The Great Northern Adventure

Greetings all. Weeks have passed and snow has melted. Clouds have hung around. Sometimes big heavy ones that sit right on camp and make it hard to see. Sometimes high flat ones, obscuring the sun. All sorts of clouds. With these clouds often comes WXCL days and on those days we spend a lot of time napping, playing Scrabble with the cook. Sometimes we kick on the generator and all gather in and watch a movie. Karen tries to have extra delicious snacks to comfort us through the dull days like that. One particular movie session, Karen made us Popcorn made on the stove and peppered with parmesan cheese. It was sumptuous.

Along with these weather days we get to enjoy the particularly pungent odeur of wet dog. I hug them to put on their harnesses, many of them like to jump up and greet you with a hug, others just double high-five your chest. Each dog has its own, personal greeting for me. They also vary throughout the day. Some of my dogs are morning people. Some are afternooners. We have a couple young girl dogs, just about a year old. Little (maybe 40-45 lbs) white, short hair girls with tails that curl up over their backs. If they get put together on a team it is a wreck b/c they jump all over each other and tangle the line. Some of my dogs will unabashedly go bell-up in front of other dogs. Some dogs won't back down. Usually the young males... funnily enough.

It is always interesting in the mornings when the dogs haven't seen you since the night before, and you certainly have so many new smells on the seat of your pants. And so the dogs greet you, just like they greet each other. And nothing wakes you up at 6 in the morning quite like that. And the dogs seem so unabashed about the whole ordeal and that is when I started thinking about that very obvious difference between humans and animals...we are the only ones that blush. Chew on that.

Dear Ones,Crazy wonderful days abound up here in the Northern State. A few weeks ago, through a strange series of events I went from being a photo girl to being a handler for a musher from Fairbanks named Olaf. A true bachelor recluse who grows his own food and loves his dogs. As such, he is rather stringent about their care and it is teaching me a lot. Our days start at 6 am when I roll lout of bed, throw on my boots and wander out to his lot of 30 dogs and scoop poo into 5 gallon buckets and put water into the little metal bowls which sit in holes in the roofs of each of the dogs' houses. Then we wander back in to camp and have a bit of time to get everything together (sun-screen, water bottles, pocket-knives, hats, varying layers of clothing to adjust to rapidly changing weather) and then sit in the kitchen and drink hot chocolate until breakfast is ready at 7. Tours start at 8:30 and so I am back in the yard by 8 to talk with Olaf and get instructions on jobs to do and decide on which teams of dogs to run that day. Then I start putting the harnesses on the dogs and put them on the line to be ready to run by the time the tourists get there. I could go on and on about the dogs, but suffice it to say they are extremely motivated, most of them are well behaved, and 8 of them had their 1 year birthday last week so they got doggy treats instead of cake. I love them.As Olaf runs the tours I work in the yard, turning the dog houses so that they stay sturdy even as the snow continues to melt out from underneath them. I also tighten their chains so they don't get caught up in them and bury the poles that hold the chains so that the dogs don't pull them out of the ground. Once or twice a day I empty the 5 gallon buckets full of snow and poo and to these 55 gallon drums which, once a week, are hooked up to a rope hanging from a helicopter and flown into town to be dumped into the sewer plant or into the cars of anyone we don't like...not really.On busy days we will work until 7, running in to grab lunch  between tours. Once our last tour leaves all the mushers load our buckets onto sleds pulled behind snowmobiles and go out and scoop the doodies left out on the trail. While the work itself does not seem all that endearing it is fun to have some time out there in the middle of the glacier, riding on a sled, holding a shovel and talking to people who I probably would never otherwise even meet. Sometimes we chat, sometimes we stand quietly and look at the clouds and lighting on the mountains. We get back to camp about 7:30 and then I wash my hands and go help Karen the Cook with final preparations for supper (she has promised to teach me to make homemade bread [which she does for us every night]). Then we carry all the food over to the lounge where someone has usually struck up the propane heater. The whole camp gathers together over the food and usually spend the time telling funny stories and, surprisingly, talk some more about poop. Sometimes some of the boys will break out their guitars and violins and jam out for the evening and I journal and listen. Other nights we turn on the generator and watch movies. A good life.The only other thing which permeates my life more than poop is water. I am becoming increasingly aware of it in all its variety of forms. I stand on snow, covering a huge chunk of ice, surrounded by clouds of fog, as rain and snow pelt down on me. I wonder what it would be like to be a droplet of water and where all has that raindrop running down the back of my neck been before? Frozen for thousands of years into a glacier? A recent arrival from someplace tropical? I am surrounded by stories, all the time.The other day our morning tours were cancelled because of fog and so some of the experienced mushers loaded a bunch of us into the sno-cat (a rather amazing all terrain machine which runs on tank type tracks and is amphibious and even used by the military) and we drove down to the tip of the glacier where they taught us about how to safely walk on a glacier when the snow has melted down to the ice. We peered into eerie blue crevasses and jumped over and around them and threw snow balls into them. Then Joel (the amazing hiker guy) took us down over the toe of the glacier and we climbed into an ice cave and looked up, through and into the bottom of the glacier. I could see grit and leaves and bubbles frozen and compressed into the ice. It was amazing. While the top of the ice had been textured and easy to walk on, from underneath it was completely smooth. It felt like I was on a Magic School Bus field trip.Beyond that I have been adventuring and playing and just loving life in general. Jumping cliffs into glacier lakes, night hiking, meeting carpenters, glass blowers, jewelry salespeople, hiking guides from all around the world and just loving every minute of it. And working on getting papers together for my visa and looking at plane tickets from hither to thither and back and around again.Thanks for reading. Love you.

