Skyline-Fuller Lakes Traverse

Alyosha


Trick or Treat: What’s Behind Cairn #2?

I recently backpacked this with the kids for two nights, although you could hike it in a long day — probably at least 9 hours. It’s a great hike, and there are several hiking books that will fill you in on the details, so I won’t bore you with them. You can run it from either end: Skyline trail or the Fuller Lakes side; it’s a well marked trail, pretty strenuous, no water in the middle ridge walk except for snow, etc. Pretty normal trail.

Except for one thing.

If you hike this from the Skyline side, as you work down from the final ridge to Fuller lake — it’s more likely than not that you will lose the trail entirely. Which can lead to bad things.

Both pictures below have you looking at Fuller Lake and the final ridge of the hike, roughly looking from the north down to the southeast. The purple line is the main trail that leads off the ridge, and while the books mention in passing that it might not be easy to find, they are not joking. The trail is pretty much invisible as it leaves the ridge, and everyone I’ve talked to here — native Alaskans who do this sort of thing all the time — all of them have missed the trail at least once, and had to bushwhack through dense, dense, marshy undergrowth for hours before finding the trail again. I include myself — it turned into something of an existential crisis for the kids, and added three hours to the hike. Not fun.

The  Culprit

So bring your map and compass, GPS, and a lunch. Don’t underestimate this part of the hike. (One technique is to cut down off the ridge very early, and run into the trail by default. I’ll go with the compass and GPS next time.) 

There are, however, a series of cairns along the ridge as you walk down it toward the north, probably showing several ways to cut down early or actually indicating the trail. I counted three: two small and one rather larger. There is also, much farther down the ridge, an arc of large stones (about three feet long) set into the ground. I’m assuming this arc was meant point to the hairpin turn off the ridge, but will have to test my hypothesis next time. Also, if that arc of stones isn’t it, I’d imagine one of the cairns earlier in the trail is the way down — again, something to explore the next time out.

The Culprit, Profile View
This trail has sandbagged a lot of people. Most people don’t hike it from the Skyline side just because of this “feature.”

Be careful.

Alaska, backpacking, camping, hiking, Kenai Peninsula


Resurrection Pass Trail

Alyosha
Five minute break—smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.

The Big One

I mountain biked Resurrection Pass trail from Hope to Cooper Landing on Saturday. Of all the backcountry trails that you can bike on the Kenai, this is the longest and is certainly a world-class ride. Not particularly technical or steep, just the sheer distance of the trail itself gives a lot of riders reason to put it off. It certainly did for me. I’m happy to report that even with the length, the trail is fairly innocuous. It clocked right at 60 km (37 mi.) on the gps, with wheel spin time coming in at about six hours. If you are in reasonably good shape — you’ll be fine. Just start early and give yourself plenty of time.

From Hope

The usual recommendation is to run the trail north-to-south, even though the rise from either end is exactly the same, starting at an elevation of 400 feet on either end and peaking at 2600 feet at Resurrection Pass. The reason for running from Hope and not Cooper Landing comes from the gradual climb from Hope to the pass — taking back that elevation on the way down mostly in two steep declines, one near Swan Lake, and another just 4 miles from the southern trailhead. After running it, I’d agree wholeheartedly — the climb out of Cooper Landing alone would be fairly rigorous.

The trail/climb from Hope to the pass is fairly kind. The trail is wide and in fairly good condition — the usual rocks, roots, and mud — but mostly wide open. The climb is fairly gentle; the only real exceptions were where the trail dips down to cross a creek or stream. What is a nice run down is paid off with a fairly rigorous climb back out, but just as you think you’ll have to get off and walk it — the trail relents and continues the gentle incline. That continues for just about the first half of the overall trail, almost up the the summit.  Once out above tree line (which doesn’t really happen until just a few miles from the summit), the terrain does roll a bit more but still nothing that will make you get off and walk. 

