Cabins drive me crazy. The fumes are sickening, 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 Fields watches the blue moon and big dipper rise over Crescent Lake.
Ben Williams, all jacked on sunshine, hucks his meat euro-dog style.
For the last run of the day Jeff 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!"
The end of New Year's Day.
Beaver-wearing Andy pleased with his Polaris 550 Supersport Fan Cooled Twin.
Jeff Jessen looking for his Austrian wife.
Frozen engine blocks are a proper way to finish mid-winter Alaska trips. Andy checks the Coleman stove that's thawing his engine block.