Denali Bike Ride

A week before summer solstice, we traveled to Denali (National Park & Preserve) to bike the access road with three friends from UAF, Martin, Sveta, and Tanja. Two of Martin's friends on holiday from Austria met us down there. The access road is 85 miles (135 km) long, from park HQ to Wonder Lake, which is often used as a photographic mirror for Mt. McKinley.

Most all Alaskans refer to Mt. McKinley by its Athabascan name, Denali, which means 'the great one'. At 20,320 ft, or over 6000m it's the tallest peak in North America, and one of the '7 summits'. It was shrouded in clouds on this trip, but Martin had previously flown us around it last April on a perfectly clear night giving us incredible views of the mountain and the entire Alaska Range.

The bus ride out to Wonder Lake took 6 hours due to the bumpy road with two way bus traffic, and the frequent stops to view wildlife and to cater for the bathroom needs of a largely aging tourist demographic. We spotted 2 grizzly mothers with cubs, but far from the bus; Martin, Tanja and Sveta were treated to one ambling up to within a meter of their bus before taking two steps into the bushes and disappearing from sight - two steps!

The ride out was,an adventure. It was long (13 hours on the go, 12 in the saddle) and on bumpy, hilly dirt roads the whole way. A thunderstorm cooled things down to about 10 C (50 F) and provided a good couple of hours of rain (and the surfacing of Mr. Happy).

Letting a bus through early on; Lise with Dall sheep horns at a info center; Mr. Happy; stunning countryside.

The views were incredible though, as was the wildlife. We saw a young moose amble up and diagonal across the road with a watchful eye on us, a coyote raiding gulls' nests, very many ptarmigans (AK state bird), ground squirrels, young hares and lake water birds. We were very lucky to see a large herd of caribou, and there were Dall sheep at the higher passes.

Dan and Tanja; Dall ram; two caribou on ridgeline; bear country!

Easing through the night. Tanja and Lise are enjoying our mid-point break at midnight. We woke u the Dall sheep asleep on the road side here at Polychrome pass.

Helped no end by Martin's seeingly inexhaustible supply of Lindt chocolate, we battled through the night to arrive at our pick up point (70 mile mark) at 5:30am. I was savaged by the sleep monster but somehow Lise and Tanja kept each other awake for a safe trip home.

Last Barrow Trip

The last trip to Barrow was timed perfectly. Last measurements were made and our equipment extracted just before the onset of a lot of surface snow melt that would have complicated snow machine travel and access to our site as well as interfering with the measurements.

The landfast ice has been very consolidated and stayed in a long time this year. Usually wind and ocean currents would have broken this ice into smaller pieces by now, allowing it to more away from shore and opening up leads (open water in the ice pack) so important for whaling. It was a terrible spring whaling season - only 3 whales from a quota of 22 strikes and 20 landings. It was the talk of the town. They'll wait now for fall whaling - hunting from boats in more open water - and pray for enough whales to see them through the winter.

We took a reccie out to the ice rubble zone, where stresses crumble the ice up and older ice is sometimes caught up in the first-year ice just grown in the last winter. I love this picture of Hajo and Matt Druckenmiller up on a huge block.

The water is a melt pond - the sun has melted snow on the ice surface but the water can't drain through the ice. As the ice warms up closer to its bulk melting point (-1.8 C) the ice actually does become porous enough to allow drainage - and this change in 'permeability' of the ice is what my work looks at.

One evening we also went 'birding' aka bird spotting. Hajo got super excited when he thought he'd seen some puffins, but it turns out they were more likely spectacles eiders (as in the ducks that give their name to eider-down). We did see tundra - and trumpeteer- swans, phalaropes, loons, snipes, different types of jaegers, and the local favourite, Steller's eider. Too bad we didn't see any snowy owls though.

We had a warm spell too - so now I've experienced -56 F and + 54 F up here (-49 to +12 C).

The on-ice equipment worked well this year, and preliminary results from the measurements with Malcolm Ingham from VUW look promising too. So all up, a good field year. I'll probably be back up in November.

May Update

Well, it's all turned from white to brown to super-green in May. The leaves took about 2 days to go from buds to being fully leafed out. What have we been up to now that there's no skiing and trips outside with the sole purpose of reporting terribly cold temperatures?
Highlights have included:

• Lisa finshing 1st semester classes and starting education classes proper, and
  
• getting a great hair cut from a crazy Colombian her told her she should grow it long at the front to cover her face when she's old (wtf?)
• attended the wedding of good friends Frank and Lalida (and witnessing just how bright it is at 3am when you're hammered and just want it to be dark so you can sleep..)
  
• making a day hike in Denali Park and seeing moose, ground squirrel, squirrels and Dall sheep
• Dan managing to go climbing a couple of times (closely followed by ice and ibuprofen)
  
• doing the 'two-way torture test', a two person race where we each ran a 1/2 marathon in a different direction of an up and down loop. Aptly named.
• getting involved in a big Cancer fundraiser - thanks a lot for all of you who've contributed!
• hosting a BBQ up at our place.
• two young grizzly bears rolling into town and hanging out at the golf course (!) one has been shot for getting into someone's yard.
  

Lisa has been running a lot actually, and is really looking forward to the Equinox Marathon in September. Dan's looking forward to one last trip to Barrow to tie up this season's fieldwork. with such big changes between seasons squuzed into the same 12 months, everything seems to change and happen so quickly. Summer is now on us, and we hope to really enjoy it.