Observations on dogsledding from somebody who doesn’t know anything about dogsledding

After a couple of dogsledding experiences in both Alaska and Greenland, I have made some surely keen observations. Dogsledding styles differ considerably between the two cultures. In Greenland, mushers sit on their sleds, which are wider and sturdier than Alaskan sleds. The dogs run in a fan formation and are controlled by voice and with a whip. This contrasts with Alaskan dogsledding, where the musher stands behind the sled, only use their voice to control the dogs, and the dogs run in a row. My impression is that the Alaskan mushers treat their dogs better. Greenlanders claim that their dogs sometimes need to be hit to be controlled because they are such wild dogs. Personally, I don’t think their dogs are any more wild than Alaskan huskies, and they definitely don’t need to be hit. Some mushers in Alaska have learned that the dogs perform better when they are treated well. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.

There seem to be advantages and disadvantages to both styles, and I think they could learn from each other. The Greenlandic dogs seem more difficult to control because they are not in a line, so they are more likely to get tangled up with each other or with a passing sled. Also, because the musher is sitting down its more difficult to see what lies ahead. On the otherhand, the trails can be very rough and full of rocks. Its easy to imagine that a standing musher would be thrown off their sled if they hit a rock. What I find maybe most interesting is that they don’t have a very good braking system. They have no way to anchor the sled into the ground, and their only way to force the sled to stop is to throw a large rope (like you’d see on a ship) around the front of the runners. I’d have thought that they would’ve developed something more sophisticated by now.

By standing, the Alaskan musher can more easily navigate his team around obstacles. Their sleds, which are somewhat lighter, are easier to manuever from behind but likely couldn’t stand up to repeated collisions with rocks. This is okay because they mostly run through the forest and swamps anyway, which is also why they run in a line. The sleds have both an anchor and a brake.

Two things that I’ve definitely learned: I need my own dog team, and Umimmak (= musk ox = long bearded one) would make a good dog name.

I will post photos later, but right now I stupidly don’t have a way to download them from my camera.

Frustrations at the museum

My experience at the Ilulissat Museum has been fairly discouraging this year, especially when compared to last year. We had basically three objectives this time around: to give another talk at the school, to set up a time-lapse camera with the school children (to get them involved with our research), and to put together a short DVD containing photos and videos of our field work.

I spent two days preparing a presentation for the school, only to have the teacher cancel on me since I had already talked to her class (she didn’t know this beforehand). Of course, I was planning on talking about something different, but that didn’t seem to matter.

The camera has also been something of headache. First, we talked to some teachers who thought the project was a great idea – but not for their class. According to Naja, my colleague at the museum, that is a typical response from the teachers here. Regardless of their response, we’d still like to put out a camera. As I’ve told several people in town, I’m happy to share the time-lapse video with anybody who can make use of it: educators, tour companies, etc, and we’d like to have the imagery for our own work. The problem is that we’re having trouble finding a good, secure spot for the camera with a good view of the fjord. I had first thought that a roof of a building would be ideal, but finding an ideal roof is far from easy. At this point I think the best alternative would be to mount it on the radio tower, which is up on the hill behind town. It seems that there is some hope for this, but it will require quite a bit of bureaucracy. We’ll give it a shot anyway.

We haven’t worked on the DVD yet. It should be pretty straightforward, except that the computer I need to use is currently in Kangerlussuaq.

On the other hand, the trip here hasn’t been a complete waste. I’ve gotten to experience Ilulissat in “winter” and have already gone dogsledding a couple of times and also gone to watch a dogsledding race. (It was the type of race where the objective is to not come in last place.) And, I’ve just purchased tickets to fly to Uummannaq, a town about an hour’s flight north of here. I’ll spend 5 days and about a month’s salary… I’m really excited to go to Uummannaq, even if it is going to be really expensive. It is much more removed from the standard tourist route and will be my new farthest north (over 70 deg).

Side note: travelling in Greenland is incredibly expensive. I’m paying over $50 a night for a bed in a hostel (a hostel!), a taxi from the airport to the hostel (5 km) costs $25, a burger at the greasy dinner costs $20, beer costs $10 a bottle if its served to you and $4 if you buy it at the store (and its not particularly special beer), and dinner at one of the nicer restaurants costs $50. The flight to Uummannaq will cost me $700, and a hotel room there costs $200 a night (actually fairly reasonable by Greelandic standards). I might end up camping outside of town or staying in a hut, but first I need to find out if Isbjorn lives nearby.

sizing matters

Some frustration today was provided by weird US clothing sizes. OK, I kind of see the principle. Sizes get bigger as the numbers get bigger. That part is easy. Difficulties start when I actually try to apply the theory and buy something that is my size.

I needed a new lingerie and hastly calculated that since my bra size is 75 centimeters, I should be fine with 30 inch bra. I guess there is something else going on here instead of a simple conversion from metric to imperial. The smallest size I could find was 32. Since my bra size is fairly common in Finland, I refused to believe that here I would be considered a weird undersized mutant. So I grabbed randomly some 32's and 34's and headed for the dressing rooms. When I tried them on, there did not seem to have any logic which sizes fit me and which didn't. Some were huge, providing ample room plus some extra space for my breasts, and few were super thight. (Most of them were really big, so maybe I am a weird undersized mutant after all.)

It has taken me some trial and error to find right size pants as well. I think the numbers start from somewhere around 0 and grow in increments of 2. But each company sems to have their own sizing chart where the basic unit of measurement is unknown and one just have to guess what size to try. To keep it all confusing, it seems to me that every single item of clothing has their own numbering system. Underwear sizes do not match pant sizes, and shoe sizes do not match sock sizes.

And I really don't understand why this country needs three different shoe size scales: separate ones for kids, females and males.

Ilulissat in winter

It's great to be back in Ilulissat, and its great to see it in winter. Its much quieter than in summer. There are basically no tourists and there aren't nearly as many teenagers cruising up and down "main street". Speaking of tourists, I learned that the number of tourists has increased from about 5,000 per year to 35,000 per year within a span of a few years. That number is expected to double this year. This for a town that has 5,000 inhabitants. As you can imagine, the town is starting to be overrun by tourists, at least in summer. I wish I could've seen it 20 years ago.

As I've written in past entries, Greenland has quite a few social problems that it is trying to overcome - poverty, poor education, and poor health care. There is reason for hope though. Among other things they are opening a university and national art museum in Nuuk, the capital city. This says to me that they are becoming increasingly independent from Denmark. (They have also started a couple of breweries, an important step towards independence!) Hopefully they can do so without selling out to tourism and mining operations.

