Spotlight

As I posted earlier this week, the snow conditions on Pyramid were excellent on Monday. So when I left work under sunny skies on Tuesday I was looking forward to another excellent daily ski run.  As it turns out I learned that just as it is sometimes awesome when you expected the worst so it can end up terrible when you expected the best.  Tuesday was not good skiing.

By the time I started up the mountain the clouds were socking in and the winds picking up.  All the powder had turned to slush lower down and to windpack up high - no more powder to be found.  And it was super windy.  At one point it blew me up hill.

Nonetheless, I was rewarded by a momentary break in the clouds when I got to the top.  It was like a spotlight breaking through the clouds to shine on me.  Patrick

An Old Soul

Jake one of our black labs is getting old, or rather has gotten old.  We got him from the pound back in November of 2006 (click here to read our blog post about his arrival), and they told us, at the time, that he had already cycled through a few families and was 5 years old.  That means he is somewhere near or past 14 years old, and that's old for a black lab.

He's always had a bad hip, and a few years ago I thought the end was near when he could not walk to the park all one winter.  But he rebounded and out lived Roxydog who did walk in the park all that winter.  And this winter he is still taking short,  slow walks to the park.

Part of the reason he rebounded, and has been doing so well for the last few years, is that we got 2 new dogs.  I think he realized the new dogs, Tank and Sheba, are his replacements in the pack, and he stepped it up a notch.  We also started to let him, and him alone, up on the bed at night.  He has thrived with the extra attention.

But just in the last few days he has lost the ability to jump up on the bed.  And he is too proud to willingly let us lift him up onto the bed.  He walks around the bed looking up, and then when I get off to lift him up he trots away.

He's an amazing dog and it does make me very sad to see him get old.  I plan on appreciating every moment of the rest of his life.  Patrick

Paper Route

Winds and rain rage outside and its the middle of spring break week. The notion of "Spring Break" is false-it isn't a break at all for parents. I"m still doing physical therapy at the base for my standard hours in the mornings as the kids are home with a sitter here at the house. It would feel more like a break if we were all someplace warm and tropical.

Nora starts a paper route on our street on Friday. It all started with her mentioning that a fellow student at school had a paper route and low and behold-that same evening in the paper I noticed that the Cliffside drive route was available. One phone call later for the details-21 houses, approx $60 a month, streets were right around us-Nora was excited! Stuey is bummed and a bit jealous I believe.

We met with the local paper today and Nora learned the ins/outs of what to do in the case of dangerous dogs, how to be a responsible carrier, etc. I see the route being a family route, as I think it will take around 45 minutes to complete and I imagine some days when Nora has outings or playdates she'll want help with it. That said, she'll be doing the bulk of the route. Its a perfect blend of exercise, outside time and work.

Zoya

Fresh Powder

Last week the mountain was a sheet of ice and on Sunday it warmed up and rained hard.  It was even raining when I drove in to work yesterday.  So yesterday after work I was not expecting good skiing on the mountain.  But i went up anyways just to get some exercise.  Boy was I surprised.  There was almost a foot of new powder!  And sunshine!

It was so beautiful I could not stop taking pictures.  There is nothing quite like looking back and seeing just your own ski tracks winding down the mountain.  Patrick

Rounding Spruce Cape

"Dad, are we around Spruce Cape yet?" my ten year-old self would cry out from my bunk, rolling back and forth-ready to be home. Hours it had been on our journey towards town. Stomach upset-I was on my dads 48 foot fishing boat, for days or a week at a time. Tired, after a long trip home. I was ready to be in the quiet of the harbor.

"Not quite. Almost there, though." Dad would reply.

"Ughhhh…"I replied.

Spruce Cape was the final rough bend on fishing trips home. It brought with it some final ocean chops and swells.  If we made it around Spruce Cape, we were golden. We were then protected on all sides by the channel for the final stretch into St. Paul Harbor. No matter how rough the swells approaching the cape, or around the cape, the channel always brought solace.

 "We're around Spruce Cape!" dad would yell below. Then I knew the worst was over. No more rough swells. I could get out and enjoy the approach towards the harbor. By the canneries, under the bridge and slowly into our boat slip.


