I've never created a blog before and I thought this would be a good place to start:On october 19 i woke up at 5 am and packed all my backcountry ski gear. Though there was only about 4 inches of snow in town, we hoped that we would find much more after driving nearly 200 miles South to the Hoodoo Mountains in the Alaska Range where the famed Arctic Man is held each year. My companions on the trip were three of my best friends Wendy, Jacob, and Kelsey and Jacob's little brother, Daniel, along with Jacob's dad, Jim, and his friend Doug and Doug's son Kyle.

We got to the pull out where the trail head starts by the road and weren't surprised to see about five other groups of snow machiners ready to head out. It had just snowed the week before, skies were blue, and avy danger was low. After unloading all the gear, jacob's dad towed us behind their snow machine over the 3.5 miles of flat. All of us then put our skins on and headed up the creek bed to where we saw a nice valley and some peaks.After hiking through willows and having adventurous creek crossings, we finally arrived at the bottom of a nice peak and face a little over two hours later. Another 45 minuts and we were on the ridge of that peak eating lunch and enjoying the sunshine.
our skin trail up the ridge with the creek bed below that we skinned up
jacob digging our lunch pitAfter lunch we decided that it was time to ski. I had been deprived of skiing all summer and could not wait. It was a foot of untouched powder on top of a pretty solid 8 inch base and it was amazing. We began by skinning up to the peak directly above our lunch spot and when we got to the top of that we spotted a ridge to our left that we could get access to by skiing a nice bowl. We kicked stepped up that ridge where we continued to make laps all day as we tried out various spines along the ridge.
the peak above out lunch spot
hiking the ridge
pure happiness as I make some turnsAs the sun began to set we decided we could get in one more lap on the ridge seeing as the kick step trail was set nicely. We went down into a gully that we thought would come out at the creek bed that we had skinned up which it did, but there was a lot of open water. Crossing the creek looked dangerous and not manageable, so we put our skins on and skinned out of the gully. When we got to a point that we could take our skins off and just glide back down the creek bed, the glue from the skins had decided to stick to my bases. No matter how hard i scraped i could not get it all off. I had a very sticky run down the creek bed and was last to return to the snow machines on the flats. Everyone was cold from waiting for me, but fortunately Jim brought a thermos of hot chocolate so they were all set. We got towed back to the pull out on the road where we packed up after a great day of skiing with friends and having fun in the Hoodoos. Overall it was an awesome trip with awesome people and I hope that I can make it out to that spot again later this season when there is even more snow!