After last Sunday’s delightful Easter ski on over 10 km of pistenbully-groomed trails, weather conditions weren’t favorable for additional grooming. We skied Wednesday and Friday as more ground and less snow as visible on the trails. So today we made the switch to dryland training and headed up Ester Dome.

Ester Dome Road was ice free and dry to Ullerhaven and had patchy wet spots beyond the first set of towers. However, at the second set of towers, the trail was still wet and icy. The roadway lacks sufficient dry ground to turnaround so park at or before the first set towers. While we were on the top of Ester Dome, one offroad vehicle ended up backing up on the road from the second towers to the first towers.

It was a great day for an Ester Dome ascent as it was 45 deg at 10 a.m. when we started and in the mid-50s when we finished 2 hours later. We saw a number of runners on Ester Dome Road–all of them in shorts.

Thus, Wednesday SCUM workouts will officially move from Birch Hill to Ester Dome starting 30 April 2025. We’ll start from the bike trails parking lot on Ester Dome Road (roughly one mile above St. Pat’s Road) at 10 a.m. The general plan is to ski walk down to St. Pat’s Road from the bike trails and then ski walk up to Ullerhaven for a 5 km uphill ski walk and then walk back down (2 miles) to our cars. Starting out, you could just start ski walking uphill (like we did today) and you can turnaround whenever you feel like you’ve done enough or have to get back to work.

Ski walkers, hikers, or runners are welcome to join us for all or part of our workout.

4/28/25 NOTE: The SCUM made their training transition Sunday before the Nenana Ice Classic tripod on the Tanana River had gone out. We make our weather observations based on our 29 years skiing together and act accordingly. We’re not climate deniers.