This Is My Secret: The Blog and Website of Writer Kristin Cashore

With apologies for my recent failure to update my appearance schedule (and everything else too) -- if you're in New York and if you're at Book Expo, I'll be signing ARCs of Jane, Unlimited tomorrow from 2 to 3 at the Penguin booth. Come and get them! :)

While Kevin was off hiking on his own...
I treated myself to something special.

I boarded a little red plane...

And we flew to Denali. Click on any picture to embiggen.

We flew all the way around Denali.

We flew low over glaciers.

We flew so close to the peaks!

Did I mention I got to sit in the cockpit? That's Chip flying the plane.



Then guess what we did?
Some hikers needed a pickup...
So we landed in the Ruth Glacier Gorge.
We landed on a glacier!

The plane landed on skis.

It was silent, except for the occasional avalanche. It was HUGE.

A day like this called for a snow angel.

Thank you, K2 Aviation and Denali National Park, for this unforgettable experience. There are no words, so just click on this picture.

At my beautiful writing cabin in Talkeetna, Alaska, overlooking the mountains of Denali National Park, I took pictures....



While Kevin, preparing for his solo hiking trip, counted calories in chocolate, pasta, jerky, etc. to make sure he was bringing enough.


It was a big job, but eventually, everything he needed -- food, water, layers, tent, stove, fuel, sleeping bag, thermarest, GoPro, snowshoes, etc., etc. -- was in the pack.


Even after he fell asleep, I was still taking pictures.


In the morning, the mountain was out.

We drove to Denali State Park, home of Kesugi Ridge, where Kevin would be hiking. He hydrated....

Put on his gaiters....


And then he was off.

On the drive on my way back to my writing cabin, I took another picture of Denali...

For you see,  though I'm officially writing while Kevin's away, I also have a mountain-themed adventure of my own on my planner. More soon here on the blog :).

In Eagle River, Alaska, we did another overnight hike and camp.

This time we made a point of practicing with the GoPro, which is a small, rugged, waterproof outdoor camera. It creates a bit of a fishbowl effect. In real life, the trees weren't really bending toward me :).













For the next leg of our Alaska adventure, Kevin is going to be hiking the Kesugi Ridge trail for a few days alone while I write at a cabin in the town of Talkeetna. More pics to come! And by the way, if these blog posts seem to be coming faster than we could possibly doing these adventures, it's because I have WiFi rarely. So I save blog posts up and publish them when I get a chance. So, no, we did not actually hike back from Carter Lake, visit Exit Glacier and Hatcher Pass, and start out on an overnight at Eagle River all in one day :).

Pictures this time, with just a few words.

We started up a fairly steep, winding dirt path, wanting to see if it led to a beautiful and isolated spot where we might make camp for the night.

After a while, we realized that given the steepness of the terrain, we should really go back down to the car and get our gear. Why do this climb twice?

Shortly thereafter, with packs on our backs, we started up the path again. Our packs contained food, a tent, two sleeping bags, two Thermarests (camping mattresses), a lot of water, and warm layers, and let’s be honest, Kevin was carrying most of it. I can carry a decent pack, but I don’t have a lot of experience carrying a heavy pack up steep terrain.

We had a map to our hoped-for destination, but it quickly became clear that the map showed a pretty straight representation of a path that was actually composed of steep switchbacks. Occasionally, a section of the path was covered with clumpy snow. Ah yes, we thought. We’ll be encountering occasional snow. 

We reached an unexpected stream that…