Falling In

One of the nearby mountains is named "Holy Mountain". It has several large bowl depressions that look like God took his fingers and pressed down to make the bowls. These bowls also are great to ski. Most years there is enough snow cover to take snow-machines to the top of the mountain, but this years extremely low snow fall made it impossible to even get to the mountain on snowmachine. That is where a ski-plane comes in handy, plenty of snow on top (or so we thought), plenty of adventure to get there.
The plan was to pile all three of us in the plane, fly up to Lake Kontrashibuna, drop our extra gas and one person. The remaining skier would ride to the top and bail out, Leo (the pilot) would then go check the landing zone for pickup and finally go back, get the last skier and drop them off at the top. The plan ended up working great. I was beginning to wonder if maybe we should have checked out the pickup spot before being abandoned on the top of the mountain, but as it turned out, there was nothing to worry about. We got two good runs in, one from each side of the bowl, watched the plane trigger several small avalanches while taking off, and enjoyed some awesome scenery.
Upon returning home I was informed that my youngest daughter was quite distraught about her Papa skiing Holy Mountain, "I don't want Papa to fall in the holes!"

The Mountain




The Bowls


The Top


Making Tracks


Leo and I on the way up


Getting Dropped Off


Our "Lift Ticket"


At the Top


Waiting for a Lift


Headed Home, Holy Mountain in the background

Learning to Fly

Putting skis on an airplane may seem like an absurd idea to some, but to others it means unbridled freedom. The snow magically transforms uneven terrain, brush, and trees into a suitable place to land, unlocking miles of inaccessible wilderness. I never have flown skis, so it seemed about time to learn how. With the help of an instructor friend and his trusty Stinson 10A, I discovered why ski flying is so much fun.

47X


First successful ski landing


Leo and his plane

The Old Man Down the Road

As Spring tries to emerge from what has turned out to be a rather mild winter in both temperature and snowfall, we find the ever increasing amount of daylight being offered to us a welcomed change to the blanket of darkness that is at the heart of an Alaskan winter. We decided to take advantage of this new daylight by hiking up to see Tanalian Falls. After dropping the kids off at AWANA, we had an hour and a half to get there and back. We made it back just in time to greet the kids as they came out of the church.

The trail home


Tanalian Falls


Bran and I