That being said (and again, this was really an incredible once in a lifetime trip we took) there were 2 issues - first of all, bring your own gear. As I was standing in the Ski shop in the resort the day before our trip with a pair of $200 snow pants in my hand, justifying the cost out loud to Tre "You know I'll wear these all the time once I have them, I always wish I had snowpants when I clean off my car.. plus don't you want to learn how to ski?", Tre was on the phone with the snow mobile company who assured him that they have all the gear we would need, and not to worry. While this is a totally true statement, the gear they provided us with kept us very warm and dry through our entire trip, it is NOT what you want to be wearing in your vacation photos. The snowsuit they gave me looked like it came out of a full house special - as you'll see in the photos below it was teal with pink and purple accents. Never have I regretted NOT spending $200 on something I didn't really need.. until now.
The second issue, was completely on me, and was compounded by a few other factors. I am not strong by any measure, and this trip was a bit out of range for my physical ability/weight. In addition to that, I have never snowmobiled before, and I hadn't even been on an atv in probably ten years. This, combined with the fact that Girdwood was experiencing a slushy snow showers, which formed a nice crust on top of the ice formally known as snow, made this ride particularly difficult. A small complaint on my part was that this was touted as a beginners ride, but after about a 10 minute demo we hopped right on and were off on our adventure. I had hoped we would have a bit of time to test out driving the machines before actually starting the ride.
The trip in total was 32 miles, 16 miles to the glacier and 16 miles back. I made it about 9 miles before I started to run into serious issues. I wasn't driving quite as fast as the rest of the group, and as a result I was getting pretty far behind and holding up the people behind me. I didn't really have the strength or the weight to maneuver through some of the wooded areas, and because the snow had crusted over the tracks from the past few days were icy and our sleds kept getting caught in them. For about 2/3s of the ride I ended up doubling up with Tre, which is something I really didn't want to have to do but I know I wouldn't have made it through the river crossing and through some of the hillier areas. Even the experienced riders in the group were saying it was a really difficult ride, so that made me feel a little better about being a big huge baby.
The glacier itself was incredible. We rode out to Spencer glacier, which is 16 miles long and spills out into a glacial lake that is 600 feet deep. I swear our guide said the ice is over the lake that we drove on is 100 feet thick, but Tre doesn't believe me. We took some photos with the ice bergs, and then rode another mile across the frozen lake to the terminus of the glacier. I rode back on the back of Tre's machine until we got back to my machine and I had to drive to the end of the tour myself. I was still a bit slower than everyone else but I felt less bad because I wasn't holding everyone up from getting to the highlight of the tour, we were just headed back.
Once we got back to the resort we were seriously tired, sore and starving. We stuffed our faces with some pizza and then drove two hours south to
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| Spencer Glacier's terminus |
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