Denali Canyoneering

There are few things in this world more exciting than picking a place on the map, and going there. And that's exactly what my friend and I did last weekend for two full days out on the west side of the park.

The day started out a little iffy with the weather; it rained a few times over the course of our 4-hour bus ride into the park, but by the time we got to our hiking destination, it had begun to let up. As the bus slowed to let us out on the side of the road, I could feel all the other passengers staring at us: two girls heading into the backcountry alone with impending variable weather conditions. I couldn't help but feel a little hardcore, even though this would be just an easy hike.

Into the canyon!

Hunting for Dinosaurs

I've kept a journal since I was 8 years old. One of the first entries I ever wrote was about how I wanted to become a scientist when I grew up, and find evidence of dinosaurs. Although my dreams of making groundbreaking scientific discoveries has long since passed, part of that dream did come true yesterday, in the best way possible.

Two of my friends, Jessica and Ashley, and I set out for the day to find Denali's dinosaur tracks, which were discovered in the park just 10 years ago -- a very recent discovery by many standards! The story goes that in 2005, a college class from Fairbanks was visiting the area and the professor was explaining that this part represented the Cantwell Formation, which should display evidence of dinosaurs from the late Cretaceous period, about 70 million years ago. Although nothing had ever been found, remarked the professor, we would expect to see things like plant imprints and dinosaur footprints around here.

"Like this?" asked one of the students, pointing to a footprint in rock they were standing next to. Just like that, the student discovered the first of thousands of dinosaur footprints since found in the park.

Wildflowers everywhere!

A Day at Eielson

You know you work in a big park when it takes you 3 months to even make it out past the first 60 miles. I am rather ashamed to admit it's taken me this long to go out to Eielson Visitor Center, but alas, it is the truth, and so I'm going to own up to it.

Last weekend I finally took the plunge and rode 4 1/2 hours out to Eielson for a day trip to see what all the fuss was about. It was a long, but beautiful 4 1/2 hours, where I sat packed like a sardine in the back of a full bus.

Polychrome Pass, looking like a painting again

The Caribou Incident

On Monday, I was working at the Savage Check Station, just doing my thing, standing on the road with my clipboard waiting for a line of buses to pass over the bridge so I could hop on and give my ranger-welcome to the park. The buses were stopped on the bridge so the passengers could view a couple caribou in the river below.

As I stood there patiently waiting, suddenly the bushes across the road from me began to rustle, and out pops a huge caribou with a full rack of velvety antlers. It was way closer than 25 yards -- probably more like 25 feet. The caribou began to trot towards me.

Intent on increasing the distance between myself and the beast, I calmly began to walk up the road backwards, facing the caribou with my clipboard held tightly in front of me. The caribou followed. I crossed to the other lane. It continued to follow. I crossed back to the right lane. And still, it followed, closing in the distance between me and it. The buses were beginning to creep forward, and the caribou quickened its pace. There was nowhere to hide.

At a total loss for what to do, I hopped off the shoulder of the road and up to the base of the tall embankment on the right, with absolutely no plan for what to do next, gripping my pathetic clipboard-shield with white-knuckled uncertainty. Fortunately, the caribou continued on its way up the road in the righthand lane. As it passed by, our eyes locked and we had a moment together. And then it was trotting off into the distance and a bus rolled up in front of me, its front window plastered with visitors and their cameras.

When the driver opened the doors for me, everyone was roaring with laughter. Picture perfect for all of them, slightly hair-raising for me. Still, I hope that one day in the distant future, one of their photos will surface. Would love to see what that looked like from the bus.

Erratic Adventures

I am alone. And I'm out of water, dehydrated, and overheating, my heart pounding in my ears. I can only see about 10 feet around me in any direction, the alders are so thick. I can barely fit through the tangle of their trunks with my huge backpack, and I'm not tall enough to see above them to re-orient myself. I know I need to continue downhill, but unless I can get out of these alders, I'm going to tire myself out before I ever reach the creek. Up until this point I was having the time of my life, but now I'm seriously questioning whether I'll even make it out of this wilderness just a couple miles from the road. 

The journey begins

The adventure began at 8pm the night before. It was a late start for a backpacking trip, but because it's almost summer solstice, the sun doesn't really "set" until the wee hours of the morning, so it was totally doable to start the hike after one of our friends got off work. 

Endless beautiful days

After days of sunny, 75-degree weather, we've finally started getting some rain. And of course sun + rain = lots of wildflowers! Denali has way more wildflowers than I saw last summer, and almost as many as I remember from Bering Land Bridge. I spent a decent amount of time last week walking the trails with a wildflower guide trying to learn all the varieties. 

