It’s late August and it’s feeling and looking like fall here in Alaska. We’ve received the first white dusting on the high peaks above Girdwood, the vegetation is changing and that cool, crisp smell is in the air. It’s all about living in the moment, but I’ve got the stoke for winter now and I’d like to reflect on my summer. Until skiing is truly here I’ll be cranking out work in the office for the business and sneaking out for more bikes, hikes, hunts and packraft adventures.

In mid-March, after I dealt with Covid cancelling trips and shutting down my business, I had a few days of freak-out moments as I’m sure most of you had too. Once I realized this all really did/was happening I was at ease. I try not to let things that are out of my control bring me down. On the bright side, I guess the neat thing was I’ve never had prime-time spring ski season for myself personally in my entire life. I was able to enjoy some quality time out in Prince William Sound at a leisurely rate with my good friend, captain Alex of the Sea and Ski trips we offer. I’ve got lots of new ideas for my next trips!

I think skiing in a t-shirt counts for the first photo in a summer blog post.

Bluebird skies, glassy waters and a bald eagle in the background on a warm summer-like April day.

In June, I joined my friends/Alaska Guide Collective co-owner guides Joe and Elliot for their AGC Rock Rescue Course. My personal passions and work trips have shifted me away from rock and ice climbing over the last few years. My skills have been sharp in the ski mountaineering and glacier travel/rescue realm, so it was good to dust the rust off my vertical rope rescue skills. We look forward to offering more public rock rescue and glacier travel courses, along with our lineup of public Avalanche courses.

Photos from the AGC Rock Rescue Course.

This summer I made it a goal to rotate the activities for better physical fitness training. Mtn biking, hikes, trail running, paddle boarding, packrafting, as well as home yoga and workouts have been making me feel good and it’s all a lot of fun. For simplicity I left my real camera at home and used the phone for most days out. I do miss the end product but the phone sure saves me lots of time behind the computer screen processing photos. (Photos below without my name watermarked are phone shots)

Summertime in Prince William Sound

Mountain biking Devil’s Pass on the Kenai Peninsula.

Stand up paddle boarding on a local river minutes from my home.

My new Alpacka Expedition packraft.

My last full adventure trip of the summer (although fall-like up there in mid August) was way north up in the Brooks Range, where we went through part of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. If I have the time, I hope to put up a blog post soon about the trip and discuss what ANWR means to me and you regarding the bad news on oil drilling leases opened up by the current presidential administration.

In the mean time, one course of action you can do to help keep this land protected is to submit a comment to Bank of America, click HERE to see my environmental initiative page and find the take action links. They are the last big bank standing that has not yet commented on record that they Will Not Finance any oil projects in ANWR. Why? Because it’s a bad investment and people don’t want it to ever happen!

Eric on our packraft / raft / hike/ hunting trip in the Brooks Range.

I’ll end with some Aurora Borealis shots. I grabbed a buddy to float and camp out on Portage river with the intention of enjoying what looked like one of the last nice weather nights in the forecast for the summer. We stayed up to 4am thanks to a surprise show of northern lights! Crawling into a frosted bivy bag felt like summer was indeed over.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to “like” and share.

Cheers, Nick D.

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