An interesting note that I learned this week: the Greenlandic word for Greenland is Kalaallit Nunaat, or land of the Greenlanders. Apparently that name didn't exist until after Danish colonization. The word "kalaallit" (or the singular version "kalaaleq") developed a negative connotation during the colonial period, when it was used by Danes to refer to a lower-class of people. This is much like the word "eskimo" in Canada and Alaska, which simply means "raw-meat eater" but has come to have negative connotations as well. Thus the people of Greenland are not particularly comfortable with the name of their own country! Apparently their has been some discussion (I don't know how serious) of changing the country's name to the much more pronounceable Inuit Nunaat, or "land of the people". Poetic, but a little misleading considering that in all of Greenland there are only 50,000 people.

Airport rant

I'm enroute to Greenland at the moment, and things are going pretty much like they usually do. This time my luggage is sitting in JFK airport and I'm in Albany, NY. I don't know what my problem is, but it seems that every trip I take involves some unforeseen delay. Inari is losing desire to travel with me for fear of spending nights at airports, which we've done once before.

Anyway, if my luggage doesn't arrive tonight, as they promised it would, I'm really going to be in a pickle. My flight to Greenland leaves super early tomorrow morning and the next flight isn't until 4 May. I suppose I could manage without those packs until then - it wouldn't be ideal - but I could manage. If they end up being lost, however... Wow, that would pretty much ruin the field season. I must have several thousand dollars of equipment in those packs plus some pretty crucial instrument download cables. Keeping my fingers crossed. There must be a lesson in all this.

On a related note, I've come to loathe people who design airports. At least American airports. Or at least the people that decide to make it extremely difficult for newcomers to find information and get around. Why aren't there more maps and information desks? Why is it that at some airports flight information screens only contain information for one airline? Why did I have to leave security at JFK to transfer from one regularly-scheduled domestic flight to another? I really don't understand the rationale.

Three most hated airports so far:
1. Los Angeles
2. New York - JFK
3. Chicago O'Hare

Hmm.. I see a trend. Maybe I've just become too comfortable with our 6 gate, 2 baggage carousel airport in Fairbanks and the even smaller airport in Ilulissat. At Ilulissat you can walk in the airport and straight up to the tower. There you can ask them to open the door to get to the runway and hangars, and they'll do it without hardly caring what you're up to.

chick chick

According to Jason, I have a bunch of weird hobbies (I guess geekines have to be earned somehow): among others, I collect religious tracts published by Jack T. Chick. These are small comics trying to get people to repent and to believe in Jesus. I don't know why anyone would like to convert after reading one of the tracts, though. The presented religious wordview is awful, and god is portrayed as cruel, unforgiving and mean. Tought luck getting in heaven, if you belong to a wrong religious group (namely, if you are not a Babtist).

My main source for the tracts is a Babtist minister that comes to the university every week and sits behind a table at the student union. I once made the mistake of actually talking to him. Now I just wait until he is preoccupied with something else and try to grab some tracts as I walk by. Two days ago I scored a big time. He was nowhere to be seen and I got to choose from a wast pile of tracts.

Tracts are kind of scary, but hilarious at the same time. Plus, you do learn interesting things: I bet you all thought that the dinosaurs were killed by global cooling, most likely caused by an asteroid hitting the Earth. No, no, how wrong we have been. The real reason is the Great flood. You see, Noah did include dinosaurs as well, but since the flood distroyed all the plant matter, the oxygen levels dropped dramatically. Dinosaurs were quite big animals and did require a lot of oxygen. So the poor critters died because the Earth could not sustain them anymore. (I don't know why god failed to save them by just messing with the oxygen levels. Not to mention how was it possible for anything to survive without any plants...). All this information is accompanied with a picture of a pitiful, coughing dino. Priceless.

Herra hajamieli

Viime kesänä Expressenin toimittaja vertasi Jasonia Professori Tuhatkaunoon. Viime päivinä on tuntunut siltä, ettei arvio osunut kovin väärään. Herra on levittellyt omaisuuttaan pitkin kämppää ja hukannut esineitä samaa vauhtia. Stereon kaukosäätimen söi sohva (kuten ilmeisesti myös rannekellon ja jääkaappimagneetin), sohvan alta löysin niin musiikki-instrumentteja kuin kameranjalankin (tosin vain instrumentit olivat hukassa, kameranjalka ihan siellä missä pitikin, kuulemma). Nyt hukuksissa on muistikortti, jolla on on aikaa materialisoitua ensi lauantaihin, kun toiseksi viimeinen Gröönlannin reissu alkaa.

Luvassa on siis kuukausi yksineloa.

English summary: our sofa is eating Jason's things (wrist watch, musical instruments, stereo remote) and my refridgeretor magnet. We are still looking for a flash card...

Losing blogging virginity

I guess I'm exposed. I never consider myself a closet blogger though; I think you actually have to write something (anything) to be a blogger. I have just been reading stuff. And now all-of-a-sudden I find myself in the batter's box.

Random thought of the day: drinking tea makes you (i.e. me) happier. But it has to be good tea with a lot of honey.

a new author

Inari has long been a blog fanatic. She's been more of a closet blogger though, not really contributing to the blogosphere. Not anymore. Now she'll be writing on our blog. Maybe in Finnish, maybe in English, or maybe in Inarian. Good luck trying to understand her, whatever language she uses...

Springward bound

A strange spring. Maybe every spring is a strange spring. Unpredictable. At the end of March it felt like winter had abandoned us. Good riddance. The birds were chirping; it was hot. Most of the snow melted. Then it was cold again and it snowed. This morning it was well below freezing. What's going on? Did we miss summer? Frustrated and anxious. Tired of winter. Nature was playing games with us.

Then, tonight, I went skijoring with our neighbor's dogs. Remembered why I like winter. Calm, quiet, beautiful light in the trees, fresh soft snow. Peaceful. The dogs pulled hard, really hard, and ran gracefully. At one intersection they went left, I went right. Disaster narrowly avoided. One dog flew into a tree. Oops. We recovered and continued on. Took a narrow trail through the trees. Bad idea. Stupid dogs got wrapped up in the trees. Finally made it through.

A great way to end a stressful week at work. How long until we have our own dogs?

Listening, reading, watching

I've decided to have a monthly post on the things that I'm currently listening to, reading, and watching. I hope this is interesting to others...

Listening to: Eliades Ochoa
Lately I've been really digging Cuban music and I'm just now starting to get a handle on who's who in the world of Cuban music. Eliades Ochoa is a vocalist, guitarist, and tres player (similar to a guitar but with three sets of two strings and it sounds nicer) who played with the Buena Vista Social Club. I'm now realizing that Ry Cooder - the man who organized the Buena Vista album and movie - may have been more important to Cuban music and culture than many of the musicians who developed the unique music styles. So many of the musicians from the Buena Vista project are now enjoying well-deserved international fame. Some of the musicians were in their 70's and 80's when the album was being made and have since passed away. If it wasn't for Ry Cooder their music may have been lost.