 

Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day on the glacier. Only half the crew was up and we had very few tours. Taken together these things mean we get to play a lot. First off two of the mushers took three of us, with our skis, up the glacier on snowmobiles. They dropped us off and went on to make a wide looping trail for a dog sled adventure later in the day. We climbed up onto a ride and looked down through a low valley, out to the trees and more mountains. To our left were giant shelves of ice beginning to glisten through the snow which has, as of yet, covered them pretty effectively. But in the sunny, 70 degree weather, the ice was glinting through in spots. We worked together to push a big rock off of where we stood and watched it start an avalanche down the ridge before it leapt off to where we could no longer see it. Then the sound of the snow, rolling over itself. The sound of a rain stick mixed with a waterfall. We spent two hours skiing around on the upper glacier then zoomed back into camp in time for a 20 minute nap, then another tour. At 4:30 4 of the mushers hooked up their dogs and we all took off up the trail that had been made that morning. IT was about 12 miles long and we looped up past emerald green pools and below towering, jagged cliffs. From camp they look like the spine of a dragon sleeping under the snow. From the feet of them, they loom overhead. The colors of the rocks and the shadows they cast make you aware of them as being something almost beyond 3D. Streaked with red from the iron inside they are a mix of volcanic rock and some form of granite. Wide and networked with rivets and cracks, they almost seem to invite me to climb but the sharpness would almost certainly tear my hands. And then there are the funny rocks, precariously setting on ledges. A balancing act that has lasted for probably longer than I have been alive...but which could also end without a seconds' notice. One of the pools lay deep below the snow. Looking down I could see the snow bulging over the ice that stepped in layers down down down.There is something empowering when you stand on a sled, pulled by 14 dogs. Each with their lines pulled taught off the center gangline. Dogs that jump about and bark all day in camp suddenly make not a single noise. Heads down except to glance back when the musher congratulates one on his efforts or yells 'haw' (left) or 'gee' (right). I stand on two runners protruding from behind the seat. Between my feet is a bar, parallel to the ground with two downward-facing metal claws. The brake. Held down it slows the dogs. Stomped on, it can almost stop them. Holding the brake lightly as we go down the hill (so the sled does not run into the dogs) I watch as the slushy snow rainbows over the bar and piles on the runners in front of my feet. Like the wake of a boat. Churning. Then you smell something that is less than pleasant and you glance down and note the tasty tidbit of doggy doo mixed in with the snow. Yum. The less glamorous product of their exertion.We rolled back into camp an hour and a half later and the dogs are certainly at NO risk of running away as we unharness them and take them back to their houses. Then I wash my hands in the bucket outside the kitchen. Cleaning well up to my elbows and go help Karen the Cook making pizzas. She tosses to dough and I butter the crust and add the sauce. Bake them for 2 minutes, pull them out and add toppings to taste. 