It was a snowy Friday morning, but the pistenbully tracks were amazingly fast and secure. Thank you, Tom Helmers! Even at -25 deg F, the firm tracks made it possible to ski fast enough to keep all the appendages thawed and warm.
Today’s discoveries bring the SCUM total of LOL ornaments past the halfway mark. We have located 7 of the 12 ornaments for this season.
Hopefully, the recent accumulation of almost a foot of fluffy snow doesn’t conceal the five ornaments that we need to find.
A deep inversion had temperatures a balmy -8 deg F in the stadium and -24 deg F in Shannon Park at the bottom of Birch Hill Road and City Lights Blvd. However, Bill Husby set beautiful classical tracks on the Black Loops yesterday, so we were lured down into the chilly depths where we found three more LOL ornaments.
In the black loops, there are a number of cutoffs so the SCUM group scattered, so only Bill, Greg, and Mom found ornament #3:
The other SCUM found LOL ornament #8 when they were lost in the Black Loops but Jerome was able and willing to go back down so we could document his find:
Even on a cold day, Bill’s tracks were a delight as on the N40, you could glide entirely up the uphills after tucking the downhills in the tracks. It was also possible to stride up the Competition Loop in Bill’s clean and deep tracks. As we were finishing up, the grooming crew was heading out the blue loops so likely by now they have new clean tracks, too. The Outhouse Loop really needed new tracks after the recent winds had filled the tracks with balsam poplar leaves.Today was a good day to not be skiing on skins as you enjoyed more free glide.
Enjoy the inversion and the beautiful tracks.
Preparing to do the military transect (down Sunnyside and Cliffside and up the Sonot Connector) meant protecting SCUM noses and faces from the cold. Here are some of the novel approaches to this challenge (top 4 photos by Joanna Fox)
These SCUM actually made it up to the White Bear loop where en route they were treated to the moon rise over the Sonot Connector:
It was chilly but a beautiful day on the trails.
The SCUM quickly found LOL ornament #6 as it was on one of the Strava segments named for a primordial SCUM. This ornament is gold, not a very easy to spot color, and is located above Joanna’s right shoulder.
Here’s a close up with Thumper, who was visiting from Reno:
Mom was skiing with just one pole to avoid further aggravation of cartilage connecting her ribs to her sternum. Thus, she was looking around while she waited for the SCUM to chase Robert and Jeff downhill and spotted LOL ornament #5:
The photo makes this LOL ornament a giveaway for anyone skiing the trails regularly.
It may be chilly on the trails, but the newly set tracks allow one’s skis to glide so you travel more effortlessly than before the recent snow.
Although the Super Tour Races moved to Anchorage, fantastic skiing still awaits skiers in Fairbanks.
Sonot Kkaazoot 