Crescent Saddle Cabin
Monday, January 4, 2010 at 12:47PM Cabins drive me crazy. The fumes make me sick, the claustrophobia gives me cabin-fever and childhood memories of hauling endless firewood make me lust for a big fat boiler. The Cresent Saddle cabin on the Kenai Peninsula changed all that.
We spent New Years eve in this four-bunk Forest Service cabin with three dogs and ten friends. All night the six-inch lake ice hummed and sang and cracked as if December's second full moon was talking to us. During the day we skied leeward, south-facing chutes filled with sun and untouched snow.
Oh Alaska!
Eric Parsons, Jeff Conaway and I ditched the cabin scene and went skeet shooting on the lake. This is a 25 second exposure at ISO 200 and F 8.0 using a birch log ball head.
Julie watches the blue moon and big dipper rise over Crescent Lake.
Ben Williams, all jacked on sunshine, hucks his meat euro-dog style.
Ben Williams spots Jeff Conaway.
For the last run of the day Jeff Conaway and I skinned and boot-packed high above the cabin for a steep and skinny chute. As we deliberated about stability at the chute's 50-degree entrance, a bus-sized portion of the cornice snapped off and thundered 1,500 feet down the gullet. "I guess it's stable. Let's ski!"
Beaver-wearing Andy stoked on his Polaris 550 Supersport Fan Cooled Twin.
Jeff Jessen looking for his Austrian wife.
Proper Alaska winter trips finish with frozen engines. Andy checks the Coleman stove that's thawing his engine block.