Not so bad

 

So far it has been a pretty dismal winter here on Kodiak.  Rain and more rain, and none of the lakes or even ponds are frozen. But if you look up high there is still snow on the mountains.  And it has been building up.  It is actually a pretty sharp snow line. There is practically no snow below about 1200 feet, and a lot of snow above 2000 feet. With all the rain I think the snow must be epically deep way back in the interior of the island.  Up high enough and all that rain has been snow.  At places like Crown Mountain I bet there will still be deep snow in mid July this next summer.

And even on Pyramid it is starting to build up.  There is still a lot less snow than usual, but there is now enough snow. Enough snow to keep me happy anyway!  Fingers crossed that we don't get another Biblical deluge of boiling rain to wash it all away.

Patrick

South bowl in the sunshine

Days of Film

 

Recently I saw on social media where someone posted a whole lot of photos from their 'early years' and they extolled the special 'look' of film vs born digital pictures.  I have also noticed how a lot of people still use film and claim that it just looks better.  Anyway, I decided to go back and look at all my old pictures.

I took a lot of pictures back in the days of negatives and slides.  One thing I noticed right away is that most of my old slides and negatives we're poorly scanned.  Back in the day I had very little memory space on my computer hard drive and I intentionally scanned my photos to be less than like 250K.  Yikes!  It looks like I should be re scanning a lot of my old pictures!

But I did find that some of my old film photos - mostly the archaeological projects - have been scanned at high resolution.  So I decided to concentrate on the photos from one archaeological project from the early 1990s - the three summers I spent on an archaeological project in outer Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island in northeast Canada. I remember that back in the day I thought I took a lot of spectacular photos on that trip.

Today looking at the photos critically they looked scratched up, grainy and slightly blurry.  Worse yet the colors are simplistic and the exposures lack dynamic range.  They look about like the born digital pictures from 6MB cameras circa 2006 (maybe worse).  I noticed that the exposure plate on the old cameras used to scratch the film as it slid across from one reel to the other. I also noticed that more often than not I missed the exposure entirely.  At the time when you took the picture there was no feedback from the view finder.  You did not get your photos back until months later.  I remember getting the exposure wrong consistently for entire summers of fieldwork (usually all too dark).  

Also film was expensive and you only got 36 pictures per roll of film.  You generally only took one picture at a time and there was very little experimentation.  Heaven help you if everybody's eyes were closed or you missed the composition.

Anyway, I looked at my baffin photos and thought 'yuck!'.  Many of these photos I would not even keep today.  So, needless to say, but I do not miss the days of film!

Patrick

A late Dorset house with central hearth

Willows Island excavation

the bear that tried to eat me

An old tent ring - maybe hundreds of years old - just sitting there on the surface

Some decent snow

 

Yesterday I woke up to sunshine and a hard frost.  And then in the afternoon when we went skiing we actually experienced some decent skiing.  This year when the sun is shining the conditions have usually been pretty icy.  A small caveat on the conditions - by decent I mean '2025' decent.  On a normal year we should be skiing to the road and getting in some powder.

But I was VERY happy with the skiing yesterday and we even did two runs.  It felt satisfying to ski with good light and on soft snow.  It reminded me of what skiing should be like on Pyramid in a normal year.

Patrick

Climbing to snow with uncle Dicky

 

It's been raining a lot lately, but if you do climb high enough it turns to snow. Yesterday Stuey and I went up with uncle Dicky to find the snow.  It was lightly snowing and there was no wind.  Pretty good skiing for this year.  We have really low standards this year.

Earlier this week Stuey and I went skiing when it was icy, and he wiped out and lost a ski.  The safety strap snapped and away the ski went, bounding along down into the fog on the north side of the mountain.  We looked for an hour but it was getting dark and we dared not go too far down the north side looking for it.

I came back the next day and did climb way down the north side looking for it.  But it started to snow.  It snowed a solid 8 inches, and then turned back to rain.  I fear the ski has now been buried in new snow.  Maybe the lost ski will encourage the snow Gods to dump snow on us.  

In any case, I set Stuey up with my AT ski gear. I almost always use tele gear - so he might as well use my longer skis.  And this spring we'll be doing a lot of looking down on the north side of the mountain!

Patrick

Abercrombie is getting green

Skiing to the road

 

Here is a short little video to show just how desperate we are for snow here on Kodiak.  Friday night we actually got some new snow on the mountain.  Maybe around 6-8 inches at 1500 feet. But best of all, there was even an inch or so of new snow down at the road.  

All winter long the snow has rarely extended down below 1000 feet.  Most of the winter we have had to hike up to about 1400 feet just to put on our skis, and that was about the elevation that we had to take them off again on the way down. Stuey and I had only skied all the way to the car twice - and that was months ago.

So yesterday when we saw that there was snow on the ground at the parking lot we were bound and determined to ski back to the car. And we did it!

What's funny is that we were quite happy with the new snow, and ecstatic to actually ski all the way to the car.  

Patrick

Groundhog Day

 

This has been an awful winter.  Warm and wet and grey and very little snow.  Then every time we get a little cold weather and some new snow - another warm snap comes along and washes it all away. I can't remember if it was cloudy or not on February 2 (Ground Hog day) - but it is likely the local ground squirrels did not see their shadows - and I certainly hope we get another 3 months of winter because we have not had any decent winter yet!

Yesterday afternoon I went up Pyramid to check out the new snow. On my drive home from work I could see new snow on all the mountain tops.  And yes there is new snow!  Even snow all the way down to where we park the car at the pass.  With no base the skiing was not great and it was pretty icy.  But hey new snow on the lower part of the mountain.

Except this time I am not going to get too excited.  New snow has been followed by warm rain too many times this winter for me to really get my hopes up.

Patrick