Fake out

One thing to note is that once you do emerge from tree line, you’re going to look dead ahead and see what looks like “the T” — and the far side of the valley where Resurrection Trail meets up with Devil’s Creek Trail. Don’t be fooled; what you’re looking at is actually just a continuation of the same valley, with the pass “around the bend” to your right. You will actually have arc to your right a mile or two until you come around almost 45 degrees. At about the point you get to the sign marking the summit, you are looking at the actual far side of the valley where “the T” is. That terrain feature threw me and made the “when are we ever going to get to the summit” part a little tedious.

Back down

The way down comes in roughly three stages. There is a fairly fast (but rocky) run through “the T” and to your right, across the saddle, until you have to climb just a bit before beginning a somewhat technical section down to the valley just below Swan Lake. Next, there is a fairly monotonous run down the valley, past Juneau Lake toward Cooper Landing, on a trail the gradually improves — although it tends to be muddy. (Muddy in an annoying way, not bad enough to do much more than cover your bike in ooze.) The third stretch comes after a cutoff that either runs to the Bean Creek trailhead (straight), or the Juneau Falls route (right) that runs to the trailhead on the Sterling Highway. I’ve taken both, and the Bean Creek run, while a little rougher, is about half the distance. If you take the Juneau Falls run, it winds up and down for most of the roughly five miles — and really only begins its decline within the last mile or so. Generally, the trail is fine, with some annoying sections of rocks and roots here and there.

Water

On this last route, I didn’t pack all the water I needed but brought a UV system to refill as I went. My Steripen failed even with fresh batteries (from what I’ve gathered, this is not an isolated incident), and I had to rely on another party’s “All Clear” UV bottle that Camelbak manufactures. I can’t say enough good about that product — roughly $90 online.

At any rate, there are many places to refill along the way. Be sure to buy some purification drops as a backup in case your UV fails you. The rivers coming straight off the mountain are almost certainly fine, but in the pass itself there are long series of beaver ponds, so anything from there to the trailhead in Cooper Landing will be drawing on that source.

Overgrowth

Resurrection Pass trail is fairly well maintained, and even though I waited for a killing frost to knock down the vegetation, I wouldn’t be afraid to run it earlier in the year. The forests and up above tree line make up almost all of the trail, so the danger of having to snorkel through chest-high wet grass is limited to a very short section (probably a mile). And with the amount of traffic the trail sees, even that shouldn’t be much of a problem.

Data

I’ve attached the .gpx file of the trail taken from the GPS data from this run. (Right click and do the “save as” thing.) Dropbox link for .gpx file.

Pressure Cooker Modernist Vegan Boston Baked Beans

Alyosha
 Picture taken from Wikipedia. (Although it’s pretty close.)

Yes, you read that right. I don’t remember where I ripped off the core of this recipe, but the bulk of this was taken from a vegan site several years ago. There it is, my bad for losing the source citation. 

However.

It took several years fooling around with what was a standard baked bean recipe to convert it to a pressure cooker — then acting on a hunch, using a tip from the Modernist Cuisine guys via Chow.com. What is great about this recipe is that you start with dried beans and can basically have a finished product in under two hours. It’s vegan, which is cool — and the addition of baking soda (at least to me) seems to add a caramelization factor that ratchets up the flavor. Some things to note:

  1. Combine everything in a pressure cooker, give it a stir, and cook it on the higher pressure setting/ring for… here’s the tricky part: Depending on the age of your beans, they can need anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours. You’ll have to experiment — at the moment my beans are getting pretty old, and it’s taking all of an hour and 30 minutes.
  2. Yes the water is 1:1 with the beans; the only reason you can get away with that is because you’re using a pressure cooker and the onions provide some of the water. Don’t skimp on the onions.
  3. Don’t skimp on the baking soda — supposedly this “promotes and alkaline environment!” which somehow gives the beans a deeper, caramelized flavor. It seems to work. See the guys over at http://modernistcuisine.com for an explanation.
  4. Depending on how you like your beans, you may either use something like xanthan gum, or simply cook the beans a bit longer with the lid off, to get the consistency you need. This ALL depends on how well the beans have broken down, and in any case they should be very close to the right consistency right out of the cooker.