Reading: The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer
I read this book with my grandma as part of our Nobel Prize reading "club". I wouldn't recommend it unless you like torturing yourself for no good reason. Nobel Prize books are typically not easy reads, but at least you feel like you get something out of them. When I finished this one I was just happy to be done. That's a little unfair, as it did have some good points. The book was essentially about a wealthy white businessman in South Africa and his relationship with the black farmers who worked on his farm - farming was a hobby of his. I suppose the book contained some interesting commentary on race relations in South Africa, but I don't think there was anything revolutionary - at least nothing that I picked up on.


Watching: The Sea Inside (movie)
This may have been the most touching movie that I've ever seen. Don't watch it alone, when you're feeling down, late at night, or without a box of kleenex. Its a story about a quadriplegic man who fights for his right to commit suicide. That about sums it up. After watching the movie I felt that I had a somewhat new perspective on life. The film stars Javier Bardem, now famous for his role in No Country for Old Men. I'm quite impressed with his acting - he did a great job in two completely different roles.

Brush with fame

In case you needed proof that I did actually meet with Angela "The Chancellor" Merkel, here are a couple of photos that I got from a reporter about a month ago.

Photos by Inge Rasmussen.

I wonder what this coming field season will bring.

The things kids do

People say that kids everywhere are pretty much the same. That's probably true, but I guess most 4 year olds don't do this:


On Sunday Inari and I went to see the Junior North American Dogsledding Championships. There were something like 20 competitors ranging in age from 4-16 years. The kids raced with anywhere from 1 to 8 dogs, depending on their skill level. Some of the dogs were really fast and were good sled dogs. Some ran half of the course and then stopped and decided that they'd rather do something else. A couple of the kids were thrown off their sleds into the snow - that's why they wear helmets!


One girl said that her favorite thing about dogsledding was getting to play with her dogs. Most of the kids' favorite dogsledding memories involved getting thrown from their sleds or narrowly missing a tree.

Photographic phrustrations

Since I got into photography a couple of years ago I've really started to appreciate good photographs of people and also of the night sky. I'm starting to get the hang of both of these, but I still have a long way to go.

A couple of nights ago I took these photos of the aurora. They look good when viewed from afar, but grainy and blurry close up. I've tried long (30 s) exposures, short exposures, different ISO settings, just about everything. Not sure if its a problem with me or my camera. I suspect that analog cameras still do much better than digital for low light conditions. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Back-blogging

Sorry about the complete lack of updates lately. I haven't felt very inspired to sit down and write about anything, at least not after spending day after day struggling over words at work. The paper that I've been working on is nearly finished - I hope to submit it next week. That will be weight off of my shoulders. Now that the paper is almost finised I've begun to start thinking about the upcoming field season. I've been looking into purchasing some really fancy audio recording equipment with a small student grant that I have. I could see myself totally getting into it. Next thing you know I'll be out recording birds and squirrels.

Life hasn't only been work work work. I've seen some good music (The Wailing Jennies, a folksy group from Canada) and some really good movies (No Country for Old Men; Juno). And then there's always hockey, broomball, drumming, and soccer. For those of you that have played broomball and appreciate the difficulty of the game, check out this youtube video. Amazing. I didn't know that people could be so good at it.

In early February I went to NASA's PARCA (Pan-arctic regional climate assessment) meeting in Boulder, Colorado. It was a really interesting meeting with good discussions. We debated questions like: How can the PARCA group most help society? (Improving predictions of sea level rise.) What is the single biggest contribution that we can give society? How do we go about doing that? Where should we focus our resources? I realized that the discussions we were having directly affect policy and the future of NASA. Pretty neat. Also strange in a way. I guess not very many people spend much time thinking about Greenland and Antarctica. In a way it makes me feel very isolated from society. Even more so when I hear people talking about business, stocks, and economics, and I have absolutely no clue what they are talking about. In my life I'm happy if the number at the bottom of my bank statements is positive.

I took advantage of the trip to Colorado to do some skiing. It was great timing - Colorado was getting hammered with one snow storm after the other. The snow was really great, so was the company. Jason Stenson wrote about our trip and posted some nice photos.

Slave to science

I've found myself in a somewhat unusual situation in that I am "racing" to get a paper published. We have some really interesting observations regarding calving of large icebergs and how the glacier, fjord, and earth respond to those calving events. Interesting enough that we're going to try to submit the paper to Nature (one of the two big science journals). The problem is that our observations are only slightly more unique than some other researchers, so if we don't hurry up and get this paper published then we may have missed our opportunity to get it accepted into Nature. If it doesn't get published in Nature we can always submit it elsewhere, but of course we want the fame and the money that comes with fame...

My colleagues are letting me write the paper, which could be really good for me. Its not very common for a graduate student to be a first author on a Nature paper - though it does happen. I stress the word "letting" because I haven't really contributed any more to the ideas in the paper than anybody else. I've done more of the work (writing is a lot of work), but otherwise its been a group effort. It's too bad that somebody's name has to be first.

Actually this whole process has been quite strange for me. There are probably five or six groups around the world working on the same problem, and there is a lot of discussion between groups, and so the ideas are really being developed by many people. But then, because of the pressure to publish (and to be the first to publish your results), people are being a little bit secretive about their observations. In my mind, that's not the way things should work. It says something about the problems with science funding and with scientists (we're just as greedy for fame as everybody else).

Anyway, getting a paper accepted in Nature seems to be a somewhat random process. Some papers that do get accepted wouldn't be accepted in lesser journals. And having a paper in Nature doesn't mean that you do better work than people that haven't published there, it just means that you were in the right place at the right time. Of course, being in the right place at the right time does require some skill.

Basically, this means that I haven't had much of a life for the past month. It also means that I'm almost finished with the first chapter of my thesis (I have to write three papers). I'm also hoping to write a paper for a conference proceedings for a conference that I'll attend in August. Maybe this means that I'll finish my Ph.D. faster than planned, sometime in 2009? And then?

Bagh Chal

I recently learned how to play "bagh chal", or the tiger-moving game. Its the national game of Nepal and a little bit like checkers, but so far its been a lot more fun. I especially like that the players have different objectives. Its quite easy to build your own board so give it a shot if you're into this sort of thing.

Start with a board that looks like this:


To play this game you need 4 tigers and 20 goats. (We used quarters and pennies.)

Put a tiger into each of the four corners. One person plays the tigers and will attempt to eat all of the goats; the goats will attempt to surround the tigers so that they can't move. At any point in the game a tiger can jump over a goat and eat it, but only if there is space on the other side of the goat... Think checkers. The goats try to surround the tigers until they are unable to move. If you're the goat player and you've lost five goats you should just give up. It's pretty much hopeless at that point.