Saxifrage, with alpine arnica in the background

I've gotten pretty good at recognizing the genuses, but narrowing it down to species still confounds me sometimes. For instance, the saxifrage pictured above -- still can't decide if it's tufted saxifrage or yellow-spotted. Either way, it's gorgeous so hopefully it doesn't mind if I just call it saxifrage for the time being. 

Full Sail Ahead!

How am I already 3 weeks behind on blog posts?? The good thing about this is that I have been so busy and having so much fun that time has completely flown by. The bad thing is, I know a lot of really cool stuff has happened, but I'm inevitably going to forget a lot of it as I try to encompass the events of the last 3 weeks into one post. But I'll give it my best shot. 

Windflower, or Northern Anemone

Summer in Alaska 2013: memories on film

I just realized I never posted this film I created of my last summer in Northwest Alaska. It seems rather fitting now, as I prepare to begin a new chapter on the Last Frontier, to look back and see everything I've done and anticipate all the wonderful things to come.

Allons-y! A Summer in Review

It is with mixed emotions that I am here to report that I now know where I'm going. For the short term, anyway. After much hemming and hawing and budgeting on scrap pieces of paper, I bought myself a ticket back to Florida until the end of October. It turned out to be about $500 cheaper than my other travel schemes, and I need to see my family anyway. From there, the plan is to head to Spokane, WA, to seek out a new life, yet again. 

Adventures at the Top of the World

A steady snowfall of big, fat clumps of flakes descends from the gray, mid-afternoon sky, mixed with cold rain, and illuminated by an industrial floodlight on an adjacent building. The ground is muddy with puddles the size of small ponds outside. A faint aroma of gasoline and burning fuel wafts in through the slightly opened window pane, an ironic contrast to the soft touch of the Arctic ice crystals floating down from the heavens.

I am in Deadhorse, AK, sitting in a shipping container-turned-bedroom at an oil company work camp. I came here originally to visit someone for a few days, but that stay has turned into over a week, thanks to my flight getting canceled for foggy weather. I don't mind too much. It's been an interesting soul searching sort of experience here at the top of the world, I suppose.

Deadhorse: almost as far north as you can get in AK

Pilgrim Hot Springs

Only in Nome, AK, does it make sense to drive 2 and a 1/2 hours north at 6 o'clock at night after work on a week night to visit a hot spring that you were told not to go to.

Well, on that flawless logic, that's exactly what I did with a group of friends. 

Grand Central Camping

Two weekends ago (already!), I went on my first camping trip of the summer. I guess this kind of surprised me because last summer was FULL of camping in the backcountry, sometimes several times a month. This year hasn't been quite as exciting in that regard, so after work on Saturday my coworkers and a friend from town headed about 50 miles up the road into the mountains for a night under the stars.

Village of White Mountain

Tuesday morning I found myself seated in the front of a bush plane, cruising due east under a high cloud ceiling, my flat hat sitting primly on my lap. I watched the landscape under me morph from light rolling tundra to the hunter green of dense coniferous forests. I was headed to the Native Village of White Mountain to give a Junior Ranger program to the local youth.

First forest I've seen in months!

We landed on a dirt airstrip at the top of a hill overlooking the gorgeous, colorful village. An older man in a rickety red pickup truck with mosquito screens for windows picked us up and somehow all 5 of us from the flight crowded into the cab.

One man who had come in on our flight asked the pressing question: "So where IS the 'White Mountain'?" The driver laughed. "It's not actually a mountain. It's that dirt hill over there. It reflects white when the sun hits it the right way. That's how the village got it's name." In fact, the dirt hill to which he was referring was even smaller than the hill with the landing strip, and looked about as mundane as you can get. He dropped us off at the Tribal Hall, where we were to give our program.

As it turned out, the village had no received our advertisements in time, and so word had not been spread that we were coming. Everyone was very friendly though, and began calling whoever they knew with kids and telling them to come to the Tribal Hall. Although we planned to start at 1:30pm, we were told that most kids would still be sleeping (Alaskan children have strange sleep schedules in the summer).

Nonetheless, eventually a few children filtered in, just 9 in all -- much fewer than the usual 30-45 we get for village programs.

Our topic for the day was the Ice Age, a program we've been developing over the last few weeks among our staff. It's a huge challenge to teach a topic like that to children ranging in age from 3-15, most of whom have never even heard of it, or have the same concept of time and history as they might have been taught in the lower-48.

We focused on Ice Age wildlife though, and after some indoor activities, we came outside into the mosquito-laden sunlight for some active outdoor games.

