After a month of running around, Margaret and I are Alaska residents!

My roommate brought it to my attention that I haven't updated my blog in awhile. Ooops. Enjoy :)

Moving to Alaska is like taking up a whole new hobby, a very expensive hobby. First, there's clothing. Cold is not just "cold" up here, it's downright hellacious. The temperature hasn't risen above 25F for about a month now and locals consider it "warm". The lake by our apartment? Yep, it's frozen. I went to bed one night to a normal looking lake and the next morning it had frozen over and will remain that way until the Spring. People are already walking across it! Don't have a warm jacket? You better get one and if you want to look like a native, it better have a hood lined with fur. I don't know if the fur is real or fake but I've been told it helps protect your face from the wind. Better get some insulated Carharts too and those stupid looking bunny boots (I have yet to give in to the bunny boots because they're just, well...ridiculous). Instead of the bunny boots, I've invested in some studded running shoes so that my runs in 15 degree weather are a little more enjoyable. Picked up some wool gloves and a hat too. I'm expecting some winter boots in the mail any day now. Still need to get a balaclava so that I don't lose my nose to frostbite.

Aside from clothing, there's equipment. No longer will I be commuting to and from work by bike (eventhough I have seen several people rocking the studded tires up here). Nope, I will be skiing to and from work and/or walking or running. So naturally I need to invest in some cross country skis (already got some Yak Traks for my walking shoes). Back in the day, I skied a lot with my folks around Mt. Hood and it never occured to me to invest in another pair of skis until now. It was easy enough back then, why would it be any different now? REI is having their winter sale and all ski/snowboard gear is on sale, so I picked up some cross country skis yesterday. My ass has never felt so sore. I had them on for no more than 30 seconds before I fell on my ass...hard. And then again, and again, and again... Has something changed in cross country sking technology over the past 20 years or do I just really suck at it? Granted, the trails were frozen and the downhills weren't helping my situation. I'm thinking about taking them back and getting some with some metal edges like my downhill skis.

Clothing? Check! Equipment? Check! The next natural step was to become an Alaska resident to reap the benefits of the PFD, a nice little check at the end of the year from the mining industry. Yes, I've crossed over to the dark side. On a scale of 1 to 10 how difficult do you think it is to get a driver's license and register a vehicle? Well, if you don't have the 20 essential documents required to get a license or registration, it will never happen. After gathering my old driver's license, passport, proof of residency (an issue in itself given that I don't pay for housing here yet), social security card, title and registration I was ready to take the driver's test and Margaret registered. Due to safety concerns, I never want to ride a motorcycle up here, so for the motorcycle questions on the test, I selected answers at random so that I could get back to work. After taking both tests I approached the counter. "Well, I see that you passed the driver's test but failed the motorcycle test. You know that if you don't pass the test that you will have to take the driving portion again should you decide to add the motorcycle endorsement to your license." It would have been nice if she had told me that before I took the test. You can only take the test once a day, and given that it was a Friday, I had to wait until the following Monday to go back in and take it again. I passed and Viola! got my license.

License? Check! Next I needed to get Margaret through emissions and get her registered. No problem! She went through emissions right before I left Oregon and has a brand new exhaust and catalytic converter. So I pulled Margaret into the testing facility (and after a "brief" 45min wait, waited for the good news.

"I can't get your car to start. Is there a trick or something?"
"What do you mean it won't start?" I walked out to Margaret and turned the key. It started right up. The idiot had the key in backwards. I waited some more.
"Ahhh...your van failed the emissions test. She has an exhaust leak and the EGR is missing."

There is a hole 1/8" in diameter that they were calling an exhaust leak. No problem, I can get that fixed. But the EGR was going to be an issue given that we cut it off when we rebuilt the engine. You can't buy them anymore and they really don't serve a purpose. I was going to ignore that part of the test for now. So a week later I brought Margaret into Midas to have the hole welded shut. Giving the guy my credit card to pay for the welding, he informs me, "Ahh, yeah...so, I think we fixed the hole but as we were welding the hole it kind of punched through and started creating more holes. We think we got all of them but to be on the safe side we're not going to charge you." Great. Taking a chance, I went to another (different) testing facility and went through the emission test again (after another "brief" 45min wait outside in the cold). This time I was nervous. The mechanic dude enters through the front door and waves me towards him with his finger.

