Go out like a lion?

I thought it was come in like a lion, go out like a lamb?  Not come in like a lion, go out like a lion.

It didn't really matter though.  We enjoyed it when we were able to get out in it!  There was a good lot of snow dumped on us in very short order.  It doesn't stop school here, they still come, we still have class and it's still fun to watch it come down all day.  It's just hard to image it like this all the time.  But, here I am, living with the snow, all the time!

This storm was particularly fun because of the wind that would rustle up the snow that had fallen and create some pretty monster drifts.  It would blow the falling snow onto my front porch/stairway and it even made it a bit hard to open the door because it was so deep at one point.  You can see in the picture that I had not made it outside yet.  I have this nice big window in my kitchen that looks right down the stairway.  The snow was piling up on the handrail, stuck to the side of the windbreak and this was taken BEFORE it started sticking to the door.  At this point there was about 5 inches on the landing before I went out and cleared it off.

Now, when you get this much snow, and then it packs down as it clears, there is a bit more ice around to sled on.  The kids love this and we took one afternoon to go and play after school.  You see that races down the hill by Icicle Foods are a popular sport.  What you don't see is that the races don't always end with everyone making it down the hill.  Some slide off to one side and into a bank, some fall off a sled while the others continue down towards the bottom.  We all have fun and it breaks the cycle of school and home.

My good friend Debbie and I went out for a little walk across the lake one day while the snow was still around.  While walking across the lake, we ran into some wolf tracks.  I thought they were pretty cool.  A little scary they were right in town but we knew they had been in town already.  I was happy to get some pictures of the prints.  We started up the hill after walking across the lake and found ourselves "post-holing" and decided to head back down the hill.  I figured instead of doing that on the way back down, I was just going to roll instead.  What you'll see here is me at the bottom, my roll marks in the snow.....encouraging Debbie to do the same.  I giggled, then she giggled and rolled part of the way down.  I'm sure she'll not forget that any time soon!

 This was also the time where I got to go and pick up a piece of my art that I will be bringing home with me, a locally carved mask from whale vertebra.  This is NOT my mask, but another one carved by the same artist.  I just thought this was too cute not to photograph and I know that a friend of mine will like to see it!

Spring Break Pt. 2: Unless you're the lead dog...

After the few days of a literacy conference and a late night trip out and back to Anchorage to pick up Mom from the airport, it was time to get the Spring Break activities underway!  We sure weren't going to waste any time.  There was a lot to do and we didn't want to miss any of it.  First on the list, a dog sled ride!

Chugach Express is a wonderful place to go through if you are in Girdwood.  Dario and his team not only provide a great experience, but his expertise and knowledge allow for good discussions about his life with his animals.  He answers questions, takes you on a great ride and brings you down to his kennel to show and explain to you what it's like to be a musher.  In addition to our ride and many others just like us, his big project right now is getting out into the schools to provide an opportunity to reach the youth and provide them with an experience to bond with animals, develop skills, and feel the sense of responsibility you get when someone depends on you.  *of course, this sits very well with Mom and I!

When we arrived at the pick up spot, all you see is a field of snow.  Tell-tale tracks in the snow show that there's probably been a sled through here at some point in time, you can't see them anywhere though.  So much snow has fallen that it's easily knee deep and very soft.  We waited a bit, looked around and wondered about how our ride would be.  Listening to the silence was peaceful and pretty soon you heard some calls and whistles.  Around the corner comes Dario with his team and the riders just before us.  Dogs pulling tight, they come along the tracks they've made previously in the day to where our trail meets theirs.  Of course this is our guy, he's got a sled made for riding, his riders have a camera, and he greets us right away.

The family before us tell us that we are going to have a great time, thank Dario and go about their way.  We get a run down of how the sled works and decide that it's a much better idea for me to sit in front where the seat is very low.  Mom will take the chair level seat.  Well, wasn't she lucky?  Not only does the scenery not change.....the smell doesn't either!  Those dogs fart when they start running!  I could not believe it!  Let me tell you, you think a dog toot is bad with just dog food, try getting the food they feed sled dogs!  The initial start was a big slow, not a big jerk like I was expecting.  The large amounts of snow that had fallen the past week really made the trail slow.  It didn't matter, the dogs loved it and I was having a blast too. 

The ride around the meadow was amazing.  We were told a few of the dog's names before we started.  Ryan was one of them.  We found that out real quick because he is a young dog and needs a lot of correcting.  (Sounds oddly familiar for some reason.)  As they pulled together as a team you could tell they were in it for the workout and they loved what they were doing.  The whistles and the calls of "Gee" and "Ha" were familiar as I had used them several times before with Ciqu.  I thought back to rollerblading with him and it was comforting, and then a little memory escaped out the side of my eye.

