We left Anchorage on Friday morning and drove north for a weekend of spring skiing. We planned on doing the Oosik Classic ski race in Talkeetna, but that wasn't the only reason for the trip. We had heard that there was good skiing to be found on snowmob

First we checked out the snowmobile trails on the Petersville Road. We drove to the big snowmobile parking lot near Kroto Creek and parked there, along with about 40 snowmobilers. We explored a few trails off the Petersville Road, but most were wavy and

And yes, that big mountain in the background is Denali.

On Saturday, we did the Oosik. Sorry, no pictures from the Oosik, we were too busy skiing. Here's an Oosik article from the newspaper. It was a classic Oosik course: a narrow, scenic ...

On Sunday, a group of about 20 of us shuttled cars up to mile 132 of the Parks Highway and skied back down to Talkeetna on the Chulitna River.

The river only had a few open leads of water. Most of it was solid ice with a very firm snow crust on top. Beautiful skiing.

The sun was out, the crust was firm, the pace was mellow, and we had a strong tailwind the entire way. A great day for a ski.

Most sections of the river were smooth, but there were a lot of sections with bumps like this early on. It made for a great terrain park for some freestyle XC skiing.

You might think these guys just have bad technique, but when you've got a stiff tailwind, this is actually very good technique. In some places we could just let the wind blow us downriver.

Linda gets a free ride on the wind.

That's me skiing in the foreground. What am I holding in my hand, you ask?

Why it's my sail! I rigged up a jacket on my ski poles to harness the wind. It worked okay, but I really needed a bigger sail. It would be great to get one of those kites they use for kiteboarding and fly down a river on skis with it. 30 feet of open

One of the many social stops along the way. Like I said, it was a leisurely trip.