Saturday Mornings

Saturday mornings have a slightly different appearance nowadays. Due to a number of different factors, the last Saturday of February looked like this.

It was a pleasant day.

View from the door of the tent. During a full moon the night before with no wind and 15 miles of visibility, we strapped on the crampons and walked up the snow-almost-filled gully on the right. We made it about 100-200 ft above where the gully widens. At that point we ran out of snow to walk on and could not continue on the talus slope in the gully due to its steepness. Even about 1/5th of the way to the top of the peak, there was a spectacular moonlit view.

The view of the gully from the bottom of the scree slope we scrambled and cramponed up in the moonlight.

Location of tent

I camped with the president and vice-president of the Alaska Alpine Club. That was for safety. They had climbed and winter camped before.  Nenana River follows the Parks Highway that connects Fairbanks to Anchorage.



The mountaineering class began to arrive from Fairbanks around 11 AM. We worked on cramponing, roped travel, ice axe arrest, and glissading. It was very fun.

A friend from church, who is also in the class, practices glissading with an ice axe.







Our classroom was different than most classrooms. The day's activities kept us around the area where had camped the night before. Some groups are barely visible finishing up on the slopes in the center of the picture.

Another view of the class from the same spot.

Winter Camping Lessons Learned:
- 0 degree sleeping bags indicate the lowest possible comfortable temperature to sleep in. -10 in a 0 degree bag requires wearing insulated pants, jacket, and boots to stay comfortable.
- Make everything just so. Getting out of a sleeping bag at 4 AM in the winter is unpleasant.
- Stamp out tent/shelter platform early and allow to set up. Take care to avoid large lumps of snow under the shelter(moderately uncomfortable).

Winter camping is not all that bad, especially when a day in the mountains arrives the next morning.