ON SNOW!

Skiing is underway in Yukon. Take a look at the ski chalet and you wouldn’t believe it, but drive 15 minutes up the Descent trail (Mt McIntyre) and you’re in the North Pole. Temperatures hover around minus 15 degrees Celsius with close to a foot of cold dry snow.

October 11^th was the day this year. 2 days before Canmore laid out their seventy thousand dollar sheet of ice. Kidding! Not about the 2 days before, but I’m sure the groomers do a good job… on their 1.8 km loop. To be fair I did hear they have some real snow now. But there must be some reason this guy drove all the way up to the Yukon.

Enough about Canmore… did you hear Yukon is the 4^th best place to visit in the ENTIRE WORLD? According to Lonely Planet anyway. Maybe Its because I was born here; I mean everyone loves their hometown. I do believe it’s something more than that. 14 sq km of wilderness per person and a 2-1 ratio of moose to human, what more could you ask for? Saying that it seems impossible that I would be unable to find a bull moose this year. I’ll have to go looking for bison now. Or ask @davidgreer99 to share some of his. There’s no recovery drink like a moose steak.

Training wise, we’re still meeting at least seven times a week, in the gym trying to build those explosive sprinting muscles, and on the trails working our heart and lungs. Its great to be home, but I’m getting antsy to start hopping from hotel to hotel. Or motel to couch, all the same. 

Heres a little video of John doing his warm up routine in the gym. Don't let his size fool you. 

September in Yukon

September in Yukon: people have to get up an extra five minutes earlier to scrape off their car windshield. Come October they’ll be shoving a piece of cardboard in front of the radiator. I would be too... if I had a car. Instead I’m wearing a buff under my Rudy helmet.

The days are getting shorter. If you sleep in you can practically miss one. Everything gets jammed into that small window of daylight. I find myself eating dinner an hour after lunch and being ready for bed until I see its only 8pm.

A couple weeks and we’ll be back on snow I hope. There’s a new ski trail cut from the Fish Lake road to the Frazer loop on Mt Mac. Having helped cut that trail myself, It will be that much more satisfying to ski. The trails close to the chalet have decent skiing from early November. Fish Lake however, only fifteen minutes away, has snow 2-3 weeks earlier because of its higher altitude. We’re looking forward to showing off our new trail and early snow to CVTC who will be coming up for a training camp in early November.

For now we’re still pounding out intervals on pavement. The more you make it hurt the better it feels to stop. A feeling I’m starting to get addicted too.

Outside of skiing, I just got back from an awesome (although unsuccessful) moose hunt with Colin and Fabian. I still hope to find a moose yet as my freezer has a lot more rhubarb in it than it does meat right now. 

Canoeing, fishing, and just being out in the wilderness is very relaxing. Not physically, because portaging your canoe around rapids and countless beaver dams is no walk in the park; but mentally, because you’re not thinking about everything else you should be doing like finding sponsors and filling out your training log. Doing more outside of skiing, makes me all that more motivated during training, so I seem to be able to push myself harder. 

Glacier to Glacier

The Denver

The Denver Glacier had a lot of miles put on it this past July. We’d wake up from our damp wall tent, take two steps out the door and snap on the zeros. For five days we skied through a mix of foggy, snowing, and bluebird conditions. Typical Glacier weather I guess: never knowing what to expect. Training was phenomenal. 

Higher intensity training and speed work was difficult because our baskets punched though the snow’s crust, especially later in the afternoon. There are no trails on the glacier and we had a loop specially groomed only the day before we arrived (making punchy conditions inevitable). I could only imagine what it would be like to have a pisten bully up there. Still the skiing was amazing; the last day especially. Not a cloud in the sky and a smooth crust to explore the whole glacier.

 It was hard to stop skiing that day, but we had to make the hike down to Skagway and drive home. Only a three hour hike and two hour drive later, I was back in Whitehorse for a much needed shower. First glacier camp in the bag.

                                                             The whole glacier crew

Now we’re In Anchorage about to hop up on the Eagle Glacier. I don’t know where the rest of July went. A lot of it was spent fishing. Caught my biggest lake trout ever. A little over 15 pounds. 

Hit’n the Training Camps

Summer has not moved north yet. July 3^rd with daytime high of 14 degrees, I reminisce about the weather at nationals this past March. But cold weather hasn’t stopped us from putting in big hours on training camps.

Our first Yukon Elite Squad camp took place right here in Whitehorse. Believe it or not, it felt good to get some hours in on roller skis after spending so much time on snow this spring. I forgot how nice the roller skiing could be in Whitehorse. A paved footpath following the Yukon River goes the length of the town and we are able to complete a loop, an hour or so long. We’ve also been enjoying the odd “urban roller ski” and if the weather permits, cooling off in the lake after intervals. RIGHT after intervals…

We pulled off a lot of quality workouts including a couple long road bike rides to prepare ourselves for the Kluane International Bike Relay the following weekend. The Yukon Elite Squad smashed the field in the 4-person category.

Having an at-home camp seems very beneficial to me. That is as long as you can stay focused and remember its still a training camp. Why waste energy and money on travel when there is the making for a great training camp at home?

Our latest camp was a hiking camp in Atlin, BC with the Yukon Ski Team. A 3-hour drive down a dusty road brings you to the beautiful town of Atlin. Population: 400. The town is located on Atlin Lake, which is home to the highest fresh water island in the world (Theresa Island). Staying in tents, like every other Yukon Ski Team camp, we cooked bison roast over an open fire and made atlatls on our off-time. We did 3 hikes, one a day, along some beautiful mountain ridges. On the last day we did a  30 minute running race up a steep-ass mountain.

Navigating the ridge through the fog

boot skiing like a pro

up-hill running technique: using arms to drive legs up the mountain

(Photos by David Greer)

Getting back to at-home training camps and how silly it is to create unnecessary travel/fatigue… we could fly to Austria to ski on a glacier but there is literally a glacier 130km from my house. That is why this Friday we will leave to here, the Denver Glacier.

These shabby wall tents will be our home for 5 days. “Sleeping on glacier, no good.” You say? Well the best thing about this glacier is it’s at 1400m. The same elevation as Canmore! The Denver Glacier is a short but treacherous hike from Skagway, Alaska. There are dogsled tours offered on the Denver Glacier all summer long but as far as we know, nobody has ever skied on this glacier. So for the time being we will call it an experimental camp. If it works out, we could be back here several times a year.

Total cost for Glacier camp: about 300 bucks!

Stay tuned to here about the Denver Glacier camp in the following weeks!

Mountain Sliding

CRAZY carpet

Colin and I taking crazy carpeting to a whole new level

catching burbot

yesterdays catch: 15 burbot and one lake trout