The goat player goes first by placing a goat onto any intersection on the board. Then the other player moves one of the tigers along one of the lines to an adjacent intersection. This continues until all the goats have been played, at which point they are allowed to roam like the tigers. The tigers continue to play as before.

The only additional rule is that you are not allowed to make a move that results in the board looking identical to how it looked previously. This means that you can't just keep moving forward and backward.

I've read complaints that the game is too easy for the goats. I haven't played enough to find out if that's true, but it seems to me that there is an easy solution to that problem - play with one less goat.

Life cycles

This time of year I go through all of the photos that I took during the past year and print the best ones as 8x10's. I found a pretty good website for printing photos: www.iprintfromhome.com. I'd highly recommend them. They do a good job and are reasonably priced. They can print in luster, which in my opinion is much better than glossy or matte.

Anyway, in going through the photos I've realized that my life is becoming a record that loops over and over and over. Around this time of year Inari and I usually do a couple of overnight ski trips to remote backcountry huts. Even the destinations seems to be almost the same. In February or March we'll probably go winter camping, freeze our butts off, and then say that we're never doing that again. In May I'll leave for field work and Inari will plant the garden. We'll be busy working on the garden in June. Then comes July, which brings fishing, blueberry picking, the Gulkana Glacier field course, and hopefully a hiking or canoe trip. I go back to the field in August, then to a conference later in the fall, and then hang low until mid-winter.

There is something about the isolation and strong seasonality of life in Fairbanks that makes this sort of cycle almost inevitable. I haven't decided if I like it or not. I also realized the other day the I'm not as attracted to the Alaskan scenery as I once was, its like I've become desensitized. I kind of feel that its time to try someplace new, someplace with more connections to the rest of the world. Then again, I know that once/if I leave Alaska, I'm definitely going to miss it.

Percussive musings

A week and a half ago I played in the end of semester percussion concert with the World Beat Ensemble. It was a lot of fun - getting more comfortable playing in front of people. Even soloing isn't too scary anymore. Been feeling quite musically inspired lately, just wish I had more time and opportunities to play.

The concert was recorded and posted online. If you're curious to hear what sort of music I'm playing, go to http://library.music.uaf.edu/ and search for world beat. In this concert we played Agbeko and Kpanlogo, both from West Africa. I especially like Kpanlogo - its really catchy. That crazy cool instrument that you hear is called the gyil. I'm trying to figure out how to get one sent to me from Ghana (and to convince Inari that we have room for one). There are some recordings of pieces from previous concerts as well: I played Bin Tin, Ijexa, Fanga, and maybe Timini. Can't remember very well these days.

The musical choices aren't always my favorite, but its fun to play anyway. I usually prefer something more Latin - rumba, samba, bossanova.

"If you can..."

Tonight I went to see the Mensah brothers perform. They are percussionists, dancers, and singers from a small village in Ghana, though through music they've been able to move to the U.S. and teach at the University of Colorado. African music isn't my favorite - I prefer afro-cuban music: samba, rumba, latin jazz. Nonetheless it was quite fun and inspiring to watch them perform. Their sense of music is so different than traditional western music, and in my opinion, a lot more fun. Plus I appreciate it their music because I see it as the grandfather of the music that I'm really interested in.

They play because its fun and they have fun because they are playing. It's easy to imagine them at their home in Ghana, playing with their family and friends. They probably didn't have much other than music, but that was all that they needed.

They were selling t-shirts and cd's after the show, just like all other musicians. But, they said during the concert that the money that they make of off sales is donated to an orphanage in Ghana. Pretty cool.

They also said that they bring Americans to Ghana for a month in the summer to learn to dance sing, and drum. As they said, "If you can move your legs, you can dance; if you can talk, you can sing; and if you can move your arms, you can drum."

20th century digital boy

Inari and I have re-entered the 20th century. We now have internet at home. Its not exactly anything to brag about though, as the only connection available to us is dial-up. I'm not sure why people even bothered with internet back in the day. Dial up is sooo slow. I'm not yet sure why we're bothering with it either. It does allow me to do some things at home that I'd rather not do at work - like blogging, buying plane tickets, checking my bank account, etc. Now when I'm at work I can focus on work. At the same time, the slow connection basically guarantees that my work won't follow me home very often and that I won't spend too much time surfing.

I was really hoping that I'd be able to use skype via a modem, but so far I'm not having any luck. I've read on some forums that it works for some people. We'll keep trying.

Oregon

It's been a busy couple of months. My research is really starting to gain some momentum. Today I started writing the first paper for my thesis (three are required). It's been quite fun; I've been doing quite a bit of detective work and feel that I've stumbled across some interesting observations. I still have quite a bit of work to do, but I'm getting there (wherever there might be).

Two weekends ago I was in Portland to present my work at the Northwest Glaciology Meeting. It was a pretty good meeting but I didn't get as much feedback as I might have liked. Anyway, I guess meetings aren't about getting feedback, they're about schmoozing. I enjoyed this meeting more than other meetings that I've been to because I feel like I'm starting to know a lot of people in glaciology and have lots of people to catch up with.


Since the meeting was in Portland I was able to stay with friends Jason and Elvira, who had moved there two weeks earlier. Despite their lack of knowledge about Portland, they were great tour guides. We did a little road trip around Mt. Hood and back down the Columbia River Gorge. Its a pretty area - reminds me a bit of parts of New Zealand. And the trees are so big! Well, at least compared to the tiny black spruce outside our cabin.

Best of Greenland, 2 of 3

Lately my blog posts have been few and far between. I'm going to blame it on Harry Potter. I haven't been doing much of anything lately other than working and reading Harry Potter. I'm almost done with book 6 (out of 7), so hopefully my social life will return to normal in the somewhat nearish future.

Well, I have managed to do a few things other than work and reading. I've joined an intramural soccer team, which has been really fun. I haven't played soccer for many, many years, and I usually end up going home sore. The first week I had a bruise on top of my collarbone (I got elbowed while going for a header) and this week the back of my knee has been sore. I didn't realize that soccer is such a tough sport. Or maybe I'm just starting to show the first (?) signs of old age. Anyway, its been really fun and I'm inspired to play more.

---------

Now back to my Best of Greenland series. I didn't manage to get my photos submitted for the show, so I'll have to wait until next time around.

Here is a photo of water-filled crevasses on Ilulissat Glacier (aka Jakobshavn Isbrae). I really like the color. Unfortunately the image isn't sharp enough to print it really big - I tried and wasn't happy with the results.

Best of Greenland, 1 of 3

One of the galleries in Fairbanks has an annual juried exhibition titled "64th Parallel", which is only open to residents of Fairbanks and vicinity. This year's them is IPY - International Polar Year - so I thought it might be appropriate to submit some of my photos from Greenland. I'm planning to submit three, assuming that the frames that I ordered arrive on time.

