Denali Hwy Bust

About 200 miles south of Fairbanks there is a highway between the Richardson and Parks Hwys that is closed to vehicles, but is snowmachined and skied all winter. It has spectacular views of the Denali range. A nice, big open world of white!

Friday night we drove down to Delta and stayed at a cabin owned by a friend of Julie.
It was a super cute little place but had a tiny woodstove so Debbie was nice enough to put some more wood in it when it dipped to near 30 degrees in the cabin around 3am. I was so warm in my sleeping bag it didn't bother me. :-)
Next morning we got up early to drive down to Paxson. The "highway" was in interesting shape, as they always seem to be up here. This was my first time driving down this way.
The views were spectacular once we got into the mountains. It was a beautiful morning but the wind was howling pretty good through some parts.
Got down to Paxson and met up with the others who stayed outdoors for the night. I am glad we had four walls around us even though I heard the auroras were amazing that night. It was about 10 degrees when we started the trip.

Check out Kris' sled.. that thing was massive and heavy as all get out.. I was tempted to jump in it and have him pull me around. It was long enough that I could have laid completely down in it. Ted only could ski a little bit because one of his dogs was sick and he had to get her to the vet.
Here are the biker chicks getting ready to go. Conditions were awesome for the first few miles.. it was cleared off and not a whole lot of drifted snow at first.
I enjoyed riding on the snow more than the pavement. I kind of get bored on pavement I guess.. with snow it's a constant thinking activity trying to pick the best path on the road, avoiding ice, keeping your wheels straight and not sliding and skidding around. My favorite is when there's a slight fluffy layer on top. Here is John skiing with his dog pulling his sled.. another good reason to have a dog!
We got into some pretty good headwinds throughout the ride. Parts of the road were unridable and we had to hike a bike.
The views were spectacular, the road conditions were in fairly good shape, but the wind was howling in spots. We got notice by some snowmachiners that there were 40-50mph headwinds ahead. We weren't sure if they were over-exaggerating or what so we continued to move forward. Two of the skiers got to the area first and turned back around. When we met up with them we decided it would be smart to turn back. We only got 10 miles in. :(
But but but.. it looks so nice and peaceful! I will say though, I don't think us bikers would have made it the entire way. One of the girls was having some major mechanical problems with her gears which I'm pretty sure was just very dirty cables.. but it was enough to reallly slow us down. I couldn't keep my feet warm but thanks to Trevor I got the feeling back in them for the ride back.

On the way back, I decided to try my new, bendable, small tripod called the Gorillapod. But, I tried to run back to my bike and get on within 10 seconds and I didn't quite make it.. haha! I thought I would post the pic anyway because it's funny.
Bummer with the trip.. oh well, still learned quite a bit about long winter riding...

The Latest

Well this weekend I plan on doing an 84-ish mile bike trip (42 in one day, 42 out the next). This should be interesting as I haven't been riding as much as the summers and road will be all snow. I wonder how long it takes one to bike that long on snow? Every time I've ridden in the snow, I've gaged my rides by hours rather than miles, since it is much much slower on snow. 3 or 4 hours? Sure, no problem. I bet though that this will be more on the rate of 8 or 9 hours depending how fast the other bikers are and on the grade of the road. I really don't know what to expect though.. maybe I am over-guesstimating.. and if we get the snow the forecast is calling for, we might not be able to do it at all. I hope we can though.. I hear the views are amazing!! This will be a good experience to figure out if I want to get more into the endurance riding/racing too. Give me that mountain air!!
If we go and make it the whole way, this will be my greatest mileage in 48 hours. ;) Stay posted..

I Have a Home!!!

High today so far: 31
Low today: 9

After several weeks of cabin shopping, I finally found something that didn't make me question one thing or another. The distance is perfect - 2 miles from the edge of UAF campus, accessible by bike and possibly by ski with a little bit of road hopping.


It's not the most flattering place.. it's not fancy log cabin or anything, but I think it's exactly what we need and the price is very right. The people who just moved out left a bunch of crap around the place and inside.. but once it's all cleaned up and Carrie and I put some rugs down and some pictures on the wall and some rustic decorations up I think it will be perfect. It is a 20' by 40' cabin, as compared to the other one that I almost signed off on that was only 19' by 21'. It has one big room that we'll use as a living room/kitchen, then two separate small bedrooms with lots of storage space. I love the big front porch (can we say BARBECUE?!!?) and the fact that we can easily put three cars in without blocking one or the other. We could probably fit 6 or 7 cars in the driveway by blocking people in. The outhouse isn't too far away from the front door so when its 40 below it will be a run in - run out event. There are motion detector lights too which is nice to know if there are any lingering moose around. We can't see our neighbors from the cabin, which is also super nice. A few of the other cabins I looked at, you were looking into your neighbors' window.