20 minutes later we are all gathered in the lounge assessing one another's degree of sunburn and reveling in the glorious day. Just as the post dinner lull begins to tug I get up and clear the lounge of dishes. Three of us scoop water out of the pots that we keep filled and boiling all day and fill up three small tubs of water on the counter. One with soap, one just water and to the third we add bleach. Olaf brings in some 70s funk music and we dance our way through the dishes. Chattering about Iditarod racers, the weather and just about anything and everything else. From there we all head out into the dog yards to do a little after dinner poop scooping. Settle the dogs houses back into snow (for those that like to knock them over or dig them up). Brush a couple that are shedding their coats and pet and console those that did not get to go on the run earlier.I sat with Big Momma (who is not really big at all) and watched the sunset. A glorious show which I will probably try to describe in a later post when I have found better words to try to wrap around it. And then, it is 10:30 and well past my bed time. Into my bag. It was a pull the mummy bag closed around my face kind of night. Only my nose and mouth peeking out. Then up at 6 am to help scoop the puppy pen and feed and water. Breakfast. Then I don an orange vest and hop on the helicopter with my hot chocolate and down to town.First order of business, to the showers. I insert my dollar, hoping whoever showered before me left the water at a manageable temperature b/c I do only have 5 minutes to the dollar. Ah the glory of hot water. And as I wash my hair I realize a very definite pattern in the jobs that I love is that showers come infrequently. A coincidence surely... Not that I enjoy NOT showering. It is just that when you have to wait for them longer, you truly appreciate them more. Right? Maybe.Beyond that, the newest exciting news is that Spain has offered me a teaching position on the Balearic Islands. Certainly an option to be considered I would say. Think of me and pray for me that I may make the right decisions. OR better yet, write to me and give me advice and encouragement.

I love you all.

Warning to those who love me and worry for my safety: This entry details exploits which may cause you slight discomfort.

Also: please excuse the many typos. I have written this on an Apple and don't quite get the dang machine yet. I will edit this when I get to a REAL computer.

The reason for the lack of post last week was because I was out having adventures to post about. Namely, I was climbing A&B Mountain with a number of my co-workers. It started off manageable enough. Steep but well marked. Sometimes gravel, sometimes soft dirt, and other stretches were large smooth rock surfaces, smoothed better than the nicest sidewalk by thousands of years of glacier pressure. Glaciers...the original highway construction teams. 30 minutes up we reached a rock off of which we could look down, over the trees, at the town of Skagway, several hundred feet below. THe ridge across the other side of town, packed with an assortment of trees, led up and over to our glacier home. Up there where the clouds played like halos around the peaks. Another hour up the trail we crossed a stream and entered what seemed like a wonder playland for woodland wanderers. Moss like icing on the cake. Roots of the deep brown and red standing trees gave body to the texture. Below was marsh. We could hear it, deep under our feet gasping everywhere we stepped and inhaling deeply as we moved on. Part way though the bog I stopped and listened as two trees played their story on each others branches. For the rest of the hike I tried to imagine which instrument in an orchestra best fit the different aspects of the mountains. The rocks were a deep resonating drum. THe wind was the flutes. The trees whisped like so many woodwinds. And all the while the mountain was the sound in between. THe echo of the silencing instruments and the body of the song.