Here is the first one - a little cliché, perhaps, but I like it anyway.


I really like that the Greenlanders still use the more traditional qajaqs (spelled differently in Greenland than in Alaska). Hunting is done primarily from boats (and with dog sleds in winter). These qajaqs seem to be used primarily for recreation.

P.S. Eemeli, thanks for encouraging me to get a circular polarizer. It really can make a boring sky look nice, as in this photo.

World News Tonight

For those of you that may not have gotten the message, I made an appearance on ABC's World News tonight on Friday. There are two clips - though in one of them I'm just standing in the background pointing at icebergs. If you'd like to see them, click on the links below.

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3573900

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3573668

Media circus

I know I've said this before - but I can't believe how much media attention our Greenland project is getting. Its really getting out of hand. I had several reasons for signing on to this project: I like working with my advisor and didn't want to risk trading him in for another, I wanted to go to Greenland, and I thought the project had very good scientific merit. But I had no idea it would become a news story!

In the three weeks that I was in Ilulissat I talked with 6 different reporters and gave a tour to Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany and supposedly the most powerful woman in the world, and to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark.

The reporters were from around the world - ABC News, Aftonbladet (Stockholm's evening news), Tokyo Broadcasting Station, NHK (Japanese), Haaretz (Israeli), and MSNBC. I missed an interview with a Norwegian reporter because of troubles with our flights, and I've also been contacted by the Oregonian. This is really insane. At first it was quite exciting to know that my work was receiving so much attention, but now I just roll my eyes when I hear that a reporter wants to talk to me. But then again, I am funded by public money and think that the public should have access to our research findings, so I cooperate as best I can.

I've already made an appearance in the Aftonbladet; the article is in Swedish, but there is a close-up of yours truly. In the article I'm compared to Professor Calculus from the Adventures of Tintin. That didn't mean anything to me, but Inari found it pretty funny.

I'll let you know when I make any appearances elsewhere.

I couldn't find any photos of me with the chancellor, but I did find this, which basically says that I will be giving a tour to Angela Merkel. I had dinner with the dignitaries - it was an informal dinner, which meant that you didn't have to wear a tie. I ended up borrowing a suit from somebody that works at the German embassy in Denmark. The next day we flew out to our campsite and I talked with the dignitaries for about 15 minutes, explaining what we are doing and why its important. Her critics claimed that she went to Greenland just as a publicity stunt, and I think they are probably right. She said that she wanted to meet with scientists - she met with two of us for a total of about 30 minutes - and I was picked because I was the only scientist in town at the time. On the other hand, a good photograph makes for a strong political statement.

Getting educated

Last Thursday was the first day of kindergarten in Ilulissat. Here, the children start their school career by wearng traditional Greenlandic clothing. They're traditional in the sense that their origins are very old but, as you can see in the pictures, the clothing has evolved considerably through the years. At noon the children and parents gathered outside the school, and one by one they were introduced and welcomed to the school and given a Greenlandic flag. The proud fathers documented the event with the cameras, just like they do everywhere else in the world. I thought it was a very nice tradition and I was happy to witness it. Most of the kids were very shy, but a few had big grins on their faces.


From what I've heard, the education system in Greenland is very poor. They are just now in the process of developing their first university. Many towns don't have high schools - the towns are just too small. Even the kids in Ilulissat, the third largest "city", have to go to boarding school in the town of Aassiat once they turn sixteen. The poor education system is a big reason that I'm here right now. In addition to my research, I'm spending about two weeks working with the municipality's "science interpreter". I've been told that even though there are many scientists coming to Ilulissat, the local people don't gain anything from the visits, and in fact they are often the last ones to find out about the research results - when they are discussed on the BBC. So we are trying to bring our science to the community and especially to the children. We want to teach them science as well as the scientific process. I'm working on a poster that will be displayed at the schools and in the town museum. We've also organized a public meeting with myself and a couple of other scientists. And, just yesterday I learned that I will be giving a presentation at the local school - a chance for the kids to practice their English and to learn about the interesting glacier in their backyard. I just wonder who will learn more - the kids or myself

A bridge, nostalgia, a wedding

Wednesday night I went to school to pick up some equipment to take with on my trip to Greenland (I’m en route right now). My computer was on, so I quickly checked the news on CNN. I couldn’t believe what I saw – Minneapolis had made international news because of a devastating bridge collapse, a bridge that was something like 10 blocks away from were I used to live. I felt shocked; it touched close to home. I’ll probably always remember reading about it, just as I'll always remember where I was when I heard about the attacks on the World Trade Center.

On my way to Greenland I made a short visit to Minnesota. Travelling there and (and to other parts of the civilized world) always gives me fixed feelings. I’m not particularly fond of the cookie-cutter design of many parts of the U.S., and when I see those areas I’m happy to be living in Fairbanks in my little cabin in the woods. That was my feeling on Thursday evening after arriving at my parent’s place in Maple Grove. Friday, though, I went to Minneapolis to meet up with Cuong and Joe and some of their friends. We went out for a dinner and then saw a play – a really funny satire of the pyramid business scheme for selling beauty products. Afterwards, while talking on the street corner on a warm summer evening, I really missed living in Minneapolis. I’m not sure if it was Minneapolis itself, or just the city culture. I often feel torn between where I would really like to live: a city, with its culture and architecture and busy-ness and closeness, or a rural area like Fairbanks, with its quiet and beauty and space and wilderness. Maybe my ideal home would be in a dense city with no suburbs that is surrounded by complete and easily accessible wilderness…

I was passing though Minneapolis to attend my friend Sing-Wei’s wedding (to Nate, whom I’ve just briefly met). The day of the wedding was one of the only rainy days all summer. The ceremony was outdoors, but they managed to squeeze it in between rain showers. At the end of the ceremony they released some monarch butterflies, some of which weren’t very eager to leave their warm little “cages”. Its interesting attending weddings after being married. I almost feel like I’m welcoming the newly-weds into some sort of club. A club that doesn’t have rules, just feelings. I’m pretty sure I know how Sing-Wei and Nate feel right now, and that’s a feeling that I didn’t know existed a few years back. I also wouldn’t be surprised to learn that their new pet names for each other are “husband” and “wife”. It’s a funny thing when you get to say “Hey wife, should we have dinner now?”.

The wedding was fun- it was especially nice to catch up with old friends, though I would’ve like to talk more with Sing-Wei.

My 15 minutes

I've just received word that one of my glacier calving videos (see 19 June 2007) will be airing on the Lerher News Hour on PBS this week as part of a larger (~10 min) story on Jakobshavns Isbrae. I don't know much more at this point, but check back to find out when it will be showing. As I don't have a t.v., I would really appreciate it if somebody would be willing to tape it for me - especially if you have the means to do it digitally. I assume that the story will also be posted online at some point (http://www.pbs.org/newshour).