This recipe makes quite a bit — it will feed six — so you might want to cut it in half.

  1. 5 cups dried pinto, kidney, or whatever beans
  2. ⅔ cups molasses
  3. ½ cup brown sugar
  4. 2 tablespoons dry mustard
  5. ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
  6. 2 teaspoons liquid smoke
  7. 1.3 tablespoons tamari
  8. 4 onion, medium dice
  9. 4 bay leaf
  10. 6 cloves garlic, smashed
  11. 2 teaspoons salt
  12. 5 cups water
  13. 2-3*ish* teaspoons baking soda
  15. Enjoy!

vegan boston baked beans Pressure cooker recipe

Caesar Salad Surgery

Alyosha
Went back to recreate a larger quantity of the caesar salad for from Meal #1 in The Family Meal, noticed another niggly error and fixed it.

The problem is in the quantity for Xerxes vinegar  in the “for 20” English version of the recipe. The French version is worse: the larger versions call for 8ml and 30ml respectively — which should be 80 and 300ml. This looks like it was translated into the English as 1/8 cup (???) in the “for 20” quantity. Odd. (The “for 75” is fine.)

Up the quantities to a generous 1/3cup in the “for 20” version.

(The two smaller versions of the recipe are fine — the c.à.s. measurements in the French translate directly to Tablespoons.)

Cooking Ferran Adriá’s The Family Meal — The Errata

Headquarters Lake

Alyosha

One more skiing option while staying on the Kenai Peninsula. If you’re near Soldotna, give Headquarters Lake a try. Great 3.5k groomed (most of the time) track on the surface of the lake, probably the best place on the peninsula to stretch out and work on your form.

Find your way to the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge’s visitor center (just south of Soldotna), and park. You can either walk or ski to the lake (about 300 yds) depending on the snow. Watch the trip through the woods down to the lake, the snow can get hard, and the trails narrow — little room for error correction.

Great stuff.

skate ski cross country skiing Soldotna Alaska

Devils Pass

Alyosha
Rode from the Devils Pass trailhead to Cooper Landing today: Devils Pass Trail to Resurrection Pass Trail, then in to Cooper Landing at the Bean Creek trailhead. Roughly 25 miles, and seven hours.

Compared to the Russian Lakes and Johnson Pass trails, this was a bit longer and much more varied in terrain and elevation. The elevation change was roughly ~1800 feet, and a large part of the Devils Pass trail was above treeline. Neither of Russian or Johnson have that feature, and with Russian Lakes trail in particular, you are down in the brush for most of the time, which gets a little creepy considering all the bear scat. Up in the Devils Pass things were a little less tense; nothing is going to sneak up on you.

The trail conditions were varied as well, some parts on the first third of the ride were somewhat rocky bordering on technical (probably a mile in total), with the trail becoming downright civilized in the valley leading in to Cooper Landing. The ~1800 foot gain is pretty gradual, for the most part NOT  a granny-gear grind. The ending section of Devils (before meeting up with the Resurrection Pass trail) was a delight, above tree line, with good singletrack, even under some VERY wet conditions.

The Pass

The Devils Pass trail meets up (ends basically) with the Resurrection Trail which runs from Cooper Landing into Hope. After meeting up, the trail gets a little more rutty, but more than makes up for any shortcomings after you pass the Swan Lake cutoff. From there to Cooper Landing the trail conditions improve consistently, until, after Juneau Lake, you are essentially riding a four-wheeler trail.

We double parked at the Bean Creek “trailhead” which is off the Slaughter Creek road, which is in turn off Bean Creek Road, right past the bridge in Cooper Landing. The trailhead itself is a wide spot in the road, where you can pull off and out of the roadway. The road itself actually continues for another mile or two and generally gets worse as you go. I’d imagine that most cars could get in and out, with one rough spot that could be a problem. There’s a nice loop at the end for parking the car if you make it. Either way, you’re shaving about five miles of the run by parking there and not at the Resurrection Pass trailhead on the Sterling Highway. (2014 edit: And if you risk the road to the end, it’s only ~1.6 miles to the Resurrection Pass trail cutoff.)

