Big return to Eagle Glacier

rganderson915
Jun 29
3 min read

Hello!

Welcome back to the blog. I'm back to regular summer training these days, but with an exciting addition to the schedule: glacier camps!

Back to the Glacier

APU Nordic Ski Center recently reopened the glacier facility after 5 long years of fundraising, planning, and construction. The original facility was damaged in an earthquake, and because the facility is only accessible by helicopter, it takes a big effort to rebuild up there.

Helicopter

We flew up there in helicopters. A good weather window is necessary, which meant we waited for about 13 hours at the airport for our first attempt. The sky never cleared, so we went home and tried again the next day. Luckily we made it up, but I was a little nervous and mostly kept my eyes closed for the ride. People made sure to make fun of me (“but helicopters are so fun, it’s so pretty, blah blah blah) but my teammate Anabel comforted me. Thanks Anabel.

From left to right: Renae, Anabel, Walker, and Michael

The building

The training center is located in the mountains above Girdwood. The building is pretty basic, with easily-cleanable floors and surfaces, rooms full of bunk beds, and an efficient industrial kitchen that can accommodate a lot of hungry skiers. There are large windows with no blinds surrounding the living room which show off the 360 degree view of mountain tops, but also make the building overwhelmingly bright on sunny days.

View from our bedroom (luckily there are blinds in there)

The trails

Our coaches and APU staff groom trails for us. They probe to make sure the course doesn’t cross any major crevasses, which is a serious consideration for glacier travel. They groom about a 7km loop into the glacier with plenty of climbing and some technical downhills, and then we ski on it twice a day, ranging from 2-5 hours of skiing on any given day.

A view of the groomed trails from the building.

The hardest parts

We skied in a blizzard/cloud for our first ski which caused full white-out conditions. It was impossible get oriented to location, direction, or grade of the trail without help from faint red trail markers. This was extremely uncomfortable for me and almost panic inducing. I didn’t love the feeling of being “stuck” up there in general, but I got used to it and also wasn’t so nervous on the helicopter ride home. We skied so much in wet snow that I got blisters on my feet, which made me less excited to ski long hours by the end of the week.

The best parts

It was a dream to spend a week high up in the mountains with a team of great people and friends. The scenery was heavenly and the group had high morale. We lucked out on weather and had insanely good conditions. I chose to keep my phone use to a minimum which also felt great. The environment had no distractions from good ski training.