Yesterday was beautiful

Yesterday afternoon - boilerplate conditions but beautiful sunshine

Yesterday was beautiful.  Today it rained.  But at least it started off as snow.  We even got some snow on the lawn here at Cliffside Road.  It snowed all morning on the mountain, but by the time I climbed up after work it was mostly raining.  Sleet, wind and super slow snow.  Up on the mountain it was blowing hard out of the northwest and creating HUGE snowdrifts.

Later after I got home I took the doggies for another walk out Spruce Cape.  It certainly did not look like it did yesterday evening (see below).  Today it was all grey green waves and white foam.  A dark forboding sky with rain spitting down.  The light did not hang around like it did yesterday, and by the time I got back to the car it was dark - the parking lot empty.  Patrick

Sunset gloaming at Spruce Cape - I got out there just a bit too late to catch the sunset

Pyramid cornice

When the light reflects off of the snow like that it means it's ice

Really wet slushy snow on the mountain today - super slow skiing all the way to the road

Big Storm

Yesterday was one of the worst storms I've ever seen in Mill Bay.  In the morning the trees were swaying so badly that I seriously considered evacuating the house.  And, indeed, a tree did fall down next door.

The kids and I went for a walk with the dogs to look at the waves in Abercrombie.  We got to the Parkside entrance and a tree had fallen and taken down the powerlines.  Inside the park we saw 2 other huge trees that had fallen down.  So it was definitely an unusually powerful storm.

What made it bad is that the wind was from the North.  Mill Bay faces North so those storms are the worst.  Mill Bay is in the lee for storms out of the west and east.  And indeed around noon yesterday the wind swung around to the east and suddenly it was not so bad in Mill Bay.  The sun came out.

In the afternoon I even climbed up Pyramid to go for a ski.  The worst of the storm was over.  Quick and Nasty. Patrick

Nasty Weather

Spruce Cape waves at sunset

Right now it is 43 degrees outside, blowing 50 mph, and pouring (no kidding - there was just a 67 mph gust at the airport).  Ughhhhhhhhh.  That is Nasty weather.  It has been blowing and raining for the last few days, and looks to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.  Until today it was not so bad - at least we were getting snow on the mountain.  But today I fear that the 'boiling water' is decimating our snow pack.  40 degrees seems to be about the break point between a 'good' and 'bad' storm.

Right now I am worried about the trees by the house.  They are REALLY bending and swaying - doing the storm dance.  And then later when I take the dogs for a walk they will come home all muddy - double ughhhhhhh.  Mud, brown, wind, and blah.  That's what we get with a warm winter in Kodiak.  Patrick

I took this picture after sunset out at Spruce Cape

So far we've been gaining snow - yesterday at the bottom of the jibber bowl

Wednesday's snow on the mountain

Abercrombie waves and cliffs

More Variations on Snow and Rime

Here are some more snow and rime pictures from my daily skis earlier in the week.  I really wanted to get a good rime picture.  I tried to capture it on branches and on rocks, close and far, but I think I did the best in the top photo when I went for the white rime against the brown and green of the low country.

Earlier in the week there was also some good fog down low with sunshine on high.  This phenomena proved difficult to photograph.  I tried to get what it looked like at the edge - when I was still in the sunshine but could still see down under the fog.  Patrick

Deer Kabobs

Last weekend I experimented with how I cook deer kabobs.  In the past I often ended up with super rare meat that was still burned on the outside.  So this past weekend I tried 'pre cooking' the kabobs before putting them on the grill.

I made the kabobs in the usual way - cut up the deer and marinaded it in a teriyaki sauce I mixed up (I also add sugar and tomato to my marinade).  Then I put the meat on sticks alternating with onion, mushrooms (I rehydrated dry mushrooms and it worked!), tomato, pepper, and basil leaves (only placed directly by deer).

Then came the experiment.  I preheated the oven up to 170 (the lowest setting), brushed the kabobs with marinade and popped them in the oven, I then turned the oven OFF and took the dogs for a walk.  When I got back from my walk an hour or so later I lit the grill and made rice.  Then I brushed on more marinade and grilled the kabobs.  I did burn a couple of them more than I'd like (see photo), but the meat ended up PERFECT - medium rare pink all the way through each piece.  The meat was NOT dried out. Nora declared them the best ever and that 'you have to make these again - they are awesome!'   Patrick

Ice, Rime, Snow & Huge Panoramics

This is actually a HUGE panoramic of 8 photos stitched together in 2 rows of 4

I have been taking a lot of snow pictures lately.  These ones are actually all from last week, and I already have more I want to post!  It has been beautiful up on the mountain.

Anyway, one thing I started to play with last week is creating HUGE panoramics. Last week I posted a picture very similar to the one above.  It was my initial try at taking a picture of the light in Pyramid's north bow.  But the mountain was too big and I could not fit it all into the frame.  So the next day I went to the exact same spot (it was another sunny day) and created a huge 2 layered panoramic. I held the camera vertical and shot 2 rows of 4 'sideways' photos and then at home I stitched them all together and got the HUGE pan (it was too big for the blog before resizing).

I really like it because it looks like a normal picture.  No fish eye look that you would get with a wide angle lens to achieve the same effect.  It shows the whole bowl about like you'd see it in real life.  Only down side is that it does make the mountain look smaller.

I also like my new camera's 35 mm lens.  It takes photos that stitched together REALLY easily.  There is no distortion at the edges that creates 'tears' at the seams in the panoramics.  With my older cameras you could always see the seams in the panoramics. Not so with the new camera!

I think I'll be doing a lot of HUGE pans in the near future!

Patrick

'Staying Alive' - I saw this skinning up the mountain and just thought it was funny

Monochromatic light!

There is a lot of rime and blowing snow in this photo!

This is another HUGE pan

Only 6 pictures stitched together in this one - I wanted to highlight the rime on the rocks in the foreground

This was the biggest pan of all - 10 pictures stitched together in 2 rows of 5

Sled Jump

Sunday afternoon the kids and I went sledding at the pass.  On the way we bought new sleds at Sutliffes.  The sleds are more durable than the ones we've used in the past, and they can be steered.  However, it was tough to steer them and get them to go straight.  We had a really tough time not over compensating when making a steering correction.  This would lead to a spin out wipeout - a loopity loop.

Then Stuey found that someone had built a jump.  The goal became to steer the sleds to the jump and go flying.  And better yet take a photograph of it.  So that is what we did for an hour - aim for the jump and get aerial photographs.  The kids demanded that I take photos. And I did not really mind being stuck as the photographer - I'd landed my first jump on a rock and had a bruised posterior.

A bonus was that their cousin Brooks showed up to climb the mountain and did some runs with us.  He was an old pro at steering sleds and hit the jump every time - even with Stuey on board.

By the end of the day everybody was quite good at steering the sleds - well on their way to becoming 'old pros'.  Patrick