Cross-Country Ski Weekend!

Hi, Everyone:

It has been quite an amazing week of cross-country skiing.  Last weekend we hit the trails with a number of Steve's co-clerks, including John and Michael who were fresh to the sport.  It hadn't snowed in quite some time, so the trails were a bit slick.  But Michael was flying and John did an awesome job making it up and down some pretty big hills!

Along the way we saw our old friend, Mr. Moose.

Then on Wed night we got about 2-3'' of snow.  We took our skis and went back out to the trails on Thurs night to take advantage of it.  This was probably the best cross-country skiing we had thus far.  We went to a large park about 15 minutes outside of Anchorage that has miles and miles of ski trails.  A lot of the trails are lit at night, so we were able to see.  It was about 25-30 degrees, so it was warm enough to comfortably ski, and the snow was somewhat wet and thus really good for skiing.

On Friday the sun was shining bright and it was a beautiful, warm day.  (Sidenote: we have been gaining about 6 min of sunlight per day, so we are seeing much more sun.  It's now bright, bright, bright from about 9a - 5:30p. Real hours of sunlight coming back!  Pretty soon we'll be falling the other direction . . . all sun, no night).

Steve and his co-clerk Rebecca wanted to take advantage of the beautiful sun, so we played hooky from work around 2:30p and went back to the trails.

It was incredibly beautiful:

Here's Rebecca!

The clearness also opened up awesome views of Denali (Mt. McKinley):

Then yesterday Tammy had a conference, so Steve rented some skate skis and tried it out.  The difference between classic cross-country skiing and skate cross-country skiing can be seen here:

Classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXk0vo2HsbA
Skate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brGZlZkCwyk

Skate skiing is crazy intense.  It works your upper body and lower body, and takes a huge amount of force to propel you forward.  It was one of the best workouts Steve has ever had.

Now we're going to John's to watch the superbowl with some of Steve's other co-clerks.  In honor of Neha (and Charles Woodson), Go Pack Go!