By Jenny Neyman
Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Gail Moore skis at Headquarters Lake at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge at dusk Saturday. There hasn’t been enough snow to ski on trails, but area lakes have seen lots of traffic.
Redoubt Reporter
With the bare dusting of powder that has been blowing around the central Kenai Peninsula for the past few weeks, winter recreationists are finding themselves all geared up, yet few places with snow.
Backcountry mountains don’t have enough cover to smooth over tangles of birch and alder, and trails through the woods are bare enough that skiers, dog sledders and snowmachiners will do more grinding than gliding.
There’s one saving grace so far this winter for those ready to ski, skate and slide — take it to a lake.
“It’s the only show in town right now, unless you’re crazy and ski on the grass,” said Bill Holt, with Tsalteshi Trails Association, who took a groomer to the surface of ARC Lake on Sunday and Headquarters Lake on Friday.
Skiers have been dusting the summer cobwebs off their winter gear, muscles and balance over the past two weeks, circling the perimeters of lakes in the area, especially Headquarters Lake behind the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge office on Ski Hill Road, ARC Lake along the Sterling Highway near the landfill and Bottenintnin Lake off Skilak Lake Road.
There isn’t enough snow down to ski on the ground, even at Tsalteshi Trails behind Skyview, which are prepped to be skiable with the least amount of snow possible.
“I sure don’t recommend the trails right now. Some people have tried it but it’s so dirty you just come to a screeching halt every once in a while,” Holt said.
Once it gets cold enough for lakes to freeze, which happened weeks ago on the central peninsula, you’ve got a smooth, clean surface sans dirt, rocks, twigs or other debris that would catch and scrape skis. With the water frozen, it only takes a bare covering of snow and a little time for the snow to firm up before the surface turns into a skiing speedway.
“What’s really nice about it this year is we don’t have hardly any snow, but what snow is there is kind of bonded with the ice,” Holt said. “From a groomer’s standpoint, if it’s cold, dry snow on ice it just peels right off, you can’t do anything until it’s skied down, and even then it’s hard to do. But for some reason, we’ve had just enough moisture that it bonded pretty well with the ice.”
There’s enough snow to glide on, but not so much a skier is left wallowing in deep drifts. It’s bare enough that ski poles don’t always have much snow in which to find purchase, but the terrain is flat, so poles aren’t as necessary as they would be for going up hills.
Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. The Skyview High School ski team practices at Headquarters Lake on Monday.
“It’s a great warmup. It’s great for working on your balance. In the beginning of the season it’s perfect, you can no-pole and just get your balance down,” said Robin Nyce, who was skiing with Gigi Banas, LuAnn Reynolds and Gail Moore at Headquarters Lake on Sunday.
Banas said she likes that the lake is flat and wide open, which makes it easier to practice early season skills, and get over the inevitable early season aches and pains before tackling any hills.
“You can feel all your muscles that haven’t been working, like my ankles hurt. You can feel everything,” Banas said.
They heard the lakes were ready for skiing from several sources — Sarah Riley, maybe? Or possibly Pete Sprague. And they all got Holt’s e-mail Friday about Headquarters Lake being groomed.
“Word of mouth,” they concluded.
“As soon as we can get out on skis we’re out on skis, no matter where we are,” Nyce said. “We were skiing up in the mountains last year, and now there’s not hardly any snow up there this year.”
Moore said they tried skiing a week ago Friday, but the snow was fluffy and not bonded with the ice yet, so they opted for the front-and-back shuffle of classic skis, rather than skate skiing’s angled stride. But by last Sunday the snow had bonded enough that people were skate skiing, Moore said, taking advantage of the only skiable surfaces around.
“That’s exactly why we’re doing it, but I think this is really fun. I like it,” Nyce said.
“And it’s better than no skiing,” Moore added.
Cross-country ski teams from area schools have been taking advantage of Headquarters and ARC lakes to kick off their ski seasons. It’s actually a good way for new skiers to start out, Holt said.
“It’s good for the kids just learning to ski. You can see the coaches can kind of stand around and watch them and do kind of tighter circles, keep an eye on them and do more instruction,” he said.
Lake conditions can be challenging if the wind scrapes bare spots on the ice or piles snow in drifts, if ice cracks and water bubbles up into puddles of overflow, or if the temperature rises enough that the snow gets slushy, then re-freezes into ruts. But as of the weekend, the lakes were about as good as they could get.
“I think grooming helped it quite a bit. It worked out really good to take the ruts out and it helps the snow stick better, too, if you don’t peel it off,” Holt said. “The other advantage to grooming is at the east end of lake we had quite a few drifts where wind pushed the snow, and the groomer took that out, and there are a few spots of overflow that the groomer evened out.”
Holt said he’s wanted to team up with the refuge on lake grooming for years, and the refuge gave him permission earlier this month to haul grooming equipment down to the lake. It makes for a nice dichotomy, groomed ski conditions in an otherwise backcountry setting.
“Sometimes the crust isn’t quite right over there and it’d be nice to go down there and touch it up. It’s kind of a whole other thing, when you think about how cool it is that the wildlife refuge is right across the street from a highly developed trail system, so you can have this kind of backcountry wilderness experience over there,” Holt said. “It’s just fun out there, it’s so pretty and kind of more of a wilderness thing than skiing on the trails, especially in the evening when the sun is setting and it’s clear. It’s just beautiful.”
Lake skiing offers more wide-open views than skiing on trails, and the more secluded location of Headquarters Lake offers more chance for viewing wildlife tracks and the critters that make them. Holt has seen a wolf while skiing on a lake adjacent to Headquarters, and last winter he saw evidence of an otter having a grand old time, running through the snow then sliding on the ice.
“He’d run and kind of body surf on the lake,” Holt said. “He was getting like 15 feet of glide. He must have been waxed right.”
Holt said ARC Lake offers a nice change of pace from the trails, as well, and is convenient being right off the highway. With the city of Soldotna giving the trails association a $10,000 grant recently, Holt said he was eager to put some work in on city land.
Last winter he and his fellow Tsalteshi groomers experimented with grooming some old trails that lead back from ARC Lake, cross some mushing trails, meet up with Funny River Road and even head back toward Tustumena Lake. When a decent dump of snow finally comes, Holt said he wants to get back out and explore new paths again.
“It was really pretty out there, just a 3-foot wide trail that kind of winds through the woods. We started experimenting with it last year, and every once in a while we’d get 10 or 15 people out there. I think it’s just nice to do things to cooperate with the refuge and respect the way the refuge is way different than how we are, but the real nice thing is to connect in with them,” Holt said.
If snow comes this week as the forecast is calling for, and temperatures don’t broach over into rain, Holt said he’d be out at Tsalteshi as soon as possible. But in the meantime, or even as a break from trail skiing throughout the winter, don’t forget where the season kicked off.
“The lakes are great,” he said.
