Winter Solitude – Note Card 987

A solitary cross-country skier travels through fresh snow as a winter sunset casts shadows across an Alaska meadow. Cross-country skiing is so popular in Alaska, ten of the twenty nominees to the USA 2019-2020 National Cross-Country Ski Team were either born in Alaska and/or trained in Alaska at the Alaska Pacific University Nordic Ski Center. In 2018 Kikkan Randall, born and raised in Anchorage, along with her teammate, Jessie Diggins, won the United States’ first ever cross-country skiing gold medal in the women’s team sprint free event at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. This image won first place in the National Wildlife Magazine’s 2018 photo contest and was taken in Spaulding Meadows in Juneau, Alaska.