DOUGLAS -- This second consecutive year of record low snowfall in coastal Alaska has me reminiscing about the Thanksgiving when the powder was so deep, it was over the heads of our two young children.
When we moved to Alaska 24 years ago, we were thrilled that our city-subsidized ski area, Eaglecrest, was a mere 20-minute drive from home. The nearest ski hill was hours of driving from our previous home in California. We soon joined Eaglecrest's seasonal ski family, right here on Douglas Island. It was not long before I became a part-time ski instructor.
Our kids' skiing skills surpassed mine much sooner than I expected. By the time they hit middle school, they were confidently speeding down challenging runs and steep terrain. As teenagers, they became certified in avalanche and wilderness first-responder courses, required by their dad, a mountain rescue volunteer and ski patroller.
Fruit Bowl, 2014
My daughter Kaitlyn and I were on a Saturday afternoon trek to a bowl-shaped slope just outside the Eaglecrest boundary line.
"Get ready to ski down from here," she directed, pointing at a small ledge on the edge of a cornice. I was momentarily distracted by our backdrop, a mountain peak shining with several inches of new snow, overlooking a deep lapis channel of the Inside Passage. My petite, no-nonsense guide peered at me through reflective rainbow goggles. "Now remember to put your bindings and boots back in ski mode and buckle up your helmet strap."
How quickly roles reverse. Twenty years ago, when Kaitlyn was 7 and a budding ski racer, I was telling her what to do on the hill. Now, I felt like the 7-year-old.
Fruit Bowl was a relatively gentle slope just out of bounds. Along the upper reaches were perfectly linked curves tracked in smooth snow by yesterday's skiers and lit by the sun. We skinned up along the shoulder, safer than straight up the middle, the path an avalanche would take. It was awkward and steep. I bent over, audibly grunting on the tight switchback corners, my lungs working hard. I psyched myself up to endure it, remembering the spinning bike at the gym. We reached the top of the bowl in no more than 20 minutes, drenched with sweat.
Velvet new snow and undulating pitches for a few precious powder turns were right before us. To get started, we had to traverse across a steep corner. Kaitlyn went first, "ski-cutting" to see if the snow slid. It fell away from the edges of her skis, just as it should.
"I'll meet you down at those trees, Mom," she said.
"The ones in the sun?" I asked.
She nodded yes and took off, letting herself go in the fall line with effortless half-turns.
I took off my backpack for a moment to dig for a water bottle. It struck me how easily my pack could slide right down this bowl. But this was pretty tame compared to another ski trek with my daughter, hundreds of miles north, a couple of years earlier.
Hippy Bowl, 2011
When Kaitlyn was a health sciences student at the University of Alaska Anchorage, we drove to a pullout at the side of the road along Turnagain Arm, just beyond the turnout for Girdwood and Alyeska Resort.
"We're going to what they call Hippy Bowl," she declared as we removed our skis from the rack on top of the car. We pressed imitation animal skins lined with adhesive to the bottom of our skis and made our way along a frozen creek and winding switchbacks to the base of a wide-open pitch. Then we hiked along the edge to a small platform with a steep drop-off to one side.
This was different from the mountains of Douglas Island, unfamiliar and unsteady territory. To our right were massive snow-blanketed mountains, mists rising from valleys upon valleys. Fall here, and you'd tumble into an abyss from which you'd be hard-pressed to be found.
I felt my breathing become shallow. Despite the expansive view, the limited space on which to remove our skins and clip on our skis felt strangely claustrophobic.
"It's OK, Mom," Kaitlyn said, clearing a space on the promontory. "Take off your skins and we'll take this line down the bowl, one at a time."
I followed in the line I spotted on the way up, my trusty young guide watching.
Sailors Rock, 2016
One of the things I love about living and recreating on Douglas is the likelihood of running into friends and family when you venture out of the house on weekends. On a recent Saturday morning, I was skiing alone when a young woman in a bright green anorak and a sky-blue helmet pulled up behind me. It was Kaitlyn. "Where do you want to ski, Mom?" she asked, as if we'd planned on meeting all along.
We hopped onto the Ptarmigan chairlift to the summit. As we approached, two figures in blue stood below us on the mountain, a young dad and his son. The boy could not have been more than 4 years old. Dad was standing just above what's known as Sailor's Rock, a promontory from which skiers and boarders launch themselves, entertaining those of us on the lift. The little boy knew what to do on steep terrain like this. He anchored his edges sideways to the hill and then released them into a slide, controlling his speed as he headed for ... oh no.
Kaitlyn and I were incredulous. The little guy was headed right for a glaciated hole in the snow called a glide crack. Glide cracks are more common this year, the result of this warm winter roller coaster of snow, ice and rain. Glide cracks and people do not mix well. You don't, especially if you are a 4-year-old child, want to slip into a glide crack. It could swallow you.
Dad did not appear the least bit worried, silently watching his son sliding toward the abyss. Just in time, the child abandoned the power slide and pointed his skis straight down the steepness. The momentum carried him up and over the glide crack. He landed with a poof of snow.
"Hey Dad!" he shouted.
"Glide crack!"
Already, the tables were starting to turn. My daughter and I witnessed it, side by side.
Freelance writer Katie Bausler is a devoted resident of the island kingdom of rainy Douglas.