Where the Wild Things Are!

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Forest Games and Aurora Flames

Axe throwing, fires starting, bucking with a two man saw, log rolling and of course birling - the art of being the last one standing on a log floating in water greeted me at the Forest Games put on my University of Alaska last week.  

 

 Our team was 1 local and two imports, with a couple of add-ons throughout as events demanded more than 3. Alice - a new friend from Fairbanks, and Phil, my room-mate and co-worker made up the team for this rainy Saturday morning.

Birling on the lake! We got off easy - last year they had to break the ice off first!

My first time birling I  made it to the second round! (by dumb luck I'm pretty sure). Second time I took the plunge, but I'm ready to go again as chance presents itself!

Phil preparing to chop off my toe!

A couple of eyebrows lighter, a few minutes later!

Firestarting - One half can of soapy water (for an obvious boil), One log (knotty), one axe (a bit dull this late in the competition), and five matches (we only needed two - don't we get extra points for that?)

Jack and Jill Log Rolling - 1st place!

 The fireworks show to celebrate was only a couple of days later! These auroras danced across the sky for hours as we drop jawed enjoyed the view for quite a while until we had to retreat for the warmth of the stove. 

 

 These lights dance so quickly across the sky, it can almost look like ribbons blowing in the wind. The photos are truly unique in that they comprise about 60 seconds of the light we saw all at once.

 

Oh, and of course I've been working while I'm here - a couple of project photos -

What a mess! Lots of water all over the place! Mostly dripping right in front of the door!

The solution - lower the roof, can chop off one corner the building's main roof - no fancy flashing required.

Phil's mascot at lunch.

 

 The main attraction - The Pita Place with a completed roof only minutes old. Northern Phil, Southern Phil and myself. This is an expansion of a beloved food cart in Fairbanks that serves Falafel and other middle-eastern foods. This is the project that allowed me to come to check out AK for a couple of months this year. Four weeks left as the winter begins to close in! 

(The puddles are not melting anymore!)

Name that giant Alaska Veggie! - Biggest I've ever seen!

Yukon Ho!

The Salmon have swum up their rivers,

and the evenings have begun to give the shivers,

Canadians are plotting their southerly routes,

the days have shortened without a doubt,

So pack your things;

toothbrush, hat, and tools to swing,

Big boots, thick socks,

The trip will begin down by the dock,

Where the compass reads north,

Set the course,

Toward the Night sky's glow!

Yukon Ho!

In lieu of my typical work schedule of heading for a southerly summer on the sun drenched slopes of Ross Island, I have traveled to the far reaches of my own continent this time, to work with a friend in Fairbanks - “The Golden Heart of Alaska."

Alaska is now off my final frontier list of states that I have visited (North Dakota, Maine and New Hampshire still on the list), and thankfully I did not have to ride the sea ice to get here. Quite civilized like - I took a Ferry.

We set sail on a clear evening, cruising out of the bay on the Alaska Marine Highway System. This series of ferries connects the outlying and otherwise inaccessible communities (such as Juneau – the capitol) to mainland Alaska. The ferries run up the inside passage from Bellingham, WA and then across the Gulf of Alaska, and down the Aleutian Islands all the way to Unalaska and Dutch Harbor.

Still in my bag, waking up to some typical SE Alaska Weather

From the Solarium on the rear deck, I enjoyed not only the fresh air of the west coast, the views of thousands of islands, and several whale sightings, but also a lounge chair to call my home! Camping on deck is the way the Alaskans do it, it's cheap, and I think the best way to meet folks on the journey. One man I met from North Carolina is trying to visit every county in the US!

We experienced some wonderful weather on the way up, lots of blue sky and sunshine. Petersburg might have been the nicest weather we saw, and we only ran into dense fog once – two crew members were leaning over the bow as we crept through narrow island passages with only 30 ft. of visibility!

Petersburg - a piece of the panorama at the top of the post.

Ketchikan in clear weather at dawn.

I hopped off in every town that we had a chance to. Picked up a hot breakfast in Ketchikan, walked to the docks in Petersburg, and picked up a truck in Juneau... A truck to drive to Fairbanks! Through the great connecting Oracle of the Internet I found my way into an agreement with someone to drive their truck up to Fairbanks from the Ferry stop in Haines. The truck was in Juneau, so I hopped off the ferry and drove myself and my ride back on.

A light station in Canada.

Kluane National park, Yukon.

Which brings me to the drive. The ferry dropped me in Haines at 9 in the morning and from there I was to drive north through British Columbia and the Yukon Territory to reach Fairbanks in the interior of Alaska. Haines was a fairly quick visit, but I did take a walk on the beach and check out the Hammer Museum. Pretty Cool.

I forgot my camera. So I had to use my phone.... Eeep! Need to clean the lens!

I will only torture my blog with one of these awful photos to show simply how many hammers one little corner of this museum held!

O Canada!

The pipeline.

 

Fish Wheel near Haines, AK

Windy day Near Tok, AK

Above Tree Line.

Grizzly on the road!

The pictures speak for themselves I think. Stunningly beautiful, all the way up.

Home! For the next two months I'll be living and working in Fairbanks, helping to build a Falafel Shop to replace the Pita Place's Trailer. A log cabin to call home with electricity and an oil furnace.

The logs of our cabin were scribed to the point where a credit card fits into few of them!