As we came up to the kennel, we slowed down, came to a stop and Dario had an anchor in the ground to keep the sled in place while the pups rested and we took a tour.  Looking back at the meadow with the sled in the picture, the sky was beginning to clear and the beauty of the day was just amazing.  Word got around that there were new people coming down and all the pups were interested, up looking around.  Dario explained how things worked and how they trained in different locations for different parts of races.  When explanations were done, word then got around the kennel that we were leaving for a run, and those that were not already on the sled were not going.   Howling from those not going started, those already on the sled howled in return!  Music to my ears.

We took our time getting back around the meadow, enjoying every minute of it I know that it might not be something I ever get to do again.  I love that Mom was able to come to Alaska and experience this with me, that we got a chance to be pulled by a team of dogs through feet of snow in the middle of some of the most beautiful mountains I've ever seen and that it's an experience that really could only happen because of this year in Alaska.  I've been so blessed because of this wonderful year, even with the heartaches of being gone, it's provided not only me, but now Mom with some wonderful opportunities too.

Sled ride in Girdwood, AK

Dorothy and Dario with the dogs

Mom and Dorothy with the sled and dogs

Sunrise and Snow

The cold weather here surprises me often times with some wonderful shows.  I get beautiful sunrises and amazing sunsets.  The colors in the pictures often times don't come close to doing them justice but I continue to take them anyhow.  Maybe sometime I will get into photoshop and get them closer but for now, you get to see what the camera saw.  An early  (well, not so early) morning peachy sky out a classroom window.

We are often times also surprised by the the amount of snow that blows around here as well.  A few inches will fall and then the wind picks up, blowing it from someplace, to my front door.  Drifts, piles of snow massed by the wind are amazing pieces of art made by Mother Nature.  This particular one is right outside my front door and requires shoveling from time to time.  27.5" tall and about 4-5 feet long with a width of 3 feet.  That's a lot of snow to move!  This time I only went as wide as the shovel was because I just didn't want to move any more.  Besides, I only needed to walk through it right?

The other beautiful part of this is my one little classroom window.  When the wind blows just right, the snow piles up on the bottom creating that "picture perfect" snow pile at the bottom.  I love it!  Too bad there wasn't a little Christmas tree outside with lights just outside that window!

These pictures were taken quite awhile ago, they could have been taken today though.  Right now I sit and watch the fresh 4" fall off a neighboring roof as it slides down the steep incline.  Plop, Plop, Plop.  I think it would be fun to stand underneath. Just once  :)

The Deep Hike

A long hard walk through the snow.  A beautiful blue sky and some wondrous sights to see was the adventure for the day.  You never really know what will happen on a hike through the village but the guarantee of some adventure is definitely there.

The snow had been falling quite often for quite some time and the clear beauty of the day was exciting.  What do we do on an exciting day?  Go for a walk, of course.  When it snows a bunch and then you go walking, sometimes the snow gets rather deep in spots.  Trudging across the road, it's not really that deep.  The road has been plowed several times.  Step off of the road and you hit deep snow.  We hit the lake just by the school and it was immediately knee deep sometimes deeper.  Along the way I found a few things that peaked my interest.  I stumbled along snow sitting on interesting dead plants, students upon hills, and a fox on a hill that we crept up on and watched as it saw us and then decided to leave.

It looks great, a fantastic mountain....we'll let you think that.  The boys showing the way.

I was thankful to be in the back of the pack.  The rest of the trekkers could break the trail and I could just tramp it down a bit more.  Through the snow we continued across the lake to the banks of the lake where the kids knew it was much deeper.  They had a plan in mind, knowing how deep it had been in the past few days while they had been out walking around.  Now, they wanted to see how deep it was and put me in the lead.  Let's see if the teacher could actually get through it!

Imagine for a second if you will, two students who are 6'2" plus, pushing a 5'4" (almost) teacher in front of them to see just how high up the snow is.  Well, in the beginning I was up to my waist in snow.  Each time I took a step it was walking from the hip.  Not just moving the leg and the knee but actually picking up my leg, swinging it up and over the snow at waist level, and then taking another step.  A few steps in, I found myself chest deep in snow.  Time to be in the back of the pack again, I was just not up to that task of blazing the trail.  Don't get me wrong, it was fun, it's just hard to walk when you can't bend at the waist any longer.

We ended the day with some flips off a snow bank, gymnastics skills coming in handy.  The walk was long and tiring but I did have fun once again and will continue to enjoy each experience I have in Egegik.

We got a good amount of snow, the tree was looking rather festive.

So much snow and wind

The snow just kept coming down, blowing around and just socking our town with lots of the white stuff.  Just outside the school I'm here with the school truck in the background and you can see that my hood is covered in the flying snow, houses are still hard to see and I've got my face pretty much covered up to protect it from the chill.  The wind is brutal when it is so cold and it gets hard to see when snow is blowing into your eyes.  Instant watering can happen when the wind flies right into your eyes too.  Then you have a problem, tears plus cold wind can equal ice right near the eyes.  Long eyelashes sticking together isn't always that fun.