All in all, it was a great trip. I can’t say the same for the other two trails I mentioned, but I’d definitely ride this one again.

Death by Illustrator

Alyosha

Why Delilah, WHY!!?

What dark little part of their collective Dilbertian mind did Adobe pull this decision from?

For over ten—nearly fifteen—years, I’ve edited .pdfs and for various clients. Since Adobe could long ago have turned Acrobat into Illustrator, or vice versa, it seemed obvious that they had no intention of cannibalizing sales by combining the functions of the two programs—FAR, FAR, from it. But fine, it was petty, but who could blame them: Acrobat would always be hobbled—SUCK—as an editor, and Illustrator would always be not-quite-pdf-savvy. I guess everyone pretended not to notice–except for maybe the people at Enfocus who have made a killing bridging the gap. Somewhat.

What’s not to like?

Actually I started editing .pdfs in Freehand just fine, but through various “means,” Adobe finally fixed that: who needs an editor that can open multiple pages .pdfs effectively? 

Nothing a few “upgrades” and a M&A couldn’t handle.

But for years, and including into the early CS years, Adobe played somewhat nice: you could edit a .pdf, but only one page at time, and of course don’t try to leap any tall design buildings in the process. 

Until CS4. 

With the advent of CS4, some odd things started happening: area text (or even point text) saved from a pdf is fractured RANDOMLY—fractured, broken apart, completely fried in the process. I’ve read of other problems, and assume this is just the tip of the iceberg. Adobe has made it plain by rod-to-the-knuckles Microsoftian/Faustian dictate that Thou Shalt Go Back Through ALL Our Software Titles to create your work. Don’t try to collate 25 pieces of simple line art for a client in a single pdf document, and make changes to that. Ohhhhh Noooooooo… they are forcing you to go back through the ENITRE publish process, editing your art in Illustrator, placing it in Indesign, then blasting it back out to a .pdf.

And I did notice this a couple of years back when CS4 came out, but though surely Adobe would mends their ways—or something. Not so: after fiddling with CS6 this afternoon, it looks like they’ve made up their collective mind.

Thanks Adobe, you’re headed exactly where Microsoft is going.

Caviar

Alyosha
I’ve had a couple of bad experiences with cured Sockeye roe, but was given some recently, and decided to let it rise or fall to the challenge of a proper caviar presentation.

The French Laundry Cookbook has a great recipe for blinis, there were fresh chives growing in the yard, and good cottage cheese in the fridge… I put it all together…

This was awesome — someone finally nailed the recipe — every bit as good as paddlefish roe (that sells in a lip-balm sized container for $70.) 
Recipe to follow at some point.

Russian Lakes Trail

Alyosha
Rode Russian Lakes Trail today. 
We doubled parked and rode it from Cooper Lake to the trailhead near Cooper Landing. Compared to my experience with Johnson Pass Trail (in late August), this was a bit easier, and we were able to average 5.9 mph — getting on the trail at 8:30, and off at about 1pm, for 22.2 miles. The trail conditions were good throughout, starting with great 4-wheeler track that gradually congealed into single track after 3-4 miles.  After that, there were the normal amount of roots, mud, and rocks, with the foliage (devil’s club) starting to close up the trail in several 100-150 yd sections. Probably about five miles from the Cooper Landing side, there is a creek/gully without a bridge that pretty much guarantees you’ll get your feet wet. The trail in general was in good shape.
Looking at the National Geographic map for the Chugach/Kenai NWR, there is a notation that this trail is rated “Difficult” where the Johnson Pass Trail is rated “Moderate.” That seems odd — if anything, Russian Lakes was easier (maybe just going from the high side to the low side made it a bit easier). But in general, the trail conditions — in terms of rocks, roots, mud, etc. — were the same. You could probably make the case that Johnson’s Pass is more dangerous in terms of drop-offs/gullies next to the trail. I was worried that the Russian Lakes would be “technical” in light of the rating on the map, but other than the amount of overgrowth (Johnson Pass was MUCH worse in late August in terms of grass and Devil’s Club) the two trails seem the same in most respects. 
Other than that, things got a bit tense from all the bear scat and bear precautions — and we did see one small Blackie (running away). There’s something to be said for seeing the wildlife from the tour bus — you’re definitely not quite at the top of the food chain when you leave your vehicle.