Running water is a convenience that has not reached too deeply into the interior of Alaska, even in Fairbanks. We haul our water in big blue water containers and as one friend recently said when he couldn't remember which side of the faucet the hot water came from – Hot water is on the stove, cold water is on the floor!

North Pole of course! (North Pole, AK)

Until next post!

Wow!

Has it really been over a year and a half since I posted? How to catch up?  Have to catch up? Maybe it will all be a little out of order, but here goes...

On the road, In the air

McMurdo Helo Ops - Best ride in town.

This is what their patches claim and I have yet to argue. I have been very fortunate this season to get a chance to travel out to several field camps in the surrounds of McMurdo. Antarctica from the air is quite an experience whether out the window of a C-17, C-130, or from the great hovering and spinning magic carpet ride that helo ops offers. I had never ridden in a helicopter before working in McMurdo, and now that I have ridden in them quite a few times, the magic never wears off. A lot of human inginuity and combustible fuel allow us to travel in the realm of storybook imagination, what was once merely creative vision is now (and has been for some time) a reality of transportation, often taken for granted from afar, but somehow endlessly captivating to be involved in.

Some of the nooks and crannies of Ross Island from high in the sky.
Lots of marine and seal grantees call these smaller islands home.

For science in Antarctica, transportation is the name of the game, and as much as any of us are carpenters, divers, dining attendants, or physicists we are dominated by the logistics of how we can do what we do while we are here. In old times expeditions were measured in years instead of months or weeks, travel by ski or dog was the norm, and the samples collected along the way literally weighed heavy on the backs of some who didn't even make it out alive.

These three folks made it out alive, but not without persisting through
enough bad weather to play 22 games of checkers.

Today we zip down here in commercial jets, with air-force support, fly around the continent in dependable (fairly) planes, and explore the nooks and crannies in a moment's notice from the helicopter.

Two trips I have taken this season brought me farther into the dry valleys than I had ever been before, and to the highest heights of the volcanic island we reside on. These trips are all taken at the beginning of the season to "Open" these sights. This involves ensuring life support (stoves, buildings) is functional, fixing problems we find with the structures, and sometimes, Lots and Lots of shoveling

Two views from the same spot on Mt. Newell. On the left the Wright Valley and Lake Vanda - fed by the Onyx Stream. On the right, a very different reality of pure glacier on the way to the antarctic plateau.

My trip to open the huts at Bull Pass and Mt. Newell took me over some beautiful areas and to the top of a mountain with a view spanning mountain ranges, the ice plateau, the Ross Ice Shelf, the open water of the southern ocean, and of course our little town down on the tip of Ross Island, in the shadow of the great Mt Erebus.

CTBT site in the foreground

Bull Pass consists of two small huts. One is for small bands of Geologists to utilize and the other is one of several CTBT (Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty) sites on the continent. It is a self-supporting monitoring station with it's finger to the seismic wind deep in the granite below. Along with over 100 counterparts, it helps sense possible nuclear bomb tests all over the world. Amazing! I found this website interesting when I looked to learn more about this:

www.ctbto.org

Lake Vanda and the sand dunes of the Victoria Valley which border the lake.

A fly over of lake Vida to photograph conditions for a future camp brought us into the next valley, and to the conclusion of our work for the day.

Mt Erebus puffs away silently above New Zealand's Scott Base.

At 12,500 Ft. Mt Erebus makes Ross Island the 6th tallest island in the world. That's right, we sit on a hot spot! (who would have guessed?)

With a relative altitude of 13,600 at the Lower Erebus Hut, and ~14,000 at the rim it makes for qutie an adventure to open from sea level. Around here, things are not always how they appear on your topo map, and the cold cold air in the atmosphere lowers our air pressure to the degree that it ususally adds over 1000 feet to our physiological altitude.

A blind camera shot from the back seat!; Looking down, the landscape opens up quite literally. Crevasses like this one cover the island, but many are invisible.

The first to arrive at the hut after a winter of scouring winds, sulfurous air, and the ever-present drifting snow is an adventure worth bringing a shovel for. Luckily after the helo drops you and your equiptment off, and you catch your breath from unloading all of it, you get a chance to warm up digging steps into the snow berm to allow safe passage down to door level in the -30 degree warming October weather.

The huts are drifted up to their roofs on one side, and are slowly deteriorating from the scouring wind on the other. It speaks well to the impermanence of human impact.

Ok, ok it is only COMPLETELY buried on one side.
The wind scours the other side so much we can barely keep a coat of paint on it!

The only other sign of humanity in the area is a downed ship just a bit off to one side of the area around the huts. A coast guard Helicopter that got into some trouble up here decades ago.

Opening the huts involved lots of shoveling, firing stoves, shoveling, uncovering windows, shoveling, hanging weather insturments, shoveling, getting the solar panels out of the garage, shoveling, and a healthy dose of removing drifts from inside the buildings. It is really amazing how much snow accumulates blowing through the tiniest crack you can imagine.

The area around the hut is covered in rock outcrops thick with crystals
which solidify in the rocks that spew from the cone on occasion.

Fumurols dot the landscape as well as heat from the volcano melts away at the cold desert snow. Antarctica's humidifiers!

Mt Erebus is a quite unusual volcano. Check it out here!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Erebus