Feb. 19, 2006

We’re into our 5^th month of winter up here, and still have about 2 ½ months to go, but it hasn’t been too bad. We had one cold spell, with daytime temps to a high of zero and lows to 10-15 below, but we’ve also had a fair amount of warmer weather, and even some rain. Today it’s about 40, and I was able to get outside without a coat for the first time in months. The sun is almost making it up over the mountains surrounding my home now, and in another week or so, I should be getting direct sunlight for a good portion of the day.

I decided to go x-c skiing, and thought it would be kinda sticky/soft due to the warm temps. Wrong! The groomed, packed trails melted just a little bit, and froze again during the night to make things very icy and fast.

The same thing happened to the road up the mountain to the house last week. I started out to work, and the road, with several inches of packed snow, was kinda crunchy so you could get some traction. I got about a third of the way down and realized it wasn’t crunchy any more. It was slick and smooth ~ essentially a bobsled course for the next 2 miles down to the highway. I turned around and went back home, and called into work for the first time since I’ve been here. There were hundreds of accidents that day in the Anchorage area.

I know Alaska was one of the most seismically active areas in the world, and we do get a minor earthquake every couple of months, but “seismically active” took on a new meaning with the eruption of the Mt. Augustine volcano last month. It’s 180 miles south of Anchorage, and has sent ash plumes over the city before. Never having been thorough a volcanic eruption before, I did some research, and found out that ash is nasty stuff! It gets through every crack into your house; 4 inches of it can collapse your roof, and if you drive in it, you have to change the air filter in your car 3 times a day, and the roads will be slicker then ice. Needless to say, the day after it erupted for the first time, you couldn’t buy an air filter anywhere in the city of Anchorage. So far, all the ash fall has been to our South or East, and the volcano has quieted down in the past few weeks, but we’re still keeping an eye on it. I can’t take credit for the photos of the volcano; they were taken by the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The Iditarod will be starting in two weeks, and I’ll be volunteering as a dog handler again. With the warm weather we’ve been having, I’m going to guess the re-start (some would say the real start) will be in Willow again, about 2 hours up the road, instead of Wasilla (30 minutes up the road), as is customary. More photos then!