This week after dinner, I've been piling Tank and Sheba into the car and driving to the Spruce Cape trail. At the end of the trailhead is a gorgeous beach with lots of driftwood and it is often in the lee of the wind on windy days.

This evening a small white fishing boat passed by the entirety of the cape. I sat on a log and watched it pass, and disappear around the corner towards town. Chances are low that there were kids on the boat with a dad reassuring them 'We're around spruce Cape!".

But, nonetheless, I felt their joy of being on the final bend and remembering that sense of being through the worst of it.
 Zoya

Fishing boat rounding Spruce Cape a few years ago

Science Projects

Nora and Stuey recently completed their Science Fair projects.  Nora investigated milk and mold while Stuey made a sundial.  Nora discovered that certain kinds of milk are more susceptible to mold.  Soy milk molded the fastest.

I helped Stuey create his sundial using a box, kayak skeg fin, and an old Brunton 'pocket transit'.  The Brunton had belonged to the famous archaeologist William S Laughlin, and has his name written on it in sharpie. I think I may be the only one who thinks the latter point adds to the project.  Anyway, Stuey had to learn about magnetic declination, the cardinal directions, and that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

Earlier in the week at St Marys they had to explain their projects to a panel of judges.  The judges asked Nora which type of milk she liked the best.

Stuey managed to explain the sun in relation to the cardinal directions and his sundial  won an honorable mention.

Patrick

Tarzan and Alex Haley

Today I toured a Coast Guard cutter. After working as the Coast Guard Base Physical Therapist for 2+ years, I was long overdue for checking out the steep ladder wells, fitness room and berthing area on this ship. WOW! I'm in awe. As someone who gets sea sick, I don't know that I could do it. Gave me a better appreciation for the men and women who spend months at sea.

Posing with 'Jane' from Tarzan!

Last weekend I took my brownie troop to the local production of Tarzan. One of our own Brownies, Cassidy, was a gorilla in it! So fun to watch the show with my Brownie troop. I'd totally do that again.

Zoya

Sunday outing in Anchorage

Lots of people hiking and skiing on the trail, but no one other than me went more than halfway up the valley

After the anthropology conference in Anchorage ended I had a day to kill before I came home.  When I first booked my tickets the plan had been for Zoya and the kids to join me after the conference and participate in the Tour of Anchorage ski race.  However, the race got cancelled, and so many people had come to Anchorage for the Iditarod start that I found it impossible to change my ticket.

I was stuck in snowless Anchorage - or so I thought.

Funnily enough Anchorage DID have great groomed ski trails right in town until Friday.  During the conference I went out to Hillside every afternoon and found freshly groomed skate ski tracks.  And then Thursday night it rained, and rained, and even Hillside became a sheet of ice.  The Anchorage bowl had finally lost its snow (although I gather the icy Hillside trails were been groomed back into skate skiing corduroy on Monday).

So I tried Glen Alps - a State Park trailhead a short drive above Hillside 2700 feet up into the Chugach range. And the rain had fallen as snow up there.  It was like a return to winter.  Fluffy powder on spruce trees, glinting ice crystals, and ptarmigan tracks on top of the snow.

To kill time on Sunday I decided to go back as far up the valley behind Glen Alps as I could.  The parking lot was packed and the trail up valley reminded me of the trail up the mountain to Dawson in the 1898 Gold Rush - a black line of traffic.  Fat bikes, hikers with strollers, cross country skiiers, dogs on leashes - lots and lots of dogs.  All the traffic had packed down the snow and I flew up valley in my cross country skiis.

But about halfway up the valley all traffic petered out.  No one had gone more than halfway and I had to use my skate skiis like classic skiis to bust trail the rest of the way.  Since I had no grip wax on my skiis I mostly pushed with my poles as I slowly climbed to the back of the valley.  I was amazed to find a place so remote so close to downtown Anchorage.  I was also amazed that I was the only person who went back there on a calm, sunny, weekend day.

The return was slightly downhill and I glided back in my broken trail to where all the people were on the hard-packed trail.

