Winter Turns to Spring

Winter finally turned to Spring a few weeks back. It feels good. The sun is back in the sky longer than we can stay awake. Buds are coming out on the Aspen and Birch trees trying to turn the forest from brown to green. Migratory birds are slowly showing up for their summer mating rituals and filling the air with songs. One of the grandest benefits of spring is the opening up of once frozen rivers. In the Fairbanks area most of the rivers are just now becoming ice free. Some rivers, such as the Delta Clearwater, open and are free of ice sooner than others. Because of this the Delta Clearwater tends to be the traditional first trip of the season for many boaters.

Becky and I normally float the river as a day trip but this year we decided to join a group of friends and turn it into an over night trip. It turned out to be one of the nicest weekends we've seen in a long time. There was not a cloud in the sky and the temperatures got as high as the mid-70s.

Becky solo paddling an Ally canoe.

First flowers of the season.

My lovely bride keeping me out of trouble.

My Peeps Are In The House

As many of you know, Becky and I got 9 laying hens last May from some friends of ours. They raised the birds from chickhood so they were full grown and already laying eggs when we got them. That made for a nice gradual transition into raising birds. This is most likely the last summer for most of the flock since they are getting old and their egg production is dropping.... I have a feeling we will be eating lots of chicken soup this winter. Keeping chickens in the arctic is not necessarily easy in the winter when it's -40F for weeks on end, but it's fun. When summer finally comes around and the ladies are able to be let loose in the run it's even more enjoyable. With that in mind, this year I could not resist getting more chickens.One of the local feed stores in town sales day old baby chicks this time of year so I went down and picked some up. We got a variety of breeds primarily based on egg production and cold hardness. Those are what I call my business birds because they are doing what they were hired to do. We also got a Polish for her fashion statement with her crazy head feathers. She is still pretty small so her adult plumage has not developed yet but when it does she will look like someone combed her hair with a firecracker. We started out by getting just 9 chicks just barely larger than a fuzzy golf ball. A week went by before I lost all restraint and went back for 4 more. We now have 13 chicks and 8 adult birds.

The pictures above were taken just after we got them. They've doubled in size in the last week and a half and started flapping their wings. All our ladies are layers so we won't be eating them any time soon but each time they stretch their wings I can't help but picture them covered in hot sauce on a plate with ranch dressing.

Alaska Range Cabin Trip

Becky and I woke up early Saturday morning, finished packing our bags, loaded the dogs in the car and headed south. Our first destination was Coal Mine Rd., just over two hours south of Fairbanks along the Richardson Hwy where it slices through the Alaska Range. There we met a group of friends for a 5 mile ski into a reasonably remote public use cabin operated by the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game.

Snow was falling at the trail head when we got there leaving the location of the mountains a mystery to Becky and I. With only a 1/4 mile visibility at best allot was left to the imagination. Even with the grand vista potential being gone the ski in was still incredibly beautiful. Fresh snow had just fallen and was still falling, rabbits and ptarmigan kept crossing our paths and temperatures where finally feeling warm after a long cold winter.We got to the cabin around dinner time, a fire was started inside while a few of us set up tents. The cabin sleeps 8 people but with 13 folks in the group we needed additional housing for the night. The evening carried on with good conversation, games and a bit of recreational skiing around the area. The next morning we woke up to a spectacular view of the mountains and not a cloud in the sky. I had to take the pictures above as evidence for later to make sure I was not dreaming or hallucinating from eating Steve's moose sausage for breakfast. We really could not have asked for a better weekend.

Open North American Sled Dog Race

Last weekend Fairbanks hosted the 64th annual Open North American Championship sled dog race. This three day race comprises of twenty mile sprints the first two days and a thirty mile sprint the third day. It's hard to convey how much fun it is to watch a sled dog event. The only comparison I can really think of is to have you imagine how excited your dog gets when you pull out the leach to take them for a walk around the neighborhood. If your dog doesn't go crazy with enthusiasm something is wrong. Now add another twelve dogs to that leach and watch the energy explode! The races are particularly exciting at the start where the dogs are waiting for their chance to run. Once in their harnesses and hooked into the line they start jumping and barking with excitement, then...... the snow hook is released from the sled, the dogs are free to run, and all goes silent as you see the dogs focus on their task at hand.

50 Years of Statehood

January 3, 1959 President Eisenhower signed the official declaration making Alaska the 49th state. With a little elementary math it's easy to figure out that means this year Alaska celebrated it's 50th anniversary. And what better way to celebrate 50 years than an extravagant display of fireworks. Becky and I have the good fortune of having a friend that works for the Geophysical Institute. That may not seem like much on the surface, but that friend has keys, and those keys were able to get us on top of the tallest building on the UAF campus which was right beside the firework launch location. Ahhh... what a good friend and what a great firework display.
Side note, other historical notables celebrating 50 years this year include: Castro becomes leader of Cuba as the Cuban Revolution unfolds, the Dalai Lama was run out of Tibet by the Chinese invasion, the USSR launches Luna 1 becoming the first craft to leave Earth's orbit, and Barbie makes her first debut.

