocky shoreline- yes.

The shore may look remote in my photos but it's quite close to civilization.

There's a HUGE glass building just South from us. Huge. Glass. Elegant. AND there's a huge ticker going across the top of one of the buildings that spews dark thought at you in English. Really dark and creepy. I was watching it this morning and could feel myself getting depressed.

Labels: drammen, photos

After being out for a jog yesterday afternoon along the coast of the fjord I knew I had to come back in the morning.

But, I think I slept in a little much since the sun was already up. Tomorrow I'll try to get out earlier.

Ice on the rocks. I don't get the impression that the tide changes very much around here though?

Not our hotel, but the building next to our hotel looking very scenic with a nice tennis court and swimming pool on the grounds.

Labels: drammen, photos

Getting in some rollerskiing on Hillside Drive on Friday and watching the snow line creep down the mountainsides.

photo by Miss Ronsse.

Labels: photos, rollerskiing

The start of the women's race at Kincaid Park.

This afternoon was nice and clear for the Kincaid stampede mass start classical rollerski race. There was a 6km race and a 12km race. For some reason they always want the women to do the shorter races. Not something I understand, but that's how "they" do it.

Taz Mannix was my obliging photographer today so all of these photos are thanks to her. Taz only recently has returned to Anchorage from being home recovering from appendicitis so she wasn't racing and got to hone her photography skills instead of her double-pole today. We missed her terribly while she was gone and are very glad to have her back at practice. I'm sure that Mishka was glad to have her home in Talkeetna for awhile though. Mishka is Taz's pet polar bear and hasn't gotten ridden much since Taz moved to Anchorage to train and attend APU.

Kate "I'm tougher than you and you know it" Arduser

Brent "At some point in my career I want to be a male model" Knight

Kalysta "I'm going to beat you and look hot doing it" Schmidt

Mikey "Chuck Norris" Matteson

Katie "You only think I'm cute until I pass you" Ronsse

Labels: photos, race, rollerskiing

I'm so amazed by how beautiful it is here. Everyday to get to look down at the ocean and up at the mountains turning red and golden.

Rollerskiing on Old Rabbit Creek Rd.

Looking down from Potter Valley Rd.

Looking down from Potter Valley Rd.

Potter Marsh

Labels: photos

Ky Eiben

One of the few things that can keep me from blogging is a good arts & craft project. Ronsee & I made an "It's My Birthday" shirt for Ky to wear at practice today since Miss Eiben is 19 today. You can't see the best part of the shirt: jingle bells on the sleeves so she jingles when she skis!

Labels: photos

Winner Creek Pass

John Weddleton, Rich Suddock & Alan Schmitz climbing up to Winner Creek Pass

Laura Valaas

I forgot how sore Lost Lake made me and agreed to go on another trail run this weekend. Every hike I go on up here I say "this is gorgeous, I have to come back here again" but there's so many trails that I haven't been on yet that I want to go explore all the new trails too. It's a conundrum.

Labels: photos

I have a guest from the lower 48 so I'm getting into the tourist track for a couple days and watching the polar bears play at the Alaska Zoo...

(but I'm still training, don't worry, especially with a uphill skate time trial Thursday morning!)





Dall Sheep

Amur Tiger

photos by Alan Schmitz

Labels: animals, photos

The lakes where we camped ended up to be a serious hive of beaver activity. Here they've terraced the lake and each level has a beaver home in it. We walked across one of their dams that created about three feet of difference in the level of the water on either side. It was pretty impressive.

Laura Valaas

Once we set up camp and had a snack we went for a run along the nearby riverbed. The braided stream required a lot of jumping and some backtracking with only slightly wet feet (mostly when we misjudged whether a bank was solid or not).

I don't know if Katie's a better jumper than I or if I'm a better photographer. I will say that she made me jump this stream about ten times since she wanted to keep trying to get a better picture.

Katie Ronsse

Katie Ronsse

Walking along the tundra meadows was great... fighting our way through the brush-- not always so great.

Katie Ronsse

One of the very cool things about Denali nat'l park is that it's illegal to remove anything (I'm thinking blueberries are exempt from that rule) so there's antlers and bones and stuff to find. It's like a great big treasure hunt. They are also extremely protective of their animals so the animals haven't learned to expect food from humans or be afraid of humans shooting them. (Katie has a moose antler, although it looks like she's a little confused about where an antler might attach to your body.)

Katie Ronsse

I was always under the assumption that beavers built their lodges in the middle of their pond but all the ones we saw were up against the shore.

beaver skull

Between blueberry pickings we came across a bear print and a wolf print in the trail. On the bus ride back out to the entrance to the park (no private vehicles in the park, only the park buses) we saw a pair of wolves in the road. One of them was a gorgeous black and was the alpha of his pack (our driver knew because the alpha wolves get collared).

Grizzly bear

and then we came upon the grizzly bear. Actually we met the grizzly about ten minutes after getting off the bus and starting our hike. Katie had been really jumpy about running into a bear and kept imagining she was hearing one. Plus our bus stopped a short ways after dropping us off and we figured that they had stopped to look at a grizzly bear. I don't know why we both automatically assumed they were looking at a bear, they could have stopped to look at caribou or moose or dall sheep. So we decided to hike up along a ridge where we could see any bears before they saw us. I was making fun of Katie because she was so jumpy and she was talking really loudly so that we wouldn't surprise any bears. At the top of the ridge we stopped to discuss where we should go next and then I glanced down the ridge side and there was a great big grizzly eating blueberries. It turned out that I was the true scaredy-cat because katie pulled out her camera to take this picture and I was the one saying, "let's get outta here." So that was closer than I really wanted to get to a grizzly, we were downwind and he didn't even notice us, but still, I was happy not to run into any more bears for the rest of the hike.

Labels: denali,