"Your van failed the EGR test. And I can't figure out how to put it in reverse. Does it have a reverse?"
DAMNIT! "The EGRs don't exist anymore! It doesn't do anything!" I have lost all faith in emission testing facility mechanics. As I was about to leave, I went back in to ask them one last question. "So, you say it didn't pass the EGR test. What about the emissions? Is it meeting the State's emission standards?
"Well, lets take a look." He showed me the form. "Umm...it passed this one, and this one, and this one. Yep, it passed everything." I think he knew what my next question was going to be.
"Ok, so the whole point of going through emission testing is to make sure that vehicles aren't polluting beyond the standards of the state, correct?" So, what you're telling me is that my van passed emissions but you won't let it pass." I know it's cruel but I was trying to make him look like an idiot. It wasn't hard.
"Ahh, yeah, I guess that doesn't make a lot of sense. But your EGR valve..."
"Yeah, they don't make those anymore."

He didn't care but he gave me a number to an organization in Anchorage that might care, the "Referee" service. Apparently this is where vehicles go when you've exhausted all possibilities of getting them tested successfully. And it actually worked! The guys were super cool, knew a ton about the year of the van and passed her with flying colors. Spent another hour at the DMV, got her plates and then I was out of there! Now I just need to switch car insurance which is supposedly twice as much in Alaska as it is in Oregon.

In better news, I've had a chance to get out and explore Alaska's bountiful trails. I'm loving winter here so far! Sun rises around 9am and sets around 4pm. My roomie and I went for a hike today and ran right into a moose and several goats. The moose run around like stray cats here.

Margaret's a champ in the snow!

Ice skating on a marsh! Check out the fire by the group of people. Crazy.

SNOW!

On Wednesday we awoke to snow but still managed to get out in the field. In protest of working in the cold, my field partner and I took lots of photos of us playing in the snow. I think I'm wearing just about all of the clothes I had packed along for the trip. (Thanks for the hat mom!)

Oh, and a picture of me in a bear den from the last trip

And so it begins...

Checking in at the airport this morning, the lady at the bag check looked at me and then at my field backpack.


Lady - "Where are you traveling to?"
Me - "Oh, about 80 miles north of Fairbanks, near the beginning of the Dalton Highway."
Lady - "What are you doing up there?"
Me - "We delineate wetlands. We are dropped off by a helicopter in the middle of nowhere and hike around all day digging holes." Her eyes got so wide I thought they were going to pop out of their sockets.
Lady - "You're going to work OUTSIDE??? Do you realize how cold it is up there? Do you have warm clothing?"
Me - "Oh yeah, I've got some warm stuff. I'll be good, thanks for the concern."
Lady - "Do you have bunny boots?"
Me - What the hell are bunny boots??? "No, no bunny boots, just rubber boots, thick socks, and toe warmers."
Lady - "Oh Lordy! You need to get yourself some bunny boots. You're really going to work outside?? You'll freeze! Oh dear..."


This conversation went back and forth for awhile. I finally moved on and let my roomie check his bags in. After going through security, he told me that the lady was really concerned about me and that she wouldn't stop talking about how we're going to freeze out there. Surely it can't be THAT bad!


So this morning I woke up, put on my usual field gear, and headed outside along the boardwalk to the cafeteria for breakfast. When I inhaled, my nose started to feel kind of funny. What on earth is going on?!? Then I figured it out - the condensation on the hairs in the inside of my nose were freezing. The bed-induced warm circulation left my hands and feet. I almost ran back and grabbed by down jacket for the 100ft walk to breakfast but I didn't. Instead, I quickened my step and jogged down the boardwalk. At the end of the boardwalk there's a thermometer. Holy Jesus! I rubbed my eyes. It was 10 degrees outside. I AM going to freeze.