Ice Art

Every spring, as the sun starts coming back and the temperatures consistently stay above -20F, all the pent up energy from a cold dark winter manifest itself in creative ways. In March one of the most intriguingly popular events is the World Ice Art Championships. That's right, people pay to enter a competition where they stand around their very own piece of ice, spend a week carving some shape from their imagination, then watch it melt.

The displays created at this event are no small feat of artistry. With sculptures ranging from 1-10 blocks of ice, each block about 6'x4'x3' in size, the size of these objects are breath taking. And the detail..... the detail is phenomenal! Most competitors start by rough cutting their shape with a chainsaw followed with more detail oriented tools such as chisels, files, hair dryers and sand paper. Their imagination is the limitation on their tools.

As one of my favorites from this year, Godzilla stands at close to thirty feet tall with a small crushed bi-wing plane in his upper hand. To see more on the event go to: http://www.icealaska.com/

Race Hard Play Hard

On your mark... Get set.... Go! It's time for the dogs to earn their keep. Becky, Charlie, Riga and I have been involved with a local group of fun loving folks (and dogs) in the greater Fairbanks area that like to get together once a month during the winter months to race. It's completely informal. No entry fee. No official organizer. No ESPN coverage (yet). Some time before the snow falls the dates and locations are set for the season. Here is how it works: As long as you are non motorized you can compete. The most common form of competing is skiing, skijoring and dog mushing but on occasion someone will run or bike the course. Normally you would not think a team of 8 dogs would be fair against a skier or runner. True, so a point deduction system is used where you get a set number of minutes added to your time for each dog. Strategy plays a big part in preparing for the big day. Do you take two fast dogs and travel light or four steady dogs with good endurance and sacrifice the minutes? Beck and I only have two dogs (one if you consider Charlie lets Riga do all the pulling) so we skijor with two. They are not the fastest dogs but it's a grand ol' time. So far our best placing was 10th out of 70 competitors. We don't have fancy high dollar prizes such as the Chevy truck the Iditarod hands out but we do get prizes for top finishers. Normally it's something inappropriately funny from the thrift store. That's all for now, I've got to get back to training for next month's race.

Hot Spring Heaven

Alaska is a hot bed of geologic activity. With it's proximity along the northern extent of the ring of fire we have everything from erupting volcanoes to glaciers and actively moving faults causing earth quakes. This may not seem appealing when considering a move here (this is the stuff the tourism board leaves out of the brochure). The plus side is that due to these unique features we also have a fair amount of geothermic activity which often leads to hot springs. That's right, hot springs all over the state. Some are car accessible with resorts built up around them, others are more remote and require a bit of effort to reach. One of the local favorites around the Fairbanks area is Tolovana Hot Springs. The shortest way to get there requires an 11 mile ski, walk, or snow machine in to get there from the road system but you are rewarded when you get there with a nice dry cabin to stay in. With this tempting treat close to home Becky and I decided to head out there with a couple of friends, and of course the dogs, for a three day weekend. When we left Fairbanks the temperatures were around -10F with the forecast ranging from high to low. From the trail head we decided to walk the 11 miles in and pull sleds with our food and gear. We got to the hot spring just after dark, started the fire in the cabin and started to soak in the tubs under the starts. What a beautiful place.

Saturday was spent relaxing, hiking around the area and playing cards in the evening along with more soaking in the tubs. Temperatures remained around -20F. Sunday morning we woke up to temps close to -30F and a fairly stiff wind blowing. As nice as it would have been to stay in the cabin until spring, we had to get moving. So we had a filling breakfast, suited up, and headed out. It was easy to dress from the cold when the wind was not blowing but add the wind and it's hard to hide from. Tip: when you are in subzero temps do not face into the wind to pee. Everyone managed to keep moving and stay warm until we got back to the cars. The parking lot is known for being the windiest and coldest place of the entire trip. Needless to say, many cars have trouble starting when it's that cold. Fortunately our truck started with only a little effort. The other cars in the parking lot had to be jump started due to cold batteries. Sure it was cold, but what a great time we had. Now if we can talk someone into putting hot tubs in the parking lot we will have it made.

Peru 2008

It's taken a while to sort through all the photos from Peru. For all the patient people out there here is a quick run down of our trip in December and a few pics.