Playing Ice Age twister in the schoolyard

Making fossil crafts

Overall the program went well and the kids seemed to enjoy it, despite having such a small crowd. It was interesting talking to some of them and seeing what a strong influence the Fish River has on their lives. In the summer, they spend all their time with their families out fishing, hunting, or swimming. There looked to be more boats than 4-wheelers, and pretty much no cars at all in the village.

Afterwards, we had about an hour to kill before our plane arrived again, so we took the time to explore the forested village.

Tribal hall

View of town from Tribal Hall, and the Fish River

Main street through town

The Fish River

Inside the Native Store (the only store in town)

Dilapidated building

Cute little church

Fish drying

I found White Mountain to be at least as friendly as Shishmaref. Everyone seemed so happy and welcoming (perhaps also because they might have thought we were State Troopers or cops, as many people do!).

View from top of White Mountain

We found our way to the village's namesake and climbed up. I could clearly see why the town was named for it -- not only did it have abundant white rocks, but you could see all of the land for miles around from its low peak.

View from opposite direction of the village

Yours truly, on top of White Mountain

I don't like to pick favorites, but I have to say that White Mountain definitely won me over. Maybe I'm just tree-deprived, or was swayed by the warm sunlight that we've been lacking in Nome, but this village left a lasting impression on me. It felt like more like the imagined "Alaska" that everyone thinks of when they conceptualize the rural parts of the state, so it was fascinating to see and experience.

Work and Play

First order of business: I'm now officially a park ranger. Uniform arrived yesterday in all its oddly-proportioned glory. Apparently female park rangers are expected to have ginormous butts and 3-inch waists, according to the size trousers I received, but alas, it'll have to work over the summer. Go ahead, have your laughs. :)

Fellow park ranger and I, ready to serve America

Bipolar weather and end of training

I've been trying to update this blog for about 3 days now, but the internet is so slow it keeps failing to save or post. So here we go again -- fingers crossed. 

Looks almost like a painting!

Springtime in Northwest Alaska

This week has kept me busy with training at work, but on Thursday we got to get out on the road system for a little excursion and to deliver a 55 gallon barrel of aviation fuel to the airstrip at the end. It was cold and foggy in town, but as soon as we crossed over the mountains, it was beautiful and sunny, although the spring landscape remains pretty brown.

Coming down out of the mountains

My first few days

Somehow, although totally sleep deprived, I managed to go on a hike up Anvil Mountain on Saturday after I arrived in Nome. Around 8pm a bunch of us piled in a friend's truck and drove up to the local peak so we could all catch up again and enjoy the late night sun shining high in the sky.

GoProing in the truck bed

Begin Chapter Two

The view out my window, winter and today

After 23 hour of flights, a couple hours of sleep, and one lost bag (yet to be found -- I may be wearing this same shirt for a while..), I've made it to Nome for a second summer of arctic adventure. It's a perfect day, 55 degrees, dry and sunny. Way better than when I got here last year in mid-June when it was 40 degrees and rained for a week straight.

Alaska video montage

I've only been home a week and a half, but already Alaska seems almost as distant in memory as it is in miles. I'll be totally honest, as great as it was to experience a "real" Alaska winter in one of the harshest environments on earth, it feels damn good to be able to just walk out my door barefoot now that I'm back in Florida. No more spending 10 minutes to put on enough layers to step outside. I've even started to get a tan again (currently in the form of sunburn, but hey).

It wasn't quite as hard to adjust to living in "civilization" again as I thought it would be. It's nice to see affordable prices in the stores once more, and have more choices in products. The harder part has been getting used to living at home after being on my own for so long. I miss that freedom already, but I keep telling myself it's only temporary. Because I know it is. Hopefully within the next month I'll be on my way to a new job, whatever it may be (fingers crossed that it will be in Alaska again).

I hate this period of limbo where I have no idea what I'm doing with my life. But in between job-searching and car-searching and freaking out about the future, I've managed to finish putting together my video montages of all 9 months in Alaska. Just watching them over again gives me the travel bug, so maybe it'll inspire you to get out on your own adventures as well. :)  Enjoy.

Through the Lens: Northern Lights

As if by magic, during my last weekend in Nome, the northern lights put on the most spectacular display I've seen to date. 

I was sound asleep late at night, but my roommate had been downtown watching one of the Iditarod mushers come in, when she noticed a smudge of green across the sky. I was awoken by her text, and immediately jumped out of bed to check the window. Sure enough, a ribbon of light was pulsing through the heavens above. I don't think I've ever gotten dressed and set up the camera so fast in my life!

Beam us up, Scotty!