With the Birch Hill trails officially open for the “dryland” season, the SCUM and friends gathered at 10 a.m. today for our inaugural climbs of the Fort Wainwright (FWW) alpine hill. On a 60 deg morning, this was by far the largest training group to date. I tried to assemble a group photo, but it was only of the early arrivals:

because Dermot Cole pulled into the south Birch Hill parking lot exactly at 10 a.m. Thus, Poles took a second group photo of all nine ski walkers:

And we were off, up the Tower Direct trail to Beacon Road. The FWW alpine hill still had some remnant manmade snow from some of the halfpipe jumps. The hill seemed steeper than it was in September, but most of our group did two ascents in just over 12 minutes a climb. We’ll start increasing the repeats so that we do four hill climbs by the 4th of July.

It was a glorious day to be outside. We saw Alaska Fire crew and others on the FWW alpine hill and a large group of hikers on the Birch Hill trails as we were returning to the stadium on the Tower Direct. Some of the trails are still wet in places but it’s pretty easy to avoid them.