I'll take a walk on the wild side and cut to the closing statement here in the opening.... The trip was wildly enriching and well worth the time and money spent to be there. Great times were has by all. As with any travels it would not be an adventure if everything went according to script. With that in mind our trip started out true to adventure fashion. We had the typical late departures out of Fairbanks and Seattle due to snow storm delays out of the Seattle airport. No big deal. Things got interesting when we arrived in Atlanta to the minute of when the flight to Lima was suppose to depart. The Delta folks made a blanket statement on the plane that due to our late arrival no one should try to make their flights and that Delta would make sure folks got to their destination ASAP. We figured, what the hell, since we were going to be stuck in an airport for a while waiting for a new flight we might as well run to our next flight on the off chance it was running late like the rest. With Atlanta being the large airport that it is we had to run down the terminal, down the escalator, ride the subway two terminals over then back up the escalators to ground level. Out of excitement of the moment we unloaded the subway and followed the crowd (neither of us saw directional signs so we played the odds). We were bobbing and weaving through the elderly and little children to get to our gate at break neck speeds. Little did we know the one-way escalators took us straight out of security and into baggage claim with no way to retreat. After a brief moment of shock and sinking spell of defeat we realized we weren't defeated until we saw that there was no plane at the gate... so we ran back to security, took shoes off, emptied our pockets, got through screening and started running again. Three minutes later and pretty sweaty we arrived at a closed gate with two other Peruvians begging to be let on as well. They had arrived on a late flight like us. The plane was still sitting at the gate. With a bit of pleading the lady let us on. Near miss on that one. The down side is that they had given away our seats so we had to separate but what excitement on the chase. We remained on the plane at the gate for over 25 minutes after they let us on. Glad we tried.

We woke up early the next day in Lima and found a bus to take us to Huaraz in the middle of the Peruvian Andes. Out of the city, into the mountains. The bus ride was mostly at night so I can't give you any mind blowing descriptions of a beautiful ride, it was dark on winding roads, but waking up the next morning in Huaraz was breath taking (figuratively and literally). The mountains were amazingly beautiful and the air was noticeably thin from the altitude of about 10,000 ft. But not as thin as it was going to get when we moved to 12,000 feet to stay at a little lodge in the mountains. It was noticeably difficult to breath and any physical effort left us light headed.
The lodge, The Way Inn, was 15km out of town and past any development with tremendous hiking opportunities right out the front door in the Cordillera Blanca (White Mountains). The first day we were both so winded coming straight from sea level that a 200 yard walk from our room was a victory in itself. Day two I had food poisoning which made a 50 yard trek tough. Day three I was feeling well enough to go about a mile. Day four a new visitor came to the lodge. A visitor who happens to live one mile away from us in Fairbanks and did not know. With our new found friend we headed off into the mountains for a nice day long trek.

We moved from The Way Inn back to Huaraz for the rest of the trip with one excursion to Chavin de Huantar on the other side of the Cordillera Blanca. Chavin is a pre-Incan archaeological site dating back to about 900 BC. The road to the ruins took us over a high pass with lots of switch backs and sharp drop offs with no guard rails. While very few cars/buses go off the side, the road is intimidating enough that Spanish missionaries erected a 100ft tall Jesus statue at the top of the pass to bless travelers on their journeys.

After Chavin we moved back to Huaraz for the duration. From there we spent our days exploring the myriad of markets with everything from chickens and pigs hanging from hooks in the butcher booths to clothes, dishes and crafts. Two different days we hired a taxi through our hostel to take us to different valleys in the Andes for day hikes.

There really is no way to use words to describe the mountain scenery so these pictures will have to do.

All in all the trip was a big success until..... We arrived at the Lima airport for departure with no problems. Stood in line to get our boarding passes with no problems. Exchanged the last of our Peruvian currency no problem. 30 minutes before boarding we had a problem. Becky started to feel sick to her stomach which took her to the bathroom. They started boarding the plane, I still saw no Becky. When she finally came out she looked pale and drained but said she was good to board the plane (what other option did we have if we did not want to buy new tickets, right?). While we were standing in the gang way, Becky doing her best to stand in the slowly moving line without hurling on the elderly lady in front of us, we hear someone hit the floor..... "That man just fell, we need help!" came from 20 feet back. Followed by, "Oh, that was the drunk dude in the bar.... I think he just past out". So we continued to move to our seats while the airline folks took the drunk guy away in an ambulance. Over the next 7 hours, from Lima to Atlanta, Becky filled......I don't want to be too graphic here. lets just say she was as sick as I've every seen anyone from food poisoning and it could not have been at a worst time. By the time we reached Atlanta Becky had it mostly out of her system but was very exhausted and doing her best to hold down water and food.

