Haystack Mountain

On Tuesday during our Christmas trip to Alaska, we decided to go sledding down Haystack Mountain. Now, this is no pansy sledding trip: this about a mile trail down a mountain, through the woods. The car drops you off at the top, and then meets you at the bottom to take you up again. It's AWESOME. And even though it was like -15 in town, it's up in the mountains so it was a balmy 15 degrees above zero.

Sadly, I am really, really bad at it. Ok. Let me give you an example. My first run down, everyone passed me. I could sled for about 100 feet before I inevitably biffed it. My problem was that the trail would turn, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to turn in the direction I wanted to go, so either I would run into a snow bank or I would bail out when it looked like I might hit a tree. Anyway, so I'm trying to get down the stupid mountain, when suddenly I see people... climbing toward me... it's Tyler and Orin, who apparently had time to go down to the bottom, get people worried enough that they sent someone to start climbing back up the mountain looking for me... to make sure I hadn't been trampled by a moose or eaten by a wolf, I suppose.... by the time I got to the bottom, I stumbled out of the woods and there was Jordan, who started laughing at the fact that I'm utterly covered in tons of packed on snow, and he asks me, "Wait, is that bark on your nose? How did you get bark on your nose? Did you run into a tree?" No, I didn't run into a tree! That's why it took me so long, because I was trying to not run into trees!

So, on the next run, we all decided that for every one time I make it down the hill, everyone else would go down two times. This turned out to be hauntingly true. I would be trying to get down the hill (I did get faster every time, in my defence), and Jordan and his brothers would pass me. Twice.

On the last run, I finally managed to get down before the guys made it down twice. VICTORY FOR AMANDA!

It really was a lot of fun. Painful, cold, but fun.