Anyhow, with all the winter weather, it was fun to walk around the school grounds and see what it was like to walk in the wind and snow but I was glad that I did just walk around the school and wasn't somewhere that I had to walk to find shelter.  While the blizzard was in our area, planes didn't fly.  That means that the mail doesn't come.  When mail doesn't come that also means that food doesn't come either.  I was still waiting for my milk to show up from Anchorage at this point.  (It finally came but it was delayed because of this storm!)

Once the storm had passed, roads were plowed and the village started to breathe again.  Mountains of snow started to appear near our little school parking area and the younger kids were excited about them.  A snow slide formed on one side and we climbed up and down the other to take pictures time after time.  

The older kids have the exciting job of shoveling the boardwalks here on school grounds so that everyone can travel safely from building to building.  They had quite the workout!  They had a good amount to get rid of and with each toss, I swear more just fell down onto the boards.  They got it pretty clear though, enough so we could get around.   You see a 4-wheeler here pretty buried in snow and then a picture of myself kneeling on the shoveled boardwalk.  Most of that snow is gone now as we have warmed up over the last week.  Now we have piles of snow where the drifts were and some bare areas.  

The frozen window

When I got back from the Christmas break, it was very cold in Egegik, it had been for some time.  In my spare bedroom, the windows had completely frosted/iced over the sills.  As you can see in this first picture, the ice completely covered the black casings of the window.  Now completely white, no opening of the window was possible.  Not like I'd want to anyhow, but it was new for me.  The bathroom window was the same way as was the giant window in the kitchen.  Sometimes that one gets opened when cooking goes awry!   What I didn't know is that when they start to freeze and stay that way for so long, cracks start to appear.  In this first picture you can kind of see it but in this second one, you can see how long it is.  It wasn't there one day, and BOOM, there the next.  Amazing what a little cold weather and pressure from all sides can do.  The window just couldn't "breathe" anymore because it was frozen all around.  The crack in this window and the one in the front room from the beginning of the year are now all covered with bright pink duct tape thank you maintenance, so things look bright and cheery!

As school creeps along through January, the blizzard warning came in, we got dumped on with snow, blowing snow, high winds and some more snow!  It was amazing to see how our little village changed in a matter of hours it seemed.  Everyone says it's the most snow they have ever seen here.  I'm glad it's the winter I am here.  I love the fact that I am getting a big winter with a lot of snow to play in.  Though when you are outside, it's cold and you have to bundle up well, it's worth it to go and play!

Here we have our Elementary students out with their teacher.  They are out by the gym where a snow drift has started and it's one of the only places where you can almost get away from the wind.  The wind is blowing the snow around so much that you can barely make out the houses in the background.  They were starting to dig into the drift to make a cove of sorts.

Huddled into the little cove in the drift, the two girls caught a break from the wind before jumping through the snow in the playground just before lunch time.  Snow like this doesn't come very often and they really seemed to enjoy themselves.   Oh, I did too, let's not kid ourselves!

Something I never thought I'd see.

It was a myth, something I'd only heard could happen.  It was finally cold enough, we were just silly enough and we had all the right tools.  A cup, hot water, a camera and the cold weather.





Yeah for Alaska and the cold.  You'll never see that in Oregon!  (I hope!)

FIrst came wind, then came snow

A nice big storm rolls into town without much warning.  It wasn't the storm that Nome got, not even close to that but the winds that we got caused a bit of a stir around here.  They say they only get worse as the winter progresses on but if it's going to do some damage, I figure that's enough for me.  

I didn't think to check the weather site to see just how hard the wind was gusting, I'll have to do that next time around.  I think I was too busy swaying with my end of the building, wondering if the Wicked Witch was going to come anytime soon to come and "get my little dog too" to worry about that honestly.    Holding on through the night, bashing and crashing was all I heard.  Metal on metal, screeching and grinding and the occasional bang.  I figured it was the storage doors whacking against the building with the gusts.  It wasn't.  When daylight broke, we found that a piece of the roof had been torn from the screws that held it in place.  Not just nails, screws!  As each pulled out, the metal had beat against the building and roof right over my bed.  No wonder it was a long, sleepless night!  The rest of the village woke to check their houses, see if things were where they had left them and look for missing pieces of metal.  Not much was heard of much damage so it wasn't too bad of a storm.  Tossed about around the school property were some bits of plastic and other odd things, I think I saw a rogue tote across the road in the bushes too.

The biggest part of the wind storm was when I looked out the other side of my apartment and saw something sitting a little off kilter.  Opps!  Just the day before it was upright.  Had to have been the wind that knocked it off it's blocks.  I knew I heard something in the middle of the night!  That big 55 gal. drum is crushed like a pop can!  I sure hope the owner has a good idea for how to deal with that later on.  I'm sure they do, it's probably something that's happened before out here.

Once the wind died down and we had a little bit of time to recoup, we got some snow!  Pretty, beautiful, quiet snow.  The world just dies right on down and is super quiet when it's covered in a nice blanket of the white stuff!  We got about 2 inches that morning and I couldn't have been happier!  Fresh tracks signal that a passerby or two have been out in the morning but all else is quiet.  I am guessing it might be someone's brother out to have a cup of morning coffee!