Patrick

My skate skiis were perfect at the start where the trail was beaten in

It's been windy! 

My skate skiis were NOT good for breaking trail beyond the well-travelled trail section

The reflected light in the shadows was pretty spectacular

View back to where I started on the horizon just below the cloud

View of the bowl at the head of the valley

Ammo Cache

Concrete pad

A couple of weeks ago I went exploring in behind Boy Scout Lake with Nora and her friend.  This winter the area has been a favored destination for family exploration (click here for another blog post).  The area is full of old WWII structures, and when we explore we try and imagine what each one we find was used for back in the day.

On our recent trip we found the very unique structure shown below.  It had a grate at either end and was neatly roofed with slate shingles.  I suggested storage of some sort; Nora thought it might be a house.  So I asked my co-worker Marnie who has been researching the area and she tells me it was for storing small arms ammunition.  The slate roof was supposed to keep the bullets contained in the event of an explosion.

While attending my recent archaeology conference I saw a few talks about historic archaeology surveys (lot of old mining camps and tin cans), but nothing as cool as what we get to find on an ordinary walk on a Sunday afternoon here on Kodiak.  Patrick

the back end of the 'ammo storage' building

Time with other archaeologists

For the last few days I have been in Anchorage attending an archaeology conference.  Four days of nothing but archaeology-speak.  Almost everyone at the conference is an Alaskan archaeologist and this is the yearly get together where we all compare notes.

My paper was all about the Alutiiq Museum's archaeological surveys of the rivers on the southwest corner of Kodiak.  We've been surveying them for the last 10 years and have pretty much finished - so I was able to synthesize a bit of what we've learned.

I put all the sites we've found on a map and then mapped all the resources and various river characteristics on the same map.  I determined where silver salmon spawn, bears concentrate to feed on fish, where the rivers are shallow and deep, and much, much more.  Then I looked for patterns.  Where did the Alutiiq choose to build their villages in relation to resources?

I discovered that Alutiiq people have always mostly focused on catching spawning silver and red salmon at their inland settlements.  What's interesting is that where they have chosen to catch the salmon has changed through time as Alutiiq society changed and evolved.

In the beginning, more than 4000 years ago, Alutiiq hunter gatherers speared spawning fish in shallow water - the same places where bears concentrate to feed on fish.  These are the easiest places to catch fish.

Later in time, when the Alutiiq began to live in larger villages and needed more fish for their growing population they started to use nets to catch fish.  They would set their nets in shallow, slow-moving water where the salmon pool up - mostly on the lakeshore.  This is the most efficient way to catch lots of salmon.

Finally, around 800 years ago, when the Alutiiq people had become a ranked society with chiefs and large villages, they started to use weirs and spears to catch fish.  Their villages moved down river from the lakes to shallow strategic places where they could control the river and catch fish earlier in the run - not necessarily the best places to catch fish.

Anyway, that was my story and the other archaeologists seemed to like it.  That's always a HUGE relief.  Patrick

Sundogs

Today when I climbed Pyramid it was foggy at the parking lot.  So foggy that I could barely see a couple of hundred yards.  I also gather that quite a few flights out of the airport got cancelled.  But when I got high up on the mountain I broke out into glorious sunshine.  It was an unexpected bonus.  Hard to believe the gloom and doom below the fog.  And yet, when i got back down again it was still foggy and grey.

Up on top, the sun had some pretty good sun dogs on either side.  'Dogging' it so to speak. Very pretty but as harbingers of bad weather they are a bad sign.  And indeed it is supposed to rain some more.  Patrick

Can it be Spring?

Can it be Spring if we never had Winter?  Or should we just call it Blah?  At least yesterday we had a light frost.  Today it is raining again.

Yesterday while walking around the house I noticed that the crocuses are blooming, the daffodils have put up their leaves, and the salmonberries are budding.   The birds are beginning to sing in the morning and the lawn is turning green.  UGHHHH  I feel cheated.

Come on Winter show us your power.  Put all these harbingers of Spring to rest.