Just through the marsh the trail decided it had had enough with the wandering and the switchbacks. It was time to go straight up. Through shrubs. Scamper up those same sidewalk rocks. THis time wishing they had even one crack to put your hand into. TUrns out the water melting off the top of the mountains picked the best ways down and se seemed to be of the impression that was also the best way up. Stomping now through bouts of snow. Winding through thickets. Sometimes all I could think of was getting one foot one step further up the trickle of waterfall. Planting the feet. Ascertaining that the ground would hold. Step up. Plotting the next step as I took the first. The going got slow and the slow got going. Jumping the spots that were deep and rushing with water. But don't jump too high b/c the optic nerve hangers (branches) were everywhere.

Finally the scrubs ended and the waterfalls we were on layers of moss on top of rocks. Alaska ll around us. Above. Below. Crumbled into the cuffs of my Carhartts. Woven into my hair and sticking to my palms and jacket. But there we were. Watching the patterns of the clouds play across the fjord below. The way the water from the rivers pushed to make its mark out into the ocean water. Again, clouds snaking across the mountain tops. Tickling the tree tops in whisps. Twirling and skipping. Moving pockets of sunlight everchanging. Epic.

Then, after 5 minutes in the wind, we decided to work our way back down. Now, when I say 'work' our way back down...well, that had different meanings for all of us. For Joel, a musher from Minnesota it meant schpeil down the mountain-side at a pace that frightened me to even think about. We got back down to the bramble and I had lost sight of the group ahead and the trail as well. I heard a voice coming from the tangle. My friend Karl, asking if I would like someone to maneuver down with. I most certainly did. Of course, we immediately lost the trail and found ourselves climbing and crawling and scrambling through impossibly thick bushes. I was using my hands and arms like I never had before when hiking. At one point I looked to my left and there was a 20 foot ledge leading down to a smooth patch of snow running down the mountain side. Looked easier than climbing through the bushes until I realized it was covering a stream. However, the bushes kept maneuvering me closer to the ledge and then the ground under my feet decided to relocate to the bottom of the ledge and I was left hanging from the trees I had grabbed. Shaking hands with Alaska in a very intimate way. About 20 minutes later we started marco/poloing with some other kids from the group and finally found Travis a Katie sitting on the bit of trail. Kate was eating chips and Travis was smoking a cigar. We made our way back down the sidewalk rocks by sliding and grabbing at tree limbs to slow us down. Until we finally made it back into the boggy playland where the others had waited. Then. Then we ran my friends. We bolted from one spot to the next. Up the mossy rises, down the rock faces. Up the gravel trails and back down. Once the pace was well set in our legs we began to play. Leaping off of stumps. Hopping on the rocks. Flying. At some point the joy of it all welled up inside me so much that I could not help but hoot out loud and started laughing. Laughing until I could not tell if my sides hurt from laughing or from running. And then there we were. Passing the old shack that had leaned against the trees next to it b/c it was tired of standing by itself. And we could see the road. And the truck. And five miles later we returned to our trailers. Victorious and ravishingly hungry. So we went to the Pizza shop in town. That morning we had planned a fire by the river that night but instead we found ourselves asleep almost before we could zip our sleeping bags all the way up.

An epic adventure for sure.

Since then I have been on the glacier for 7 or 8 days. I have learned that trying to know what the weather will be like in 5 minutes is really a waste of effort. You can try, and you can fret. Or you can learn to enjoy the mystery and just be prepared for anything. I am retraining myself from the first to the second although my endeavour to learn the clouds goes on. We have started getting snow again which means clouds and fog as well. Meaning sometimes days are WXCLD, sometimes sessions are WXCLD, sometimes you are just so sure it will be WXCLD and then there the helicopters are, unloading bundles of awestruck, camera toting visitors. Some of them, we never see their faces. THey seem to be growing out of the back of digital cam-corders or massive cameras. So desperate to capture the moment that they miss the whole thing in the first place. Others, you can see, are just there to have the time of their lives. They don't need much of a prompt to start laughing I have learned and I join them sometimes. THose are my favorites. The ones who understand to just laugh and have fun. IT feels so right because, being up here, I can't help but wonder if this whole thing is just one big cosmic comic. I love it. I love it. I love it.

