Ups and Downs

This has been a week of ups and downs in more ways than one. The day after my birthday was the worst. It started out quite well -- we spent the snowy day snowshoeing up King Mountain and sledding back down.  

I got the most epic GoPro shots yet, but alas, I will never see those shots. 

Mush!

Instead of watching the Superbowl on Sunday, I found myself at a dog sled race, driving a snowmachine. A friend from town was helping out with the Nome Kennel Club Dog Sled Race, and offered to let my roommate and I borrow his snowmachine to go out on the trail and take photos.

GoPro: Hiking to a Dredge

It's finally here: My GoPro HD Hero2! Took it out for a practice run yesterday to snowshoe to one of the gold dredges just outside of town. Took some getting used to, and I still need to work on stabilization and composing my shots better, but it's not too bad, all things considered. 

It was about -8 degrees when we left, but got increasingly windier as we got closer to the dredge and dropped to about -20 with windchill. I was feeling pretty close to mild hypothermia in the dredge so I stopped filming once I couldn't press the buttons on the camera anymore (we did make it to the top of the dredge though!). Managed to get a couple more shots on the way back through a ground blizzard, which looked pretty spectacular in the sunlight!

Let There Be Light!

Today it was BRIGHT out! Like, real actual normal sunlight, not that sunset bogus we've had for the last 3 months. Okay, so maybe that's a little harsh, but I am impossibly happy to see how high the sun is in the sky (which still isn't that high). I wasn't even that annoyed when I realized it it was hitting me in the eye through the window when I got back to the bunkhouse. It's amazing how different everything looks and feels; it's a cloudless day and the world just seams brighter with the sun reflecting off the snow and the white mountains contrasting sharply with the vivid blue sky. Too bad it's freezing cold as death outside.

Life in the Bush

I have been intermittently aware over the last few months that I've failed to thoroughly described to you what it is really like to live in the Alaskan bush. Maybe you've gotten some idea if you've read enough of my posts, or if you remember some of my initial deer-in-the-headlights reactions when I first moved here 7 months ago.

But every so often, I am reminded that what has become daily routine and "normal" life for me was a totally foreign concept last year and still is for 99% of my friends and family.

The "beach"

January on the Tundra

January has been an interesting month so far. Work has been moderately busy with various publication-related projects, but otherwise relatively uneventful. The last couple weekends have been warm enough to bring on winter storms and thus great snowshoeing opportunities. 

Battling the blowing snow

Hello (2013), Goodbye (2012)!

2012, what a year. A week before the 2012 New Year, I had only JUST seen snow on the ground for the first time in my life, and now I live in the arctic and trudge through it every day to work. A year ago this month, I was in Honduras, exploring Mayan ruins and snorkeling through the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef system for school. Just 2 months later I found myself in Iceland, doing volunteer work, hiking across lava fields, waterfalls, and glaciers. Two months after that, I graduated with two Bachelors of Arts degrees, high honors, and a bunch of awards. And after turning down 5 job offers, a month later I landed in bush Alaska where I now sit tooting my own horn because, hell, that was quite a year and it deserves a little shout-out!