There is so much more to say and many more stories to embellish but those will have to wait until next time. Until then.

Good night Peru.

Winter is finally here

“Tuesday was the coldest day of the current cold wave with a high temperature of 41 below at Fairbanks International Airport and a low of 47 below. It was the second straight day that the temperature at the airport failed to climb above 40 below.” –Fairbanks Daily News Miner-

Oh yeah, and it's dark too. Regardless, it is good to be back home with our dogs and chickens. And to all of you lower 48ers, the new rules of the game are 'no complaining about cold temperatures in your area to a Fairbankian unless you are within 10 degrees of our temps'.

Night Fall

I remember as a kid little things like fire flies, tree frogs and being able to see the Milky Way on a dark moonless nights. Then one day all that seemed to vanish. The fire flies seemed to disappear along with the tree frogs and light pollution from "civilization" (I use it here as a dirty word, pardon my language) obliterated the Milky Way. Fortunately Becky and I are now living in an area of relatively little light pollution where on a good night the Milky Way can still be seen. Of course, a good night in Fairbanks this time of year starts sometime around 4pm and last until 9:30am and is somewhere in the temperature range of zero Fahrenheit to minus forty Fahrenheit. Cold but beautiful. And for the lucky few the Aurora will dance in the sky with the Milky Way in the back drop. Becky and I are doing well and wish everyone of you a happy holiday season.

Chicken Little

Don't mess with the ladies in the coop. Harriet is on guard and ready to mess up any intruders if they try to rumble with the other ladies. Give them fresh greens, grains and grit and no one will get hurt.

Aurora Borealis

Here we are, sinking back into the depths of another subarctic winter. October brought early snow and proved to be one of the coldest Octobers in recorded history. Oddly enough it made for a very nice fall. Once the trees finished turning brilliant yellows, reds and oranges the leaves dropped to the ground followed closely by snow falling to the ground. There was enough snow on the ground by mid-October to start cross country skiing. While this time of year is great for leaves falling and snow flying it is also one of the prime times to view the Aurora Borealis. Three factors play into this: 1) it's dark which means the Aurora can be seen if it's active, 2) it's cold but not too cold which means the night's sky is clearer but not unbearable to stand outside in for extended time periods and 3) planetary alignment is ideal for solar storms to activate the lights (trust me on this one, you don't want me to get started on the explanation). With all this in mind I went for a walk with my camera for a few hours a couple of nights ago to star gaze and hopefully see some Auroral activity. JACK POT! The forecast predicted a moderately active night which ended up being a bit off. It was one of the most active nights I've seen in a few years. Keep in mind when you look at the above picture that the color you see takes place 70-200 miles above the Earth's surface and moves like curtains in the wind.... a very dynamic process and aw inspiring. For more information check out http://www.gedds.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast/

Early Snows

October arrived with a different face this year. In past years October was known as the drab, brown, leafless, rainy/snowy, frozen rain transition time of year with no recreational benefits. Could not run or bike because the trails were either ankle deep mud or ice but could not ski because there was no snow. This year things are different.... nothing but snow (and a little sunshine)! Once snow started falling the temperatures never got warm enough to melt what was on the ground. Total snow pack is somewhere around 11 inches which is close to a record for this time of year and the cross country skiing is great. The ski areas started grooming the trails last week. In years past I can remember no possibility of skiing until well after Thanksgiving. No complaints.

Denali Road Lottery

Once a year, in late September, Denali National Park opens up the Park to private vehicles. But as you can guess, if the opening was unregulated everyone would rush in with chaos resulting. To keep things under control the Park holds a lottery from which 100 lucky winners per day (for 4 days) are allowed to drive their private vehicles the length of the Park road. Normally the only way to get further back into the heart of the park is by joining a bus full of 40 other tourist. The bus is not a bad way to see things. It keeps congestion down and makes the area nicer for wildlife. At the same time it is hard to pass up the opportunity to drive your own vehicle around being able to set your own pace and go off on hikes as you wish. As you might suspect, since I'm writing this, Beck and I won a pass in the lottery this year to drive the road. What a treat it was. Being able to see Denali is always hit or miss. The mountain creates it's own weather and seems to enjoy playing hide and seek with visitors. We were in luck. We left Fairbanks early in the morning in the clouds. It looked as if we were in for a wet day which would have been fine, the Park if full of wildlife and the colors were in full swing so we knew there was still had a great chance of seeing the unexpected. As we got closer to the Park the sky started to open up. By the time we were at the Park entrance there was nothing but blue sky over head and Denali looking down on us from a distance. The whole day ended up surpassing our expectations. Wildlife sightings included sheep, grizzles, caribou, ground squirrel and a number of raptors.