Michael Creek Tour

In very many ways, my wife is amazing. On a trip up Michael Creek she proved once again that she is a sport and pretty dang tough. "Hey wife! Let's go do something fun!" does not always lead to fun. Julia is very patient. 

After making a run at Item Peak the weekend before, I got all excited and decided that we could make it to the top in one day if we started early enough and had good conditions. So Julia and I called some friends and headed down to Michael Creek to see how far we could get. 

Julia and Ella were a bit green when it came to mountaineering so before we left we strapped on the crampons for 20 minutes of fun.

Getting ready to crampon on snow piles at UAF.

 We drove down to Michael Creek Friday night and the four of us piled into our 1- err 3-season tent around midnight with some occasional gusts of wind. The view from the tent in the morning did not indicate good weather.

Crud. Clouds and blowing snow.

 But things cleared sufficiently as we made breakfast and put away the tent. I briefly chastised Julia for the choices she made related to the food she wanted to bring along in her pack. Celery is not a common mountaineering snack. But she was patient with my impatience and we slapped skins on our skis and took off.

Up the creek.

 After a few minutes of breaking trail, blue skies appeared and we were feeling good.

Looking west towards the Delta River and Richardson Highway.

What was not looking good was the lack of trail. The weekend before there had been no loose snow in any portion of the canyon. Now there was a new foot of snow and more blowing snow collecting in the canyon as we moved through. With no groups ahead of us that morning we broke trail through the length of the canyon, paying close attention to areas of avalanche danger.

"Further in and farther up!"

Getting out of the canyon and into the valley.

 It took us five hours of significant effort to travel as far as we had gone in two hours the previous week. Around 1 PM a pair of skiers passed us as we rested. We started following their trail but our expedition began to unravel. Julia's ski boots were treating her very poorly. Five hours of slogging through a foot of snow is very different than an hour and a half of skinning and skiing in the dark at Moose Mountain. The weather began to deteriorate. Lenticular clouds were developing on small knobs on the ridge we planned to follow and spin drift was coming off the ridge as well. The new snow was beginning to do exciting things as well as we moved through it. Jeremy mentioned enthusiastically, "Whompf means the climb is on!" I agreed but the girls were less than excited about reaching our objective.

So we called it good. Julia's countenance changed immediately and even though her feet were very sore, she began to enjoy skiing again because we were pointing ourselves towards the car rather than away from it.

Everybody look at your skis! Nice.

Jeremy maintained a positive attitude for the duration of the trip. 

So we turned around and headed back. I wandered ahead of the group to take some pictures of the descent out of the valley. Julia fell down.

Expressing sympathy for Julia.

A little further down after they had passed me, Julia fell down again.

My turn to express sympathy for Julia.
"Hey, get up."

A little further on down, Julia fell again.

Ella's turn to express sympathy.

 At this point Julia's feet hurt very bad. Bruises on her toes were developing. But she kept on.

Look at that smile. 

Also, the view was gorgeous.

Heading back into the canyon.

 Most of our tracks had disappeared due to blowing snow. We kept on, careful to avoid the open water from the flowing creek below us.

Waiting for the downhill section to clear.

Happy to be out of doors.

Shortly after this, Julia fell down again and started to whimper a bit. This was by far the most spectacular of the four crashes. But we dug her out of the snow and she picked herself up and continued on. I happened to get it on video. Let me know if you would like to see it. It is maybe a little bit humorous.

Scooting down one of the more difficult portions of the canyon
shortly after her big face plant.

We got out of the canyon, loaded up the car, and headed back to Fairbanks a bit earlier than expected. But we had wandered around in a beautiful place on skis for about 7 hours and enjoyed time with good friends.

*I should mention that Jeremy is a very experienced climber/mountaineer. He would not concede defeat and the next week he teamed up with his climbing buddy from the Muldrow Route on Denali and another uber athlete and they charged their way up to Item Peak in one day. They broke trail like we did in our first attempt for approximately 11-12 hours and made it to Item at 7 PM.

In the car on the way home (On the way home! Not even a few days later!) Julia mentioned that she had fun and would like to do something similar again. She even seemed sincere. She had cried twice and her feet were throbbing but she wanted to try it again. I suppose we should try to find boots that fit a little better.

My wife is pretty. And tough. And awesome.