Aki, it’s a nasty day. We are in the living room, looking at wet snow coming out of the sky. In a few minutes it turns into rain. It’s going to come down as rain for the rest of the day. Hoping that the weather will be better, if not colder, near the glacier, we drive out the Mendenhall Campground. 

            Aki’s other adult owner has come as well. Even though the ground at the parking lot is covered with five inches of new, wet snow, the other adult human clamps on her skate skis. Given the soft snow conditions, I figure that she’d do better on her classic skis. As I slide easily in a nice ski track at the beginning of the trail, she struggles. Then we reach the place where a snow machine packer has started to pack down the trail. He wiped out the classic ski tracks, forcing me to bounce over snow made bumpy by the snow machine. That turns the rest of my stay at the campground into a scrabble for the best surface for my skis. But Aki and her other human are able to fly down the packed trail.