Update: The clip was aired on 1 August 2007, and can be found online.

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!

What is productivity?

This past field season was a struggle and so it was quite a humbling experience. Last year everything went really well, so I kind of expected more of the same... The instruments that we left running over winter failed, and nearly every instrument that we brought with didn’t work as it was supposed to — at least not at first. This included a wind gauge, a precipitation gauge, a marine radar (for tracking iceberg motion), an automatic theodolite (for optical surveying), several GPS, and an ablation meter (measures ice melt rates). On top of that we had some pretty bad luck with weather during the first two weeks at our camp. The first night that we were there we had 60+ knot winds. Martin lost his tent in the wind and broke his glasses when they were blown off his face. All of the tents suffered some damage. A week later we got hit by another storm. You could hardly stand up outside, let alone try to do something productive. This was also probably the first time that I’ve ever slept with ear plugs. It was really something. I’m sure I’ll remember it fondly some day. Check out this poor tent:

In the end we managed to accomplish most of what we had set out to do. At any rate, it gave me a new perspective on how difficult field work can actually be. I was certainly feeling pessimistic about our work for a couple of weeks.

During the last two weeks — we were out for a month — the weather cleared up. Actually, it was amazingly beautiful weather. It was actually hot, and there was very little wind. That’s quite unusual, because large glaciers often have strong winds blowing down-glacier. We had a lot of time to relax during those two weeks. I passed my time by reading Finnish children’s stories and cleaning up all the dirt. Its really a dirty place.

We also played network video games (not really),

ate narwhal,

and formed a band (photo for the c.d. cover).

Return to summer

I sometimes think that glaciologists - especially those who chose to live in Fairbanks - must be really stupid people. I spend my winter in the dark and cold, and once spring arrives I travel to Greenland so that I can sit next to a giant ice cube all summer... Well, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy being in Greenland, because I did. But its also really nice to be back in Fairbanks. Everything seems so green, and its warm and the flowers are blooming and the birds are chirping.

I've started keeping a journal while doing field work because after a while the days blur together. I'll try to type up some of my entries and post them here. Maybe they're interesting?

For now, I'll leave you with a link to a video that I put together. About once a week we witnessed a BACE (bad ass calving event), during which a large part of the glacier tongue would break off and roll around in the fjord, making a lot of noise in the process. The icebergs are huge- the ice cliff that you'll see in the video is 80-100 m high, meaning that the ice is on the order of 800 m thick. Try picturing that rolling around in your neighborhood! This particular calving events lasted for about 20 minutes; I took one frame every 10 seconds and compressed the whole sequence into about 20 seconds.

For an avi file, click here. For a wmv file, click here. Sorry if they don't work on your machine.

Squirrel fever

There seems to be two cultures of people: those that think that squirrels are a nuisance and those that find them adorable. Most Fairbanksans seem to fall into the first category. Winters are cold in Fairbanks, so of course squirrels like to crawl into peoples' walls and steal insulation. I'd do the same thing, so I really can't blame them. Some people have been known to set traps or shoot squirrels with BB guns. I even know somebody that shot a squirrel with a rifle, though the perpetrator admitted to feeling guilty afterwards.

Inari falls into the second category. She made a bird feeder that just happens to have a large enough opening to double as a squirrel feeder. I do think squirrels are pretty cute, but I'm not convinced that intentionally attracting them to your house is a good idea. Well... Sometimes you don't always have a say in these things. So I just accept it and use it as an opportunity to play with my telephoto lens.

Into summer

It's hard to believe a month has passed since my last update. This time of year always seems to be extra busy for me, what with finishing up course work and preparing for field work. On top of the normal busy-ness, my parents came up for Inari's exhibition and thesis defense. Inari was featured in the school newspaper again. She managed to sell several of her pieces at the show, which was nice to see because somehow she doesn't believe me when I tell her that her art is good. It's been interesting to see what pieces sell- the ones that she likes least (and I tend to agree with her) seem to be the ones that everybody else likes the most.

A while back Martin and Dana had asked her to make a painting for their daughter's room. She struggled with it for several months and finally finished it, but mostly because she just wanted to move on. Inari told Dana at the opening that that piece was intended for them, but if they didn't like it then they could choose another one. Dana didn't relay the message to Martin. After seeing the exhibition today Martin told me that he was really disappointed that the piece that he liked most was listed as "Not for sale". Guess what piece that was?

So that's what Inari has been up to. I've been frantically getting equipment ready for our upcoming field season. I can't believe that I'm already leaving next Friday. I'm really looking forward to getting away from my computer and out into the sunshine. We've had some amazingly beautiful weather for the last month but I've hardly had the chance to enjoy it.

Our research project is getting more and more exciting all the time, too, largely because of the big changes that are occurring on the Greenland Ice Sheet. This year we'll have a Greenlandic reporter out at our field site filming us and interviewing us for a Greenlandic television show, and we've been contacted by reporters from several major news agencies, including PBS and the BBC. Also, a photographer for National Geographic will be out there running time-lapse cameras at the glacier terminus.

inari.com

Inari the artist will be graduating in a few weeks and then joining the "real world". She'll likely be doing some freelance art and graphic design, which you'll be able to view at her new website: http://www.inarikylanen.com. There's not much there yet, but I'm sure more will be coming.

Going solo (skiing)

I just completed my first solo winter ski expedition, which turned out to be a somewhat crazy adventure. In a way it was one of the most remote trips that I've done, but it was also one of the cheapest and closest to home.

Last Wednesday I flew by small aircraft to Manley Hot Springs, an end-of-the-road village that is about 80 miles west of Fairbanks as the crow flies. From there my goal was to ski back to my cabin in Fairbanks. After arriving in Manley I put on my skis and threw my 60 lb (27 kg) pack on my back and started shuffling down the street. That first day I navigated my way through a maze of snowmachine trails partly by luck and partly by instinct. These trails are definitely for people that live there and know the land well. The first day was almost without incident, except that near the end of the day I missed a turn that I was supposed to make and ended up at an old sourdough's cabin. He invited me for a cup of coffee (I declined), told me a little bit about the trail that I was supposed to be on (the trail used during the Serum Run, a fascinating story for those of you that don't know it), and pointed me in the right direction. I felt pretty good about my first day - I had covered over 25 miles (40 km) and was well on my way home.

That night it snowed, just a little, but it was the bad kind of snow: granular, coarse snow that grips your skis and makes you wonder why have these heavy things strapped to your feet. The trip became a death march. My hamstrings quickly tightened up, which was followed by sore feet and a swollen achilles (tendonitis, I believe). I passed through the Dugan Hills and Deadman Lake - didn't stay there too long! Then onward pass the settlement at Tolovana and into the aptly named Minto Flats. Day two had me second guessing my ability to make it home. Would I have to turn around? Should I take a trail to a different village and hitchhike home?

