Desperate Snow for Skiing

It rained pretty hard all day Wednesday and it seemed pretty warm - dismal.  But yesterday on my drive in to work I saw new snow on all the mountaintops near town.  'Whooo hoooo,' I thought, 'time to go skiing'.  And so after work I rushed home to get my ski gear together and pick up the dogs.  Then we rushed on up to the pass to climb Pyramid and go skiing.  The first ski of the new year!

Only there was not very much snow.  Barely any snow in fact.  Good thing I brought my 'rock' skis - a really old pair of skis that I do not mind thrashing on rocks.  I found a run of snow covered ground about 100 meters long and got in my ski.  Dogs barking and jumping around in the sunshine.  It certainly was beautiful up there in the late fall sunlight.  Maybe the snow was a little desperate but I was glad I climbed up the mountain with my skis.

And, funnily enough, I did not hit a single rock.  Patrick

Touching Snow

Last weekend the snow line finally made it down to the mountain tops around town.  So on Sunday Nora and I climbed up Pyramid with our cousins to check on the snow.  The hope was to go sledding.  However, by the time we got up to where the snow had been earlier in the weekend there was barely any left - Certainly not enough for sledding.

But there was enough snow that both Nora and I got to eat some.  We figured eating the new snow will create snow luck, and hopefully bring on more snow.  We both want a very snowy winter!

Patrick

See the bear?  He's in there!

Puzzle Season

Stuey and friend Elias after finishing the 1000 piece puzzle

The days are getting shorter and the time spent inside the house in the evenings longer.  It's puzzle season.  The last couple of winters we have always had a puzzle going on a coffee table in the living room.  And a couple of weeks ago at Stuey's suggestion we started up the first puzzle of the season.  We finished it just this past weekend (top photo).

With the end of daylight savings time it is shocking how quickly it gets dark.  As an aside I often wonder why we don't do a radical daylight savings in winter!  That's when we need the light.  We should have moved the clocks forward 2 hours and not 1 hour backwards.

Anyway, since we moved them back, and not forward, we do need more indoor evening activities.  And that's where puzzles come in.  Once absorbed in a puzzle I enter a time warp.  Suddenly the time just flies by.  Puzzles are horribly addicting.  There is nothing quite like the feeling of finding and fitting the missing piece.   Patrick

Cliffside Halloween

Last night at 7 PM I was all alone at the house, and feeling a little left out.  Both Nora and Stuey had gone off with separate groups of friends to trick-or-treat.  It was looking a little like our annual neighborhood trick-or-treat together as a family would not happen.  On Halloween Eve every year since the kids were tiny we have dressed up and walked up and down Cliffside Road on a trick-or-treat trek.  We are pretty much the only ones who trick-or-treat in our neighborhood, and I know that a lot of the houses on our street count on us to stop by and show off our costumes.  It has been an important annual event that has introduced the kids to the neighbors and the neighbors to the kids.  And I was worried that it was about to die on the vine.

And then Stuey called and asked for pick up and wanted to know if his friend Elias could come along with us on our Cliffside Road trick-or-treat.  'Why yes,' I replied.  I picked him and his friend up, and, as we were leaving our house to walk Cliffside, Nora's ride pulled up and dropped her off too.  And so we all got together just in time to do our annual Cliffside Road neighborhood trick-or-treat.

The tradition lives!

Bears in the 'Hood

There has