The place is mine April 15th.. so let the fun begin!

Crazy Friends

Ed and Brian did the Wilderness Classic race last week which is the only unsupported wilderness race in Alaska. Check out the article on their adventure in the Newsminer from Thursday. They had a slideshow of pictures and stories yesterday at Ed's house which was sweet and awe-inspiring. I'm still amazed by the beautiful places that you can reach in this state if you really want to! The pictures in the article aren't a quarter of what they encountered!

Ice Climbing at Dragonfly Creek

High today: 33
Low today: 23

A year or two ago I was in Pittsburgh playing Cranium Conga when I got a card that said "write down something you would like to try someday" (or a sport, or skill, or something..) and well, I put "ice climbing" down. No one playing the game guessed my answer when I told them the first letter of what I wrote down. I very clearly remember my sister telling me, "you want to go ice climbing?! You're crazy.. you're going to die before you're 30!" Well guess what I did today!!! Heck yessssssssss! I've been excited for this trip since.. uhhh, November!

The conditions down the Parks were by all means of the word, crap. (that one's for you Jim)

We got to our destination down near Denali around 10am welcomed by breezy conditions that were colder than expected. By the time we walked down the gully a bit, the wind was gone and it snowed on us the whole time. Here I was very worried that winter was over already!! I was very happy to see the flakes in the air again.

Adam takes a first glance at what we're climbing on.

This was a pretty sweet trip because it was a beginner's trip but most everyone was well prepared and did fairly well. The ice was in great shape too. (I imagined it to be much worse)

The creek we were on flowed down to the Nenana River. It is still weird to me that in a month and a half this will be floatable... there are some signs of breakup though..

Ted is climbing on the left in the picture below. I was happy to see a familiar face on this trip. He did an awesome job, too. He even went all the way up one-axed!

Below is Randi, who I just met today and is awesome. She's from Illinois and is spending a semester up here. She has another year left after this but wants to move back to AK already. It was really weird meeting her because she not only looks like another Randi I know from State College, but she also sounded like a good friend of mine from school when she talked.


Below Malin is trying her hands at repelling on the rocks. I decided to stay to the ice because I figure we have all summer to repel off of rocks.. the ice will not be here forever!

Do you like my orange hat? I know it compliments the green sooo well :-P

Thanks to Ted for taking a few pics of me climbing. This was my last ascent up and the hardest. The one side of the ice was more difficult than the other.
We were out there for about 6 hours, but it seemed like it may have been 2 or 3. This kind of made me sad when they said we had to head back to Fairbanks. I was ready to camp out and just stay there for the rest of the weekend!! Definitely an awesome trip though and something I want to do again.

Snow Riding at Chena Lakes

High today: 37
Low today: 9

In February when I went measuring ice depth for work, we stopped at Chena Lakes to measure the depth of the ice there.. and I immediately thought about how fun it would be to go biking out here in the winter. Today, Debbie and I went to try it out! Debbie JUST bought a new bike (HOORAY!) so we broke it in for its very first ride.
In most places, the snow was AWESOME. There were some crunchy, deeper parts, but overall the pack was in fantastic shape for snow riding. Unless your name is Julie, and you stop focusing for a split second and wipe out in a snow ditch...
I looked kind of silly with my poagies but after yesterday's cold ride I decided to bring them.. they are very handy for stashing extra clothes too, or storing clothes if you get too warm. The latter happened to us today.
Debbie is having a fun time on her shiny new bike. It was still pretty darn shiny 2.5 hours later too.. things aren't very dirty at Chena Lakes yet!I had fun trying out the "non-trail", aka the crunchy deeper snow pack that wasn't as packed down. You need to keep your momentum going to really push through it. There were a lot of "aaaaaagh" noises while riding through it.

When we were headed back to the car.. we couldn't help but notice a ramp built up by the snowmachiners. I tried it out a few times - nearly impossible to get any air because I couldn't get enough speed riding up to the ramp. We needed a downhill to the ramp to really have some fun times!

Debbie decided to give it a shot, too. If you zoom in on her face, it's priceless!A friend mentioned that we could ride all the way down to Nenana on the river and I'd like to do it.. not sure that I'll be able to before winter is over though. I guess there is always next year! Put it on the 'to-do' list.. the very very long 'to-do' list.

