End of Year Downtime

Every year I am lucky enough to get the time between Christmas and New Years off at my work.  I think of it as my end of year downtime.  Usually I take the kids for a few days in Anchorage, but this year Nora got sick and high winds cancelled our flight.  We generally like to go to Anchorage for some guaranteed snow time.

It can be dismal on Kodiak with no snow, but this year we have snow and funnily enough Anchorage is too frigid to be fun.  Temperature in the teens on Kodiak equate to below zero in Anchorage.

So I have been passing the days playing in the snow.  Taking the kids sledding, skiing with the dogs, and exploring the Upper Buskin.  This is the time of year when I recharge the batteries and get ready for next year.
Patrick

Upper Buskin

For the last few days I have been skiing every afternoon in the woods above Buskin Lake.  What I call the Upper Buskin area.  It is one of my favorite places to ski.  Last winter I only got to ski the Upper Buskin a few days in late December before it warmed up and never got cold again.  I hope that does not happen again this year! In any case, I plan to take advantage of good ski conditions while they exist because I know that they may be fleeting.

Yesterday I took the dogs with me and we skied for almost 2 1/2 hours.  The snow was almost a foot deep and I had to break trail most of the way.  In the beginning the dogs were bounding about every which away, but by the end they just followed in a line behind me as I broke the trail.  We were all pretty tired.
Patrick

This is the Upper Buskin 'Lower Canyon' - I did not get to ski this area last year

Snow Day

The day after Christmas Nora was still sick and it was bitingly cold and windy (top photo).  So the kids stayed home while I went for a ski. But on Friday we got our family snow day, and even another 'blizzard'.

It was supposed to be a blizzard, but the snow totals did not end up being very impressive.  We received only a few inches rather than the predicted 6-9 inches.  Oh well.  But a few inches is enough to make the kids and I happy!

We drove out to the golf course just as it started to snow. The kids dug a snow cave into one of the snow drifts by the side of the road while I went for a cross country ski into the woods.  I came back an hour or so later to find happy but cold kids.  It was snowing hard and the kids were totally snow covered from digging in their cave.  We blasted the heat in the car and warmed up as we drove home.
Patrick

This is Nora and Stuey's snow cave prior to the blizzard

Best Photos of 2019 - landscapes

This is the third of my 'best photos of 2019' posts - and the theme for this one is landscapes.  No people and no snow!

Looking at all the photos on the blog post screen they look kind of disappointing, but I think that's because they need to be blown up to impart their impact.  So click on the pictures and look at them on a big computer screen.

I've noticed that pictures that do well on small screens are not necessarily the best photos.  Panoramic photos always do badly.  On Instagram people where people are looking at the photos on the iPhone screen the ones they like tend to be colorful and have blatant composition.  Ideally I think photos should be printed big and viewed up close on a wall.  And iPhone photos do not tend to look all that great when they get blown up big.

Patrick

XC Skiing in the trees

Yesterday I took the dogs for a ski in the trees.  It was screamingly windy (see photo of harbor below), and the golf course was a wasteland of drifting and blowing snow.  So I decided to try the upper Buskin River area.  The area is in a deep valley and there are cottonwood trees to break the wind.  But I was worried that there would not be enough snow to cover the rocks.

I needn't have worried - it was glorious.  The river is still not frozen dry, but all the old WWII roads are nicely covered.

This time of year in that area the sun does not shine.  Barometer and Erskine mountains  shadow the area.  Later in the year the sun gets high enough to clear the mountains and shine down in the valley, but not now so close to the Solstice.  The sun on high makes for a dramatic contrast.  All the peaks are pinky white and the cottonwood trees starkly silhouetted black against the blue sky and pink snow.
Patrick

This is what the harbor looked like on the drive home

Christmas 2019

Kodiak had a white Christmas.  But yesterday morning in the dark with water pouring out of the gutters it was looking pretty bad.  At our house the forecasted snow had turned to a hard rain.  Nora opined, 'Kodiak is never going to get snow ever again'.  Then the skies cleared off and the sun actually came up!  It was a beautiful sunny day and it only rained at our house which is on a point sticking out into the warm waters of the Gulf.  It often rains at our house when it is snowing just 1/4 mile away.

And then later in the day it snowed some more and today (the 26th) the temperature is in the low 20's and it is windy and cold.  Kodiak is a winter wonderland - even at our house.

The bad news is that we were supposed to go to Anchorage for a couple of days.  But Nora got some sort of stomach bug and we cancelled the trip.  Even that turned out to be somewhat serendipitous.  This mornings flight got cancelled anyway due to high winds, and tomorrow in Anchorage the high is supposed to be around zero.  So Kodiak is really the place to be!  And we got snow!  And Nora is feeling better.

Yesterday, Nora was not feeling well all day.  But did not really get sick until late in the day.  We opened presents in the morning and afterwards Nora and Stuey watched Youtube videos on how to set up Nora's new GoPro video camera.  We went to the golf course to go skiing and they tried it out together (see photos below).  Unfortunately Nora started to get sick, and once at home they never had a chance to make a video.

Today I have my fingers crossed that Stuey and I do not get sick!  The plan is to go for a XC ski with our new snow.  I think we'll ski the Upper Buskin area where there are trees and the wind will be less bad.  Fingers crossed.  Patrick

Best Photos of 2019 - kids and family

This is the second of three 'best photos of 2019' posts.  This one is all about kids and family - basically these are the ones with people and dogs in them.  When critically editing photos these are the toughest to examine in a non-biased way.  That's because the content is far more meaningful!

For instance, in the photo above, is that a good picture because of the composition, the clouds and blue?  Or is it because Nora is in the photo and I remember the moment?

Anyway, I tried to pick the best photos in this theme based on composition and not content.  But of course no one can really outrun their own biases and that includes me!
Patrick