It was a lovely day for a ski walk up Ester Dome today.

No one fell and no one damaged their ski poles.

The remedial SCUM headed toward the Tower loop for our normal Friday morning workout of multiple ascents of the Fort Wainwright alpine hill. However, today we were greeted with sunny blue skies and decided to take a different trail to the towers. En route, we encountered one of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Summer Trails Challenge signs. However, we were upstaged by a cute bear cub:

Not wanting to be accused of harassing wild life, the SCUM left the cub to his gymnastics and went on to do their three ascents of the Fort Wainwright alpine hill. Afterwards, wayward Robert signed the rock to document his rock carrying efforts from 17June.Don’t you want to join the successful few who have carried the rock up the 0.83 km under the Fort Wainwright alpine hill chair lift? We’ll be back there again next Friday.

In an attempt to add a fresh challenge to our ski walking up the Fort Wainwright ski hill, this season the SCUM added carrying “the rock” that Allen Doyle (former Equinox Marathon winner and Sonot Kkaazoot skier) used to slow himself down when training with the SCUM last summer.

As reported here, Bill Husby and Robert Hannon were the first SCUM to carry “the rock”, previously estimated to be 30 pounds:

https://sonotkkaazoot.org/2020/06/17/scum-hill-training-rocks/

Several weeks later, Carl Hemming carried “the rock” up the hill in a backpack.

https://sonotkkaazoot.org/2020/07/24/rocky-ii-the-scum-workout/

Because Carl is a retired Alaska Fish and Game fish biologist, we asked him if he had a fish scale that we could use to weigh the rock. Being a professional at estimating fish by eye, Carl didn’t need a scale. However, Dan Johnson, our retired nurse and EMT administrator had one and offered to bring the scale and a shopping bag to hold the rock to today’s workout. So before we did our 3 ascents of the FWW ski hill, we officially weighed “the rock” and it was lighter than all our estimates at a mere 20.2 pounds:

Bill Husby in official Sonot Kkaazoot orange tank top holds “the rock” in Dan’s fish scale

Bill was the only rock hauler that showed up for today’s workout and his estimate of the rock’s weight was the closest to today’s measurement (Carl was fishing and Robert was recovering from a tough night). However, the three gramps and I did three ascents of the FWW ski hill in the unfamilar sun today.

Three Gramps wait on platform at the top of FWW ski hill for me to finish

We walked up Beacon Road and down the Tower Loop to the Birch Hill parking lot where our four silver Subarus awaited us.

4 SCUM owned silver Subarus (that match our hair color)

My car like my carcass was the oldest model at the workout today.

Join us on Fridays at 9:00 a.m. We also let skiers with blue and red vehicles to ski walk and carry the rock.

Without an Equinox Marathon in 2020, there’s no problem social distancing while ski walking on Ester Dome. Today Bernardo was so far ahead of me, I didn’t even see when he crested the top.

However, most of the SCUM still had their masks handy, just in case, we couldn’t social distance.

All photos by Joanna Fox

Enjoy ski training outside, but make sure you are well separated from your training partners while breathing hard on the uphills. We had no problem with a group widely varying in age and fitness. Today we were able to climb above the fog, but didn’t really appreciate the sun above Henderson Road until we were heading back down from the dome.

During summer, the Friday morning workout for the remedial SCUM is ski walking up the Fort Wainwright alpine hill under the chair lift. Today to celebrate the 4th of July while taking COVID-19 precautions, we decided to do four ascents of the FWW alpine hill, a first for all of us. The day’s motto was “4 for the 4th!”

It was sunny when we arrived at the top of the alpine hill and dropped down to the start. Joanna, who ended up following Bill Husby up ascent #1, was already channeling her inner Eeoye as we walked back down. However, she found herself drawn up the hill three more times by one bionic kneed SCUM and pushed by the other,

I can’t believe I climbed that alpine hill 4 times!

and she had the data to prove that she had done it.

While our fellow SCUM play in Denali or Homer, we celebrated our 4 on the 4th on the top of the hill

and in the Birch Hill parking lot:

Joanna had thoughtfully brought an entire case of Hawaiian beer expecting that our “definitely maybe” SCUM would join us. Because we had our hearts set on salty, greasy foods after our 705 m of climb today, the beer will still be in her van next week if you run out of excuses and decide to train with us.

The COVID-19 has kept the SCUM close to home this summer. To keep us from going stark crazy, we’ve been hill training in preparation for crushing whatever mountain is put in our path.

Masked and social distanced in the Birch Hill parking lot, we discussed the workout objective: ski walking three times up the Fort Wainwright alpine hill (on the trail under the chair lift). For extra challenge (and bragging rights), a SCUM could carry a 30 pound rock down and back up the ski hill (a trick we learned from Allen Doyle last summer).

We accessed the Fort Wainwright alpine hill from the Tower Direct trail so we had a 1 mile warm-up before we descended  0.84 km to our first hill climb start. Bill Husby carried the rock down from the bench at the top (where it has been stashed since last summer), and then demonstrated on the proper carrying technique up.

On hill repeat #2, Robert decided to carry the rock. He tried to use gravity to roll the rock down the hill. However, having been a philosophy not physics major, Robert and the rock disappeared into the nearby woods.

Robert did eventually retrieve the rock and carried it on hill repeat #2 being paced by Carl and Dan.

and finished hill realizing that gravity still ruled.

Carl was supposed to carry the rock on hill repeat #3 (Dan was exempt because he recently had shoulder surgery), but forgot his pack frame. So all the guys did hill repeat #3 with just their poles:

This 8.0 km workout had 625 m of ascent (and descent) under beautiful blue skies and a light breeze. During those hill repeats, we were temporarily relieved from the stress of grim national and state news, and concentrated on just putting one foot in front of the other without tripping. Even the mosquitoes seemed to ignore us on the FWW alpine hill.

We’ll do it again next Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. if you want to join us. The groans and sighs at the end will be the best of the entire day.