You Can See the Bike Paths!

High today: 35
Low today: -5

Decided to ride south on the Parks Hwy today on a new bike path that was being put in when I was here this summer. It sure is nice having clear bike paths to ride on, but I now remember how much resistance my fat tires give to the pavement! The paths would be great for a cross bike. I look forward to the trails turning from their current in-between stage of ice to fun rocks and singletrack in another month and a half.

This isn't the new bike path, but this is the one I took every day last summer. It has only recently been plowed so that it's comfortably ridable again. There are only a few sketchy parts of the sidewalk left near the main intersection.
The new path down the Parks is pretty sweet. It goes south to Ester, so that is where I decided to go. By the time I got to Ester I was getting pretty cold, forgot about the wind chill factor when riding on pavement.
Here's a shot of the aurora behind IARC last night. It was being stubborn and not coming out of the horizon into the overhead sky. Still neat though! Last night marks the 4th day in a row of aurora viewing. Spoiled? Yes indeed! :-)

Arrival of the Pennsylvanian Scientists

High today: 27
Low today: 1

I was sitting before work trying to feverishly finish some last minute work when I turn around and there's very familiar faces that are not normally in the office - my former cloud physics prof/neighbor Dr. V and coworker Chad from PSU were here!! I was SO excited, I immediately stopped in the middle of my conversation with someone to get up and hug them, haha. I knew they were here as of last night but didn't expect to see them that early this morning. It was super fun introducing them to people here and then we went to Lemongrass (a very tasty Thai restaurant) for lunch. I forgot my camera (gasp!) so no pictures.. but I will take some over the next couple of weeks as this big research project happens. I guess something about showing people you knew for almost 5 years where you made it is reassuring. Sometimes I think we need that reassurance.. especially when you're still establishing your new life and still slightly attached to people far far away. Plus, I love Penn State and I will always be happy to relive something that stemmed from there. This grad school thing.. I won't be a "Nanook" ever.. Nittany Lion for life!!

Two more Penn Staters coming Sunday! I suggested we have a "reunion" lunch/dinner. Ok, well I am the one reuniting because they still put up with each other everyday... but you know what I mean :-)

On another note, no aurora pictures last night.. I completely passed out of exhaustion early. Maybe tonight??? And I know on my last post I said something about Thursday.. my brain calendar was off by a day.. well, in any case we were just making the point that the aurora has been active mainly on the weekends this winter. Happy weekend!

High today: 21
Low today: -8

Something about Thursdays makes the aurora want to come out. As LeeAnn commented, maybe it's just working up a storm during the week and then BAM, it's Thiiiiiiiiirsty Thursday, and ready to party like a rock star. Ok, those weren't her exact words but something to that extent. Anyway, here it is, a bit more excited than last night! I would stay out all night driving around taking pictures but I'm on early shift tomorrow.. ahh shiftwork. Tomorrow night I bet it'll be out again. So stay tuned for a third aurora chase in a row. :-)

Settings just right

Well, now that I've figured out how to get decent shots of the aurora, all I need is a good aurora. Tonight was not the night. The aurora was out but it was fairly faint. These shots were taken with my Canon SD800 with the following settings: ISO 400, 13" shutter speed, I changed something under the exposure lighting by a nudge, a 2 sec. timer, and a tripod. I can't wait til I get a bright aurora to see what the Canon can do. :-) Enjoy!

Enjoying the fresh snow

High today: 30
Low today: 6

On Sunday night, we got our first measurable snowfall in a long time. It was only 0.5 in, but it was still measurable and just enough to get the trails in better shape.Today was a beautiful clear day and I just couldn't let it slide by without hitting the trails at UAF. I took a new-to-me trail, the Ester Connector trail, which was lovely, flat and quiet.
It met up with the Skarland trail which I vaguely remembered someone saying was a rougher trail. But, I was in exploring mode so figured I'd give it a try. I went a good ways over some sticks and icy spots and fun little bumps, but the trail started getting crummy with litter (branches, pine needles, etc) so I turned back around and went back the way I went in. I need to take a few hours and just go all the way around the trails before the snow all melts!!
But then again, once the snow melts, and we give it two weeks or so to dry.. biking season begins again and I can have fun on the rocks - woohoo!

The aurora is supposed to be active the next few days, it's crystal clear out right now (but not dark yet), someone showed me how to change the shutter speed on my camera, and I have access to a tripod now so stay posted for some possible aurora shots!