6 year Anniversary at Hutlinana Hot Springs

Ben and I went to Hutlinana Hot Springs for our Anniversary. Hutlinana hot springs is an unmarked trail on off the Elliot 128 miles north of Fairbanks. The trail is 14 miles round trip slightly up hill with 1 stream crossing. We did it as a long day trip, the drive is about 3 hours depending on the snowy roads.
The trail was nice and snowy, we can ski it soon! We were aided in the begining by anniversary style sock markers left by friends.

We made it! The trail stops right here and it was so quiet and beautiful, the hot springs were nice and hot.
View from in the hot springs.

Ben and I enjoying our soak before the hike back to the car.

Galen James McCaa

Galen James McCaa was born on 12:44pm Sept. 26th, 2009. He was 7.7lbs. Brown and Galen a few hours after the birth of their beautiful baby boy! It was very exciting Saturday.Cob a few hours later. He was up shortly though and took the picture of Brown and Galen above.


Brown's newly knit socks.

Equinox Ultra/Marathon/Relay

The start of the 47th Annual Equinox Marathon in Fairbanks, AK. It is a huge community event and in addition to the marathon and the relay..this year we had an Ultra Marathon as well. This race is almost all on trails and goes up Ester Dome and back down to UAF and ends at the patty center. The Ultra did an extra 6 miles around the trails at UAF. So many of us did one form of the race and we all had a great day. I ran with Kristen Barton and Patrick as the "5 kidney's" relay team. I ran the third leg and only Ben had his iphone for a few pics. He was busy timing at the top of Ester Dome with Brown and the rest of the timing crew. Jackon's team was best dressed in Zubaz's zebra print pants and mesh tops, I don't have a picture, but the News-Miner does.
Matias in the lead off the trail and heading back on the trail and to the top of Ester Dome. He won the marathon again this year in time 2hrs 51min.

Finishing the third leg, only 9.5 miles and mostly down hill from the top of Ester Dome.

We had a breakfast party this morning to send off Robin, Chris and Mara back down to Anchorage. Robin is the new legend, winning the ultra marathon for the women's and 3rd overall. She ran a very impressive fast run that caught everyone's eye. She has an impressive resume that we embellished and it turned into she did the Wilderness Classic solo when she was twelve by the end of the day :-)

Chris and John relaxing after the marathon. What a great day it was! I am sure everyone else has more pics, I just thought I would post a few.

AK Range Traverse and East Fork Susitna

We headed down to the Denali Highway and into the Alaska Range this weekend for a packraft trip. We started out driving up Valdez Creek Trail and left the car. We hiked over numerous passes with many rivers, caribou, blueberries and alpine lakes to swim. It was a 30 mile hike, 30 mile paddle and 10 mile run back to the car. Ed, Heather, Ben, Dea and Patrick hiked this awesome Alaska tundra and did a first decent in packrafts on the East Fork of the Susitna river. It was a great trip! This picture is the first of a million stream crossings on our hike.

The the first pass and the rest of the trip we had incredible weather and aweome views of the Alaska Range. Heather, Patrick, Ben, Ed and me falling over as I ran from the self timer.

Saddle of the first pass.

Ben and Heather hiking along side Mt. Deborah and caribou.

Just two of many curious caribou on the hike (Ed Plumb photo).

Some small scree fields over the passes, but for the most part great tundra hiking.

Ed filtering water at an alpine lake before we all took a dive in.

Finally day2 decending down to the East Fork Glacier River.

About to start our descent down the river in the packrafts.

A few sprinkles during the paddle and one big thunderstorm with hail 1/4 mile from our take out bridge.

2nd portage around some large rapids, part of the excitement of an unknown river in a remote area.
Another unknown was downstream from the headwaters of the glacier, the river fanned out into many shallow channels over a mile wide. This is Heather pushing off with her paddle to break loose(Ed Plumb photo), but mostly we had to walk in the middle of this shallow glacier river until we could jump in again. I don't think it is technically a portage or line when you're walking with your boat down the middle of a river. We will call it as ed says, a good experience :-) We all had a great time!