Oh dear and patient reader. I would like to open this entry with the sad forewarning that I have not yet figured out how to hook my camera into the computers up here. But know that there are pictures waiting and I should have them up here in a week or two.

This has been a crazy week on and off the glacier. We had two WXCL (weather cancellation) days due to snow up on the glacier. On the first day we got at least a foot of snow in less than 24 hours. Because of the low clouds and bad visibility the helicopters could not make the trip so we just hung out around camp. A few of the boys started going stir crazy so we decided to approach our second snow day differently. We went outside in the morning and played snow volleyball for a while then went out on snow shoes for a bit. We spent the rest of the day digging out a big fort then piled a bunch of snow and started working on an underground room which was orchestrated by our Colorado girl, Cori. There were four of us working on it diligently and were planning on sleeping in it but then we were notified that the weather was good enough for a crew flight to be sent down and so a group of us had to leave half way into building an igloo over the front room. Hopefully the weather will not blow it over before we can get back to our creation! Now a group of us have been weathered down into town for 3 days.

On the helicopter ride down the winds were so strong that we were basically flying sideways all the way down the valley. Once we got out over the water the winds were too strong for the pilot to drop altitude so we got to spin around in circles to drop down which gave us an awesome view of everything. Now we are safely in town and planning on going to dinner then to a show about the history of the town (which we get into for free for being ‘locals’). Since we have been in town for so long we have been adventuring all over this place both through the town (aka delightful little diners, gear shops to ogle, goofy tourist shops, ridiculously priced fur coat stores and diamond shops) and all around the trails reaching out in all directions.

My first order of business was to acquire a pair of rental x-country skis to facilitate quick travel across the glacier. Necessary for my job of course.  .  . I was excited to be returning to the glacier by the next day but we were informed that we would not be flying up until later so Travis from Bed Oregon and I decided to hitch-hike out to Dyea, an old abandoned mining town about 8 miles down the fjord. The funny thing is that for as eerie as an abandoned mining town sounds, there is actually nothing there at all because these Northerners, being the practical people that they are, took their houses with them. So we walked along a trail through the woods along the highway and then, along the hill that rose we were picked up by a bussely buoyant looking old lady driving a large yellow tour van Chillkoot Trail Guides. Her name was Ruth and she had been here year round for 5 years and was a wealth of information about every thing we passed. She even stopped for us to identify some edible plants I had been curious about. She drove us all the way out to a trail head and dropped us off before turning her van around in one of the many, convenient ‘large vehicle turn around loops’ available.

There we stood on a bank 20 feet over the Taiya River, winding through a wide low rocky damp bed of rocks. The rain misted down on us. The only really significant drops were the ones that came from the branches of the trees as we brushed through them. We came upon several other groups of people like ourselves, just out wandering the trails in the rain. Some camping, some carrying backpacks and layers of weather gear. We walked across an old framed bridge and watched the water flow underneath us before we dropped to the pebble beaches lining the river. We found old shards of colored glass and wondered where they came from. We came across an old red brick and wondered what house upstream was missing such an integral piece. But we spent most of the time wondering up at the trees and mountains and the low coiling, wisping fogs which snaked through the treetops along the low ridges. In the distance we could see a tall, round snow covered mountain. The snow billowing off the top in a wind which undoubtedly rocked the world above tree-line. After a few hours of wandering we realized we were decidedly hungry and made our way back to the road. We were eventually picked up by Tyler and Clifford the Big White Dog. A Montana farm boy with a big green truck who also knew a good deal about the area. Such as that this fjord is the second deepest in the world, the deepest in America. Also that, while most tourists are led to believe that this is a canal, it was actually named after a man whose last name was Canal. A locals’ prank on the herds of wealthy old people who trample their streets for at least 8 hours a day before retreating back onto their lit boats and dining halls and deck top pools and Jacuzzis.