Those Cookies

Alyosha
After getting The Family Meal last October, and cooking the second meal in the book, the chocolate cookie recipe (cookies au chocolat), produced molten pools of goo, rather than cookies. That really bugged me, I remade the recipe about three times, and threw out a couple of attempts — got pissed and started scouring the internet. Other than a few glib, rah-rah reviews, no one had done this recipe and made it work. And no one had taken the cookbook in hand and seriously started parsing it out.

Hence this part of the blog — cooking through the entire book (now complete).

Eventually it seemed like a good idea to get a French version of the book to see if the many recipe errors were there as well, or if I simply had translations errors that were introduced when converting to imperial measurements for the America version. I received my copy of Repas de famille last week, and by and large, those errors are still there. Not all, but enough to leave me scratching my head. Maybe a few more posts on that.

The Cookies

Comparing the two books, there is serious oddness in how both the recipes are scaled — theoretically –by ONE FIFTH from 100 to 20 cookies. Some of the ingredients in the French version come down by 1:10, some by 1:5, and some that don’t make any sense at all. This pretty much parallels that same acid trip scaling that the English (American) version suffers from.

So let’s just not scale it down, and go right to the 100 cookie version — that smaller version is too weird to decipher — besides, everyone likes 100 cookies, right?

So, looking at the French version, and comparing it to the American version, only the quantity of dark chocolate has been screwed up in the metric-to-imperial measurements: the quantity of dark chocolate is listed in the American version at 1.1 pounds, where it should be 1.8 pounds (825grams). The callout for the white and dark pieces is actually translated correctly. It’s not really relevant here, since the error lies deeper.

This is where I think the serious error occurred: in the recipe there are two chocolate callouts: one for the dark, and one for dark and white pieces. The recipe, however, tells you to take two-thirds of the dark for melting, and add the rest with the white. There is no mention of simply using the 225 grams of “white and dark pieces” called out in the ingredients. The amount of chocolate has then, in all likelihood, been inadvertently upped by one third or so.

Let’s back up and say that the TOTAL amount of chocolate called for is 825 grams, and that there is possibly 150 grams of white chocolate in the mix (see the picture). So now you have roughly 750 grams of dark chocolate, 150 of white. If you take one third of the 750 grams of dark chocolate and roughly chop that with the white, you melt the 500 grams with the butter and put the remaining 250 grams with the white for folding in later.

The only other thing is that the five-spice mixture and instant coffee in both recipes is called out at 1 c. à. c. (translates directly to 1 tsp. or 5ml). That seemed stupid since the instant coffee must act as some sort of binder [[2016 Edit: Bullshit — it was just for flavor]], so I upped both to 1 c. à. s. (translates to 1 Tbl. or 15 ml).

It worked.

Unlike the other failed attempts, the frozen mixture pulled away cleanly from the parchment paper (that you wrapped it in for freezing), and after baking for 10 minutes at 350º — they looked like the picture as well. COOL THEM OFF as fast as you can. They kicked ass.

Mystery solved, here are the proportions for 100 from the French version (and my corrections to the chocolate quantities). Also, freeze the dough overnight, it needs it.

Vanilla bean: 1
Eggs: 5
Sugar: 400g
Butter: 85g
Dark Chocolate 75% ( I used 72%): 750g
White Chocolate: 150g
Flour: 85g
Five-Spice powder: 1TABLEspoon
Instant coffe: 1 TABLEspoon