If this trip had gone as planned I'd do a full write up but I (and likely most others) have mixed feelings about this one so am just posting the photos.

The very short story is 18 of us showed to McCarthy betting on a bad weather forecast and we lost big time. Already warm weather had turned the snow isothermal and an incoming system the day we set off dealt the final blow. Within a few hours of starting it was raining on the Nizina River which turned to wet heavy sleet soaking everyone. Malcom and I were in a front gang of 9 that broke trail about 30 miles to near the toe of the Nizina Glacier. We all dove into our bags and had a damp night out. In the morning it was still raining with no freeze. Snow conditions worse. The consensus among out group was that travel would be too slow going to force it, and concerns of wet slide avalanches on otherwise trivial slopes would be too dangerous to manage. We all broke camp, put on our still wet travel clothes and bailed back to McCarthy in a soaking rain with increasing intensity.

The change in conditions within 24 hrs was quite shocking. The already bad snow was just slop, with water in our ski tracks. Pools of water formed in any low spot we skied through and entire sections of river ice on the Nizina had broken away. The road we effortlessly skate skied out of McCarthy the day prior was a sloppy mess of slush and the final mile though town and back to the B&B were standing water, pools of slush and glare ice.

We all dried out at the B&B and socialized as Dave arranged logistics for us all to get out of McCarthy. It was good fun telling stories and making new friends, however the collective mood slowly dropped when the novelty wore off and we realized we were all going home without a big wilderness experience.

With that, from a grey window in Anchorage - I look foreword to March 2020!

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