I've biked in 10 degree weather before, but walking around all day in it is a different story. Heck, we barely even walk out here - we walk at most 1/3 mile, dig a hole, and sit there for a good hour looking at the soil and plants and then move on. It didn't really "warm" up until 1pm and by then the temperature had only risen to maybe 25 degrees. We were cold. I had two toe warmers in each boot, handwarmers, a thermal top, t-shirt, wool sweater, down vest, rain jacket, work vest, thermal bottoms, rain pants, wool hat, and thick socks and I was still cold. Even the 200+ pound people in the company are freezing their asses off. And this time, there is not only permafrost beneath the soil, but also a good 4-6 inch layer of frozen ground I have to break through before I even hit pliable soil. And then I hit permafrost 8-16 inches down. Every day the layer of frozen soil deepens.


They're predicting snow later this week. Supposedly, we don't work when there's 1/2in of snow or more (we really can't because it would cover the vegetation we need to document). Not that there's much vegetation to speak of anyway - the leaves have already fallen from the trees and most of the plants have died for the winter. The snowhill cranes have already flown south for the winter, but we press on to get the job done. We're out here until October 4th - only time will tell who gets frostbite or hypothermia first. It's been warming up a bit (upper 20s, lower 30s) because the clouds have been moving in but that can only mean one thing...snow or rain.

Monday

Tuesday

Last time to enjoy the summer...

My intention was to work when I got back from the field until my next trip, but looking outside, the sun was out, the leaves are changing colors and I thought to myself, "Man, this could be the last week of summer." So, I said F-it and made plans to go fly fishing with some coworkers. Man, I never thought fly fishing could be so much fun (so much fun in fact that I ordered myself a fly fishing rod)! I'd been fly fishing once in the Steens Mountains but at the time didn't didn't fish for more than five minutes because it started pissing rain. We were the only ones on the lake for most of the day.

Reflection of a cabin on the lake

After a day of fly fishing, my roomie and I headed down South to Seward in Margaret to celebrate his birthday. We found a sweet camping spot along a river on the turnoff to Exit Glacier, made a fire, listened to music and drank beer until 2am. Waking up around 9am the wind was howling like crazy - the entire river valley was hazy from sediment being blown up from the river bed. BUT we decided to go for a hike anyway. The weather couldn't have been better, well, with the exception of the hypothermia-inducing weather at the top of the ridge. The wind in the valley, yeah, it was up on the ridge too but about 30 degrees colder. It got to the point where I was praying that I didn't have to go to the bathroom because there was no way in Hell that I was going to be able to get my pants down, let alone get my zipper back up and fastened.

Flight from Big River to Anchorage

I can't believe I'm paid to see some of the things I've seen. Take the flight from Big River to Anchorage for instance. I was paid to fly OVER the Alaska Range. Amazing.

Big River Camp

Sorry, it's been awhile. I've been out in the field for a couple weeks and just got back to Anchorage a couple days ago. Hmmm...where to start....

I was at Big River camp again for two weeks, one of my favorite camps due to the proximity of the mountains, the lake, and awesome helicopter rides. Below is a view of the camp from the chopper with Mt. Hesperus in the clouds, my running "trail" (e.g. the runway) and my "cool down" (e.g. the lake) which is more like an ice bath. I also hiked the ridge behind the camp.

View from the ridge behind the camp

Plane taking off from the runway

What to do with a little extra time at the end of the day? Bury your coworker!

My roommate and another coworker had to use their bear spray on a bear that was a little too close for comfort (8ft). When I asked them how the bear spray worked their response was, "Glad I'm carrying a gun." Naturally, a couple of us were curious how far the bear spray would go so we went for a walk and tested it out. It doesn't go very far...

My first view of the Northern Lights! There wasn't much color to it - the next camp that I'll be at from Sept. 26th - Oct. 4th is farther North so I'm hoping *fingers crossed* that I'll get some good views from there.

View from the back deck of Mt. Hesperus and da moon

Views from the chopper...

Mt. Hesperus! (above)

MORE PICTURES TO COME LATER...STAY TUNED...