Friday morning wasn't much better, slow and frustrating. The trails got better as I approached Old Minto, a former native village and now a drug and alcohol abuse center. I began to regain my confidence. Its amazing how many mood swings I went through on that trip. I thought I could make it all the way to Fairbanks, it might hurt a little, but that's okay. And at that moment the buckle on my hip strap snapped, meaning that all of those 60 lbs of gear and food would be resting on my shoulders for the last 50 miles. Ouch. I still could have turned towards Nenana (rhymes with banana) and shortened my trip, but I decided to continue on.

Friday night it snowed. Again, more bad snow. I wound my way through a labyrinth of rivers, ponds, and swamps and finally hit the Alaska Railroad. That was a comforting thought, now I was in a safe area and starting to get close to Fairbanks. The trails should also improve, or so I thought. The terrain became more familiar, I recognized some hills in the distance. But still the skiing was slow. I skied 11 hours on Saturday, but still covered less ground than I had covered in 8 hours on Wednesday. Furthermore, that night I discovered that part of the pain in my right foot was due to a huge blister that now makes walking quite difficult. I'm pretty sure the blister was a result of skiing with frozen boots in the morning. They had thawed out by afternoon and became more flexible.

I hadn't given up hope of making it home, but I began to seriously consider alternative routes. I had plenty of food - way too much in fact - so time wasn't too much of an issue. Weather ended up being the determining factor. That evening it dropped below -20 F (-30 C) and I could hardly sleep. I woke up several times shivering and was eventually unable to fall back asleep. I decided that there was no point in lying in my sleeping bag shivering, so I got up at 3:30 and took the shortest possible route to the highway. I would hitchhike home after all. The night sky was clear, the moon was bright, and I was treated to a spectacular auroral display that lasted for at least 2 hours. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and took it as a sign that I had made it.

I had no trouble getting a ride home. Its pretty easy when its cold and you look beat up. I made it home in time to go out for a big breakfast at Sourdough Sam's, a rewarding finish to a tough trip.

So, why did I do this trip? I'm not sure. But I'm sure it won't be my last ski trip. Going solo was a very different experience, I felt more aware, but also more insignificant. I had no support, mentally or otherwise. I tested my limits and came away with nothing more than some wounds that will heal in a few days. I learned something about the land where I live, where people have lived (amazingly) for thousands of years. I gained more respect for pioneers, building trails and living on the land. And I learned that as I much as I love wilderness, I still need some modern comforts. I ultimately didn't achieve my goal, but I did put myself into a position that I could have achieved it if it was really that important to me. And I didn't lose any toes.

Mary Shield's Cabin, Part II

Two weekends ago I found myself skiing out to Mary Shields’ cabin with Martin and Dana and their 2 year old daughter Sonja, and Keith (another glaciology professor). This was the second time that I’ve made the trip (see February 2006). It was a lot of fun and mostly uneventful, except for one near disaster… On the way into the cabin on Saturday we encountered a long stretch of overflow that had not yet frozen. (Overflow occurs when a creek freezes to the bed, but there is still water being fed into the creek. The water pressure gets too high, and it squirts to the surface through cracks in the ice, the result being that there is water everywhere.) We managed to get through the overflow with little difficulty – just wet feet, but that wasn’t a major problem because it was quite warm.

We met Mary at her cabin that afternoon; she had spent Friday night there and was just about to head back to Fairbanks. She was surprised to learn that there was so much overflow since she hadn’t seen any the previous day. It turns out the by the time she got to the section of overflow (with her dog team) the water level had risen to above her knees. Her only choice was to take her team through the overflow, which took her two hours and she must have become nearly hypothermic in the process. She was naturally quite concerned about our ability to get past the overflow on Sunday, so she came out to the trail to meet us. By the time we got there the overflow had already frozen, so we didn’t have any problems. She claimed that crossing through that overflow was probably the second most dangerous thing she’s ever done with a dog team, which is a lot coming from her: she’s mushed thousands of kilometers throughout Alaska. She wouldn’t tell me what was the most dangerous thing that she’d ever done.

Yukon Quest

This year's winner of the Yukon Quest dog sled race crossed the finish line in Fairbanks yesterday afternoon. At noon I heard that the lead team (Lance Mackey's team) was expected to be in town shortly, so I drove into town to watch the finish. It turned out that Mackey wouldn't arrive until 2:00 pm, so that gave me a lot of time to stand around in the cold and ask myself "Why am I here?". I was there to people watch, I guess, and to check out the latest Fairbanks fashion.

Mackey eventually arrived and we were all happy that we could go back to our cars to warm up. The dogs looked happy and eager to continue on, even though they had just run 1000 miles in 10 days, and in doing so broke the old course record by over 12 hours. Mackey is also planning to run in the Iditarod, another 1000 mile long race; it starts in two weeks

Rainbow Peak

I’ve been quite bad updating the blog lately but I have a pretty good excuse: I’ve been too busy having fun. We’ve had exceptional weather over the past month and there has been no shortage of opportunities to enjoy it. The past weekend was quite cold, so I finally had the chance to cross off some things from my to-do list.

Two weeks ago Inari and I and a few friends headed down to the mountains to climb Rainbow Peak, one of the easiest and most accessible climbs in interior Alaska, making it an ideal day trip. To take full advantage of the little sunshine that there is in January, we awoke at 4:30 am (!), left Fairbanks at 5:30 am, and started climbing at 9:00 am, just as the sun was rising. The snow at the bottom of the mountain was so sugary that we had to literally crawl on our hands and knees for the first 20 minutes. We encountered solid snowpack (actually very crusty snow) once we got past the vegetation that separates the mountain from the road, so we strapped on our crampons and headed up. We reached the peak at 1:30 pm and were treated to spectacular views. From there we could see Denali three hundred kilometers to the west as well as Mt. Wrangell (a massive volcano), Mt. Drum, and Mt. Sanford (a 5,000 m peak), all approximately 150-200 km to the south. We were back down to the car at 4:30, just as the sun was beginning to set. I found myself in bed at 10:00 pm and didn’t find myself getting out of bed until noon the next day.

Tolovana Hot Springs

The weekend after New Year's we headed out on another cabin trip, but this one involved a sauna and colder temperatures. Most people left on Friday and came back on Sunday. I wasn't feeling too good on Thursday, so I decided not to go. (Admittedly, I wasn't all that excited about skiing 11 miles at -20 to -30 F (-30 to -35 C).) I felt better all day Friday, and I wasn't too happy about people having fun without me, so I packed up my things and got ready to head out on Saturday. I got an early start, started skiing at 10:00 am (before the sunrise) and made it into the cabin by 1:00 pm, just as they were finishing breakfast/brunch/lunch - it was a lazy morning for them.

