On the first bluebird day in a week, we took a ski tour up a stream called Sheep Creek. We have been eying it from the highway because it looks like a wide path with a steeper gradient than other nearby streams.
April skiing - blazing hot
The snow was consolidated enough to be relatively firm underfoot, so we made good time skiing the 3 miles to treeline.
Snow balls falling down the south-facing slopes leave funny tracks
We saw weasel tracks all the way up here! And there were ground squirrels out and about.
There was a rock-ice slide in the valley in the center of this picture. The rumbling sound of falling debris was alarming!
The saddle is somewhere around the bend to the left...
This valley had a series of snow chutes that I think have been carved by a combination of avalanche paths and spring snowmelt.
Looking back from the first saddle, a false summit. We switched from skis into snow shoes because it was getting too steep.
We found a caterpillar near the summit! I have no idea how it is supposed to eat. We took it back to the house and it is now living in a mason jar. What will it become?
Finally, the actual summit.
There aren't many named features on the map, so I'm going to call this "weasel pass" because we saw weasel tracks and because it kept having tricky false summits!
Looking down the Cathedral Rapids side of the mountains.
The terrain was too steep to ski down safely, and we were cautious about avalanche danger, so we hiked up a knob and descended part of the way on a rocky ridge. It was almost too steep to walk down in snow shoes!
Big thunderheads building on the horizon hurried us onwards.
We followed this ridge line down to the last set of jagged rocks.
Looking back up at the saddle from where we decided to switch back to skis. This was the lee side of the mountains, and the snow looked so pillowy and smooth!
Once we descended in elevation the valley narrowed into a chute, which was like riding a miles-long half pipe.
Cathedral rapids was as awful as I expected, with lots of enormous boulders and loose, deep snow. But it's a mercifully short section of the trail and the Tanana River was beckoning us home.
We biked back to the car at about 9 pm. The total traverse was about 10 miles and took us about 7.5 hours.
Looks like a wooly bear caterpillar. I saw a video while waiting in a doctor's office that mentioned this.
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