We rolled back into town and made it into a tasty little Thai shop with delicious tea and spicy food. I am proud to say that I now volunteer to eat lettuce. Just like real adults. But nothing can change the fact that peppermint fudge will always be more appealing to me. At the end of the day we came back to the campers and settled down on the floor with the mushers and watched a goofy movie, ‘More Dogs than Bones’, before climbing into my sleeping bag and reading Calvin and Hobbes until I fell asleep.The next day (today) we all got up and went for a cheap warm breakfast. We then wandered along an old gravel road beside the river and railroad and looked up at the hill-sides, collapsed into rock slides. Rocks bigger than my car settled 200 feet below where they probably once fit. Sometimes we would see and hear small cascades of rocks which made us hurry on down the road.

We began to run into trails sneaking off from the main road and found ourselves climbing over mossy rocks and fern padded dirt. We came out into a clearing at the bottom of a deep, gorge-like valley and looked up hundreds upon hundreds of feet to the top of a narrow, raging waterfall. We traversed the rocks and explored a cave before wandering back down the hill into the graveyard where the heroes and legends of the town were buried and where funnily colored tour busses bring visitors for a few minutes of silent reverie of a foreign history.

Walking back we saw a train coming along the rail and I borrowed some change and now we each have a flattened coin to commemorate our voyage. One warm package of ramen later I am feeling dry enough to venture forth to town before the market closes. Upon our first tour of the town we found a small funny shop called Port of Call populated mostly by people from very strange sounding countries but which carries the funniest, most random foods. I happened to spot some nutella and of course had to procure some. Also, somewhat jostled into it on a matter of dignity I purchased a jar of ‘Srikaya’ whose label sports a coconut, some kind of sprout and eggs. The matter inside the glass resembles something you would expect to encounter coming from a sick baby. But we are going to try it and that requires a loaf of bread. So I would like to leave you with some little poems and reflections I jotted while exploring.

Reid Waterfalls

Breathe deep the Alaska dream
Let the air filter through you
Clean you
Cascading towering waterfalls
Caves & nooks
Water. Still. Though settled on a precipice.   Foaming.
Eddies. Swirling foaming bubbles
A gargledsong
Happy currents leap
Tiny streams, out along-side
Findtheir own way
Kamikaze Droplets launch. 

Gold Rush Cemetery

Cemetery sleep
Along the broiling river
Nestled in the hill side
Intermingled with tree roots
Interlocking in a slow hug
Earth take me back
Wind carry my ashes
Across the wide land.
That I may nestle with all that I love.
Rain and snow, still fall on my face.

