The last day in Alaska arrived with the long drive back to Anchorage waiting for us, but we weren’t about to leave without one more ski.

We stopped by the ranger station and ran into Tucker, who years ago had lived in Eldora and patrolled at the mountain. Life takes people to interesting places, and now he’s a Denali ranger. It was good to reconnect. He pulled out a map and started pointing to trails we hadn’t skied yet, the kind of local knowledge that only comes from someone who spends a lot of time out there.

With a few new ideas in mind we swung by the bakery, grabbed some pastries, and headed for the trail.

Right away these trails felt different. They wound through low rolling hills that rose and fell beneath the forest. Ancient glacial moraines, Tucker had said. The hills made for fantastic cross-country skiing: endless little swoops and whoops that let you glide, dip, climb, and glide again.

It started snowing hard not long after we set out. Thick flakes falling through the trees. That made our choice to stay low in the forest and off the tundra feel like a good one.

We skied past beautiful frozen lakes and wound through some of the best trails we’d found on the trip. One section was called Roller Coaster, and it skied exactly like the name suggests: a flowing rhythm of short climbs and quick little descents that had us laughing as we skied along.

The only other person we saw all day was a man running a team of dogs down the trail. Something about dog mushing has always appealed to me. Watching that team glide past through the falling snow made me wonder if that might be a hobby worth exploring someday.

One of the highlights came near the end of the ski when the trail carried us through a dense stand of black spruce. Black spruce forests feel deeply northern. These are the last trees before the land gives way to tundra. Skiing through them feels like stepping into a Jack London story, the quiet broken only by skis sliding through soft snow and the occasional creak of a tree in the cold.

Eventually, though, it was time to go.

We drove back to Anchorage through a full-on snowstorm that shrunk the world down to the headlights and the white lines in the road. We stopped in the city for some shockingly good Indian food, then grabbed a few hours of sleep before the long flight home.

From the airplane window the mountains stretched along the horizon in silhouette above a sea of clouds glowing orange with the sunrise. Alaska fading slowly behind us.

By the time we got to our home in Colorado it was nearly eleven at night. The trip felt finished, but something about the symmetry of it all pulled me back outside. I clicked into my skis and headed down toward the river for a short glide under the night sky.

Halfway along the ice cracked beneath my skis with a sharp report that echoed in the darkness.

On the way back I noticed two red eyes watching from the edge of the trail. A lynx stood quietly in the shadows, evaluating me for a moment before slipping back into the trees.

Wild place to wild place.

That felt good.