Monday, March 10, 2014

Peak 3 Ski - 3.6.2014

The story of skiing Peak 3, an Anchorage evening classic, isn't really a story of skiing, its a story of the last year.

It all started almost exactly a year ago when I arrived in Anchorage. I'd just quit my job in Colorado and heading north unemployed and filled with excitement. The minute I got into town last March, my good friend LP and I headed out for a sunset ski of Peak 3. It looked about the same then as it does now.


That time around I didn't forget my skins, like I did this time. Boot packing sure was a lot more work than skinning. But just like last time, I was fresh off leaving a job. In fact, when LP started skinning I was still sitting in Anchorage tolerating an unannounced exit interview. Sure glad I caught up with her though:


I was just as glad to see Malcolm. Malcolm had a great story about the pirouette he once did in his truck on the skating rink that is the top of the road to Peak 3.



A similar slippery experience happened to me on the way to Peak 3 last week. It shouldn't have happened, but I was in Cordova last summer when my tires died, or at least that's my excuse. The shop in Cordova found a "great deal": a set of tires for $850. That wasn't going to happen. Of course, I tried to order them from Amazon Prime while I spent the summer on a boat in the Prince William Sound. Obviously they never arrived. So, in August I found myself driving off the ferry in Whittier on my doughnut with all my possessions on top of or behind it. And, since studded tires are illegal in Anchorage in August I ended up with a set of new studless tires to start off my first winter in Anchorage. All of which was coming back to me rather quickly as I was sliding even more quickly backwards down the ice rink I had confused as a road.

All of this was completely, undeniably, and totally my fault. Malcolm remembering the finer points of freestyle truck driving:


But, at the end of the day, its all those funky, sketchy, and often downright idiotic moments that make life so special, and that we remember so vividly.

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