Recent posts

15Jan 202621 Jan 2026

100-mile Ice Skate in Katmai National Park

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXqoUVId6lk Alaska experienced a sustained cold spell throughout December, which froze many lakes without snow cover. I tracked satellite imagery…

7Aug 20258 Aug 2025

Western Brooks Range to Point Lay, Alaska

Another passenger on the flight to Kotzebue stopped at my row and introduced himself as Colin Arisman. Colin is an…

13Jan 202517 Jan 2025

Bad Date Ideas in Boston

I met Amy on the subway from Boston’s Logan Airport. I struck up a conversation with her son (6 years…

Nome and the Seward Peninsula—first Impressions

21 Aug 202423 Aug 2024

It's a puffy-jacket-in-the-summer kind of place.-Burr I've been waiting a long time to visit the Seward Peninsula. The nose-shaped peninsula stretches to within 50 miles of Russia, making ancient migration…

2023 Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic: Little Tok to McCarthy

31 Jul 20241 Aug 2024

I've been sitting on this trip report for a year because I was hoping to find an elegant way to say goodbye to the Classic phase of my life. But…

The Best Drysuit

1 May 202424 May 2024

I've been on a three-year mission to find the perfect drysuit. But given the classic dilemma: Durable, lightweight, affordable ... choose two. I soon recognized that I was looking for…

ski…

2024 Alaska Mountain Wilderness Ski Classic – The End of an Era

8 Apr 20249 Apr 2024

2024 marks the end of an era: thirty years of Alaska Mountain Wilderness Ski Classic organization by Dave Cramer and the staff at Summit Consulting. The Winter Classic—an A to…

Highly likely, low consequence: The learning sweet spot.

29 Feb 202429 Feb 2024

I returned from an avalanche course last weekend and Sarah welcomed me home by exclaiming, "You are going to be so jealous!" She and Hannah had gone ice skating that…

The Glide: Camouflage Ice

November, 2022. Hannah Brewster's favorite place to skate is the Palmer Hay Flats and Rabbit Slough. Her pet project is trying to find all of the sneaky connections between larger…

The Glide: Rapidly Thinning Ice at Skilak Lake

December, 2021. Sarah and I rented the Lower Russian Lake USFS cabin on the Kenai Peninsula Christmas day. We planned to ski to the cabin, knowing that there was a…

The Glide: Ice Rings II

New insights regarding ice rings! You might want to catch up with the original post: Waves in Slush! I heard from a few people who describe ice rings forming by…

The Glide: Ice Rings

8 Dec 202317 Dec 2023

I noticed stripes in the ice at Big Lake last week and recalled Karl Ramsdell's incredible photos of ice rings in Maine: https://www.instagram.com/p/CYli4CQLmD9/ I returned to Big Lake with a…