Mt. Prindle, a Carhartt wedding, and canoeing

Yikes, I can't believe its already been a couple of weeks since my last post. There are so many things going on these days its hard to keep up.

Two weekends ago I went rock climbing at Mt. Prindle with friends Laura and Pierre. We left Fairbanks Friday evening and drove north on the Steese Highway for about two hours. We then turned onto a logging road and continued on, fording two streams in the process. It was quite clear that the car couldn't make it past the third stream, so we took our bikes off the roof of the car and rode a few miles to the end of the road. From there it's a 7 mile hike up and over a couple of hills to the base of the climb. We ended up hiking until 1 am (in full sunlight!) . Saturday we woke up late in the morning, discovered that we didn't have a pot (my bad), ate cold oatmeal (yumm...) and continued on to Mt. Prindle. We relaxed in the sun with the mosquitoes on Saturday evening, climbed Sunday morning, and were back in Fairbanks by midnight on Sunday evening.
Mt. Prindle has some impressive rock outcrops, the highest of which is over 300 m high. Unfortunately most of the rock is completely covered with lichen, so the climbing isn't as nice as it looks from afar. Anyway, it was fun to do a long climb - something that you can't do in many places around Fairbanks. I've only done a couple of multi-pitch climbs before. It takes some getting used to. I was a little nervous at first, but once I started focusing on climbing (and not looking down) everything was fine. Pierre is a very good climber and did all of the leading, so there really wasn't much for me to worry about. I'm just glad that he led and not me!

This past Saturday Inari and I attended our friend's wedding. It was truly a Fairbanks wedding - the guests were asked to wear Carhartt's and bring some food to share. It was complete with piñatas and a group of about 30 youngish people (mostly geology graduate students) dancing in the rain. These dancers included the bride, who was wearing hiking boots under her traditional wedding dress. A lot of old friends were in town - it was good to see everybody.

On Sunday I went on a short canoe trip on the Chatanika River, and then remembered how much I enjoy canoeing. I then proceeded to buy a roof rack for our car, 2 nice life jackets for paddling, and a paddle for Inari. We went again on July 4th. I'm hoping to squeeze in some more paddling trips this summer, but there isn't a lot of time left! I'm going fishing this weekend, and Inari's sister Anu is coming in a few weeks... After that I'm off to Greenland again and won't be back until early September. Phew!