Hello climbers, tourists, and adventure-seekers worldwide. Welcome to our 2011 season and our second attempt at keeping an active shop blog.
We at Exit Glacier Guides have a pretty cool thing going on in our shop, and we're happy to chat about it around campfires in town (and with a glass of whiskey here and there), so this year we're going to try our best to keep a ledger of our adventures online on this here blog. This will again be an experiment for us – we're not really sure whether the blogging road that we're about to stumble upon will lead us deep into the woods or onto the impartial sunlit trails back home. This is fairly unscouted territory for us and for the guides, but perhaps we can provide an insight into what it is like to live in Seward, AK during a summer while working in the outdoor community day after day – for whatever that is worth to posterity. We're not writers but we'd like to share some of the experiences we are fortunate enough to have here in Seward.
This winter was exciting for all of our guides – all of whom are returning from last season, we are proud to say. There were graduations, winter ascents, ski-bum training, North Slope polar bear sightings, and adventures in Thailand. Soon there will be off-season stories shared around bonfires on the river and yarns stretched as far as next week. Everyone in our shop is slowly starting to find their way back to Seward's frosted adamantium mountains and the busy season is fast approaching a town that has been sleepy for six months, and we're all very excited to get started.
This year, in the shop, we are going to be running our helicopter tours for the second season. We had great feedback on these adventures from last year, and we're excited with what we can offer this year up on the alpine ice. We actually enjoyed the helicopter so much last year that we used it to kick off our end-of-season adventure with all of our guides and flew to a remote alpine valley, where we climbed a first-ascent on a local peak and then explored an ice field until our toes went numb and our beards grew brittle, all as our hearts grew brighter. The range is amazing around this town.
We're also still running our veggie-powered bus out of the shop, something that has been a four-year experiment in alternative energy. We're getting better than ever at filtering waste fryer oil for the engine – we're actually to the point where we savor the smell of hot veggie oil. It could be considered strange.
If you have a chance, check back here sometime and see where this blog takes us. We plan to have shop news as well as reflections on the local outdoor scene here in Seward. If you're in the neighborhood, please join us on one of our trips. We've continued to have great feedback from the folks that have joined us on adventures, and we hope to provide some pretty awesome experiences this summer, too.
Here's to a great summer for everyone!