Patrick

Sometimes Island With Stuey

Recently I haven't had enough one on one time with Stuey. I  can just tell when he becomes extra needy. Or doing not-so-wonderful things to get my attention. With Nora in girl scouts, I have lots of mommy-daughter  time  with her on our way to/from meetings but haven't had good connection time with Stuey away from Nora.

This morning, Stuey was way excited at the prospect of mommy-son outing AND going to Sometimes island-a place he's never been to before.  I knew the tides were low and I appreciated how excited he was to go check it out.

The rain and wind pelted us from the sides and our jackets were soaked just a few minutes into the walk.  But it didn't matter  as we walked across the mudflats towards Sometimes Island and the bunker on the island which Stuey was very excited to see.

On the return hike we took the beach route and the tide was starting to come in. Stuey took joy in seeing how deep the water was and testing out the heights of his boots.

Zoya

Deluge After Deluge

These pictures were taken during and after the last deluge earlier this week.  During the storm the eagles hovered on the updrafts above the cliff in front of the house.  After the storm all the snow froze and turned rock hard on Pyramid.  I was actually sort of surprised that we did not lose all that much snow high on the mountain.

Now there is another one coming.  Gale force winds, temperatures in the 40s, and inches of RAIN.  UGHHHHHH.  All these storms from Hawaii are pushing our cold air down into the lower 48, and judging by the news stories they clearly don't appreciate it.

My fear is that with global climate change this could be the new normal.  Last year was the warmest year on record for Alaska and this year is shaping up as even warmer.  Perhaps a changed climate and warmer Gulf of Alaska waters has changed the flow of air across the Pacific.  Perhaps every year we will see the same jet of warm air from Hawaii to Alaska setting up the same series of wet, warm storms we have endured for the last 2 winters.  Could this storm pattern be the new normal?  I hope certainly hope not.

I'm too old to sell my skis and take up surfing, or as Nora put it, 'Maybe we should move to New England so we can enjoy the snow'.  Patrick

No Winter Here

Lately the national media has been all over the recent snow and cold on the East Coast. Street scenes with towering banks of snow and talking heads jabbering away about the hardships everyone is experiencing and all the snow accumulation records.  Supposedly it is 'unprecedented' - with 'records going back to the 1870s'.  And yet I think they have missed the real story.  The real story is the warmth and lack of snow in Alaska.

I don't think East Coast weather is big news because cold and snow is what's supposed to happen in winter.  Maybe it is a little more extreme than usual, but its still winter weather.  What's happening in Alaska and on the West coast really is unprecedented.  Here on Kodiak Island in Alaska we are still waiting for winter to arrive.  This is sort of like having no Summer on the East Coast.  Imagine if it snowed in July?

Funnily enough, it did snow a few times in New England one summer way back in 1816 after a series of volcanic eruptions had caused a dramatic global cool down.  It was a year 'without summer' and contemporary accounts relate that many lakes stayed frozen for the entire summer.  Imagine if that happened today?  Can you imagine the uproar on CNN if there was no summer in Boston?

The reverse is happening here on Kodiak Island - we live in Alaska, and yet, no winter yet.  On Kodiak none of the lakes have frozen over, my garden is still going strong, and we've barely gotten any snow.  It's barely even dipped below freezing.  It's been more like a normal winter for Richmond, Virginia than for Kodiak, Alaska.

Researching this blog post I noticed that the Anchorage Daily News picked up on Alaska's abnormally warm winter in today's paper (click here for link).  But they did not make all that big of a deal about it.  And Anchorage has had some winter - if not as cold and snowy as usual.

This morning I culled these weather maps on the internet.  Check out the temperatures across Alaska today as compared to the lower 48 (but also be aware that the color scales are offset about 20 degrees).  It's above freezing in Fairbanks, Alaska in mid February!  That's AMAZING - far more amazing than sub zero temperatures in Boston.

Also check out the forecast for Jackson,  Mississippi as compared to Anchorage, Alaska.  Pretty darn similar.  WOW!  And that kale in my garden is still kicking - and not just surviving but putting on growth.  Patrick

Stuey with a healthy kale plant still producing in the garden