Skating into spring
March 29, 2026
Two sparkling spring days of Nordic skating on Kenai Lake and Wasilla Creek
The spring season is a sort of month-long ‘opposites day’ for Nordic skaters. That early season excitement is gone, but the long, warm days make skating infinitely more pleasant. Most lake ice is incredibly thick (no poking every five feet with an ice pole!), but the surface bears the cracks, bumps, and gaps that come with months of wintertime weathering. It’s the best of times, it’s the bumpiest of times, the age of sunshine and the age of barely making it out the door because you’re already thinking about backpacking.
Nevertheless, despite its contradictions and complexities, late-season skating trips are often some of the most memorable of the year. The sights, sounds, ice, and experiences are unlike anything from the early to mid-season. ‘Don’t sleep on spring skating’ is a reminder I’ve frequently given to others… and also to myself.
March 12: Kenai Lake
On March 12, Allie Heaslet, Adrienne Voss and I hit the road for Kenai Lake. We’d been glancing at near-real-time satellite imagery of the lake for weeks, wondering if it might be possible to skate it from one end to the other. Kenai Lake zig-zags just over 22 miles through the Kenai Mountains, and different sections of the lake typically freeze up months apart. An end-to-end trip would be a true bucket-list accomplishment.
Judging from the imagery, the northern portions of the lake looked largely snowed over today. But it appeared that the recent snow either hadn’t fallen on the lake east of Porcupine island (toward the center of the lake) or had been blown clear. We parked at Primrose, at the lake’s southern end, and set out into the mid-morning sun.
Adrienne skating across Kenai Lake
Early-season ice typically forms in a short time under a narrow range of conditions, and is usually consistent enough to describe with a few words. This was different. This ice surface was a ‘living’ record of an entire winter’s swinging temps, sunlight, wind, and snow. There were bumps, cracks, broken plates, drifts, and rotten ice… not to mention some shockingly smooth sections, too. It was a true ‘everything bagel’ of wild ice.
That said, while late-season ice like this keeps you on your toes there is a payoff: an unmatched range of beautiful patterns, textures, and colors. Some sections of Kenai Lake were covered with impressionistic splatters of refrozen ice chunks, while black ice and snow ice swirled together in others like a giant glass marble. Cracks descended multiple feet down into the teal water, some shimmering with an iridescent rainbow-like effect caused by solar radiation.
Ice patterns on Kenai Lake
The ice improved significantly as we rounded Black Mountain and began skating west. I started to think we might actually be able to reach Porcupine Island, still a few miles away, but we were stopped by several bands of broken-up and refrozen plates spanning the width of the lake. We stepped, slipped, and slid over the first band, reaching a big patch of younger ice with a heavy orange peel surface, but decided the juice wasn’t really worth the squeeze. Life is too short for bad ice… especially when there’s great ice right behind you.
Allie and Adrienne navigating refrozen ice plates on Kenai Lake
On the way back we stopped for a snack break in the sun, and I took a few minutes to snap photos of Adrienne’s brand new L10-Y Nordic skates. I liked how the rainbow blend of colors on the L10-Y picked up the shimmering multicolored sparkle of the spring ice. Even though I spend a ton of time making Nordic skates, I never really know how they’ll look on the ice. The L10-Y exceeded expectations.
Adrienne’s L10-Y Nordic skates on Kenai Lake. We make some pretty dang nice Nordic skates, don’t we?
Later that night I spliced together a few video clips from the day, including an impromptu ice pole duel between Allie and Adrienne. I set the video to one of Max Richter’s Vivaldi recompositions for extra-maximum dramatic effect and uploaded it to Instagram, thinking it was a fun way to remember the day. Not long after, I was on the phone with a fellow skating professional who asked ‘you have a couple daughters, right?’ I was confused, and he said he’d seen my clip of the two little girls fighting with the ice poles on Kenai Lake.
I couldn’t stop laughing. Luckily, Allie and Adrienne seemed to find the mix-up as funny as I did. Granted, it’s hard to tell how old people are when they’re bundled up in winter gear, but I also took it as yet more evidence that Nordic skating brings out everyone’s inner child.
March 29: Wasilla Creek
Southcentral Alaska had an unseasonably cold March, and the ice was holding on tenaciously. The only problem was that the snow was, too. Luckily, the Anchorage/Mat-Su region has numerous microclimates and high wind had put the Palmer Hay Flats back in play. There had been a number of tempting ice reports from the Cottonwood Creek area and Rabbit Slough, but after browsing the satellite imagery I thought nearby Wasilla Creek had potential.
On March 29, Daniel Volland, Bronté Smith and I headed out to see if the squiggly turquoise pixels on the imagery corresponded to skateable ice. We parked on the shoulder of Nelson Road, skated across the roadside lagoons, and then walked about half a mile through sparse grasses till we reached the headwaters of Wasilla Creek.
Bronté skating the very top of Wasilla Creek
The top of the creek was very narrow — only a few feet in places — before it widened out about a quarter-mile downstream. As is common with small late-season waterways, a large crack ran down its center and the creek had ‘domed’ up, making the ice slightly higher than the surrounding grassland. The ice looked to be at least three or four feet thick, and in clearer areas we could gaze down through layer upon layer of cracks and bubbles.
Wasilla Creek. The red skate is a super duper top secret Ermine prototype.
I’d last skated Wasilla Creek on January 22, with Allie, Kurtis Adams, and Sarah Bahan. The creek (which is really more of a partially intertidal slough) was velvety smooth that day, and the skating was fast. Today, the ice was bumpy and slightly rotten at the edges, and we had to constantly look out for cracks (including the canyon-like crack running down the center of the creek). The spring sun had turned every lily pad into a dark pothole. It was a beautiful day, but the skating was tricky and a little treacherous.
Wild ice and wild scenery on Wasilla Creek
I was hoping we’d reach the intertidal part of the creek, where I thought we might find smooth ice. But just as on Kenai Lake, eventually we reached a point where we decided that it just wasn’t worth it to press on. We spun around and headed back up the creek.
Bronté weaving between grasses on the Hay Flats
A good day on the ice always ends with a good (or at least big) meal. On the way back to Anchorage we decided on Texas Roadhouse, themed after one of the least wintery states in the US. Behind us the ice continued to melt under the late afternoon sun, and in front of us was a bowl of honey butter, a half rack of ribs, and a whole lot of summer.
- Paxson Woelber has been a dedicated Nordic skater and advocate for wild ice skating since 2016. In 2021, he founded Ermine Skate, North America's first Nordic skate company. Today, Ermine offers a range of premium Nordic skates and Nordic skating products designed for wild ice.