Its crust skiing season again, but around Anchorage it has gotten off to a slow start. The valleys are barren from a warm winter, and the upper elevations are still getting dumped with snow. I did a drive down to Turnagain pass yesterday, just to be sur

This map shows what we were aiming for - that big white dome in the upper middle part of the map. I'm not sure of its name, but I've been calling it Willow Dome. I had been scoping this thing on the maps, and looking for a way to get there. It just looke

Yet another map (I really like maps). This shows a close up of our route, in red. As you can see, we never made it to the promised land, Willow Dome. But we still had a good ski...

Here is a picture of the dome. Damn, that looks like good skiing up there!

Apparently I wasn't the first person to think that this would be a good place to go. The snowmobile trail looks like it gets used frequently, judging by the non-stop, hateful bumps we had to endure. The trail looked like this, or worse, for the first ha

As we skied, we realized that the crust, which looked promising in the parking lot, was getting thinner as we went. By the time we reached the base of the ascent up to the dome, we knew there was no way the crust would support our weight, we were about a

Open water in a few places, but mostly good coverage.

It was really beautiful back there.

After heading upriver for six or seven miles, we decided it was time to turn around. The snow was starting to get softer.

On our way home, with the dome in the background. We didn't find crust, but the dome looked even sweeter up close than it did on the map. It might be all tracked up by snowmobiles, but I think there is still some great crust to be found up there. I thin