The "group" consisted of 1 snowmobiler ("snowmachiner" in the Alaskan dialect), 4 skiiers (1 on tele-skis, 1 on randonee, and 2 on cross-country), 4 snowshoers, and 4 walkers/sledders, and 2 dogs. I'm usually not too keen on having snowmobiles around, but in this case it was a good thing. It was nice to have the security of knowing that if somebody got dangerously cold skiing/snowshoeing/hiking, that we could get them to the cabin quite quickly. We also got to bring with some things that you wouldn't bring without a snowmobile, like milk, juice, and a keg of beer.

Saturday afternoon was spent chatting and eating, in the evening we went for a dip in the hot springs. All 13 of us.

We got up relatively early Sunday morning and headed back to the trailhead - staggering everybody's start time so that we would all finish the journey at about the same time. We arrived in the early afternoon and started up the cars - or tried to. Three of them started no problem, one needed to be jumped and heated up with camping stove, and the fifth car just wouldn't start. We left it there and returned the next day with a generator and heater and a new battery - that did the trick.


Self-portrait after skiing 11 miles in frigid temperatures.


Inari after snowshoeing 11 miles.

It turned out that Saturday was the nicest day of the weekend, and so I felt glad that I chose to wait until then to ski in. The light was beautiful and there was no wind, a rare thing on that trail. It took me three hours to ski to the cabin, but it probably would've been quicker if I hadn't stopped to take so many photos.


Dr. Seuss's inspiration?


Spectacular light on Saturday morning.

New Year's Eve

Inari and I greeted the new year with three friends, seven dogs, some spiced wine, and firecrackers at a cabin in the Chena Recreation Area about 40 miles from town. It was my first time skiing this winter due to my trip to New Zealand and a general lack of snow in Alaska. It must've been a good time because for once I wasn't preoccupied with the thought that yet another year was slipping by. The dogs were also a lot of fun, running laps around the cabin, jumping, playing. Made me want to get one of my own. Maybe someday, when we have a better idea of where we'll be living in the longterm. I'd hate to get a husky and then end up living in a city. I don't think I could part with the dog, but it also wouldn't be fair to the dog.


Here's the New Year's group, from left to right: myself, Siren, Inari, Mica, Sandy, Safira, Tico, Anja, Bailey, Eamon, Elvis, and Scout.


The mulled wine, a German tradition. You pour wine into a pot, put a sugar cone over the top, pour rum over it, light it on fire, and add more rum.

Brian and Lynley

One last New Zealand post, then I'll almost be caught up...

One of the researchers that I worked with is an interesting character and deserves a post of his own. Brian has a Ph.D. in glaciology and now works half-time doing glaciology research. The other half of his time he spends being a good citizen: protesting, writing letters to the newspaper, and taking mining companies to court. At the moment he is working on a campaign to prevent a mining company from working in an area (the only area) where an endangered species of snail lives. The mining company wants to simply relocate the snails, but then, why do the snails only live in this one area? Maybe the snails wouldn't be too happy about being relocated.

Brian and his partner Lynley were living in a bus for several years (they're now working on a building a house), the bath is outside and is heated by fire, and their outhouse consists of a hole in the ground - no roof or seat! Brian built a small hydropower system out of an old washing machine and protected from the elements by covering it with a real estate sign. He also built a wind turbine, but that fell down during the first storm. The car runs on veggie oil, which he picks up from various hotels and restaurants in town. I got to go with him to pick up a load (1000 L) of veggie oil. See photo below - containers of veggie oil pictured with the bus.


Here's a view of the shed where Brian processes the veggie oil before using it in his car. He's still trying to figure out to do with the all of the crud that he's filtered out. He said that he's leaning towards building a flame thrower (why?!?) but that he might also give it to the fat man who ships it to China to be made into lipstick...


It was a little bit funny being in the field with him and Tom (master's student). Tom works at a gear shop and has very fancy clothing and equipment; Brian uses gear that might be older than I am.

New Zealand plant life

Besides birds, the next most interesting thing in New Zealand is the native vegetation. As with the birds, much of the vegetation is extinct or nearly extinct, thanks to introduced plant and animal species. It seems that immigrants were more interested in building a "better Britain" than in adapting to a new, unique ecosystem. Here are some of the unique plants that I stumbled across.


The aptly named "vegetable sheep".



Poroporo, a plant traditionally used by the Maori for medicinal purposes. The berries are poisonous until they become ripe. (In Finnish, poroporo would mean "reindeer reindeer".)



New Zealand Edelweiss - just a little bit different than the real thing.


The flower of kotukutuka (tree fuchsia), one of the only native deciduous trees in New Zealand.



New Zealand flax...


and a flax flower, which grows on a stem that is much longer than the rest of the leaves.


Lancewood (I'm having trouble finding the Maori name), a plant that looks different during its juvenile stage than during its adult stage. During the juvenile stage, the sharp leaves point upwards; as the tree gets taller the leaves start to point downward and become fleshier. It is thought that this was to discourage browsing by moa. When the plant is short, its leaves are to sharp for a bird to eat, and when the plant becomes taller to it is too high off the ground for the moa to reach.



Very few native plants in New Zealand are edible; this is one of them. The leaves are very spicy and would probably be nice on a salad or soup, but apparently nobody uses them.


The Mt. Cook Lily, high alpine flower found on the south island..

The friendly birds

If there is anything worth knowing about New Zealand, its that the bird life is amazing. Prior to the Maori arrival around 1200 A.D., the only mammals living in New Zealand were bats. This allowed the bird life to flourish and evolve into some very unique species. The largest bird was the moa, which could grow to 3 m in heigh and was flightless - it didn't even have stubs for wings. Maybe more extraordinarily was the Haast eagle, the largest eagle to have ever lived. They weighed 10 kg and had a wingspan of 2.6 to 3 m. They survived by preying on moa!

Unfortunately, the Maori and later the Europeans killed off much of the native bird life through hunting, habitat destruction, and the introduction of exotic species. Some interesting birds have managed to survive, such as the endangered kiwi, the kea (a mountain parrot), the weka, and the tui and the bellbird or korimako.



I didn't manage to see any kiwi, but we were visited by two kea at our hut, and I saw several weka begging for food at tourist sites. The kea were really cheeky and fun to watch. The clearly weren't concerned by our presence - they were more concerned about trying to rip the roof off the hut.


This weka I spotted searching for food in a little shed.

I also saw and heard several tui and bellbirds, but they are quite small and difficult to photograph. They are songbirds in the truest sense of the word, and hearing them greet the morning sun is a real pleasure. The tui are especially fun because they have two voice boxes and can therefore produce a wide range of sounds (some that humans are unable to register) and have they ability to mimic other sounds, such as bellbirds.