I am sitting in one of three trailers owned by Alaska Icefield Expeditions (AIE) in Skagway on my first day off. Sean and Noah and I just got back from a fun little hike up to Lower Dewey Lake where we sat on a cliff over the lake and looked across at the wall of pines with layers of white mountain peaks jutting up behind the ridge. The town is 2 streets by 20 streets as it is set in a nice little valley. Just over the mountains to our east is Denver glacier and the dog camp that is my home for the next several months. The camp is starting to come together. We just put up some of the last dog food tents yesterday when we had no tourists. It was so hot up there that we were in t-shirts and shorts and were applying sunscreen like there would be no tomorrow. Kate is one of the mushers up on the glacier and is the daughter of a prominent Iditarod runner. She has done the junior Iditarod and lives is what they call up here one of the 'native' villages. She is a really solid kid and I have a lot to learn from her. She and I painted about 30 of the 270 dog houses white yesterday and I have the paint on my arm to prove it! We have to have everything on the glacier painted white because if not the sun beats down on it and the snow melts around it. I did not believe it at first but even something as small as a few dog hairs laying out the snow results in a huge hole in a matter of days. Our houses are these long, arched, white weatherports. Ours is called the girls ghetto and it is the only living tent that has a door on it. There are four of us who live in there. Each of us has a plywood board to sleep on but my sleeping bag and thermarest do plenty to keep me warm and comfy (although I did learn the first night that I have to sleep with my nose inside the bag otherwise I wake up to ice crystals on my bag from where I have been breathing all night!). Aside from that the common hang outs are the 'Com Hut' which is where the desk and our photography stuff is, the kitchen which is where all the tasty stuff is and our cook Karen reigns supreme, and there is the lounge which has a propane heater and tables where we eat and boxes of toys and games for us. Apparently once they get the snow cats moved up there they will space our tents out more but until then everything is set up really snug. Apparently they have been dragging their feet on getting everything set up for us this year. We don't have uniforms yet and apparently are still missing a few buildings. But the dogs are there, and the trails are groomed, so business moves forward. We have had two days of tours so far and I think this will certainly be manageable. My daily routine is as follows: We wake up at six am to the barks of hungry dogs. Once they are all fed we pile into the kitchen and eat our breakfast to a chorus of 'my belly is full' howls. Seriously. All the dogs start doing it in unison, it is so funny. Then we are responsible for breakfast KP (kitchen Patrol). After that, I and the other photographer, Cherisse, go unpack our totes of photo gear, turn on the generator, turn on our two photo printers, start rolling batteries in our hands to warm them up and then look at the board of tours and split it up. Usually two helicopters come in every half hour and each chopper carries up to 6 people. Each dog team pulls two sleds so that makes for 3 tourists and a musher. My job is to scamper out about a quarter of a mile onto the glacier to a certain strategic point from which I can easily shoot sleds on either of the two trails we have (North camp and South camp). Then I wait for the sleds to go by and snap a quick photo then tootle back to the Com Hut and print the photos, put them in black mats that have our emblem on them then plastic baggy them and by the time I make it back outside the tours are back and I just walk up to the different groups and offer them their pictures and $20 bills come at me like they were pocket change. Cherisse and I alternate so I won't have to handle more than one tour an hour but it is certainly enough to keep me busy all day. That is the routine until about 6 pm when we finish our last tour, take account of the money and send it down on the last helicopter and pack the rest of our stuff up. We finish with that at about the same time as the mushers and handlers finish up with the dogs then all 25 or so of us pile into the kitchen to see what we can do to help supper finish up faster. After that we hang out, have book club or chat or sometimes watch a movie and then are in bed by probably about 8 or so. Because we had no tours yesterday Jacques, our French musher who has been doing this for 5 years, took Cori, Kate, Sean and Noah out to one of the ridges on the snowmobiles and we looked out at the stunning scenery. Right below us we could see where the glacier turned into a stair of ice waterfalls beyond which the pine trees stood all the way down to the edge of the ocean inlet. Beyond that the landscape rises into cacophony of white mountains across which the different hues of sunlight and different layers of clouds travel. On into eternity. Or at least into Canada. The glacier is set in a valley between two walls of mountains the tops of which are jagged and proud. Below the rock faces the snow starts but there are open spots where you can see that the glacier has smoothed the rocks and below that is camp. One of my favorite parts about camp is that on the mountain right behind camp, and the way I face all day as I take pictures, is a portion of rock with 5 high points all side by side. In my mind they are five old men, regarding us with humor, bouncing back the dogs' barks and our laughs...but I digress. So Jacques took us out on the snowmobiles and we did some SERIOUS sledding! The snow was crystal hard because it has been hot all day and was getting cold so it was all turning to snow so I tell you my friends, we flew. I had no idea how inexperienced of a sledder I was until I was faced with those hills. There are certainly a whole lot of new skills for me to learn, develop and cultivate up here. I am excited! On our way back I was ridding dog sled that was being pulled by the snowmobiles and learned (the hard way) how and when to lean so the sled doesn't tip and I must admit I have yet to master the art of using my foot to slow the sled without digging my toe and getting whipped off onto my face. I have the scrapes on my cheek and nose to prove it =). Well, we are getting ready to go for dinner at the Fish Company so I am going to wrap this up. I will try to figure out a way to upload pictures but as of yet I have not devised a way to do so. I intend to update this regularly. We will see how it goes.

 

If you can read this post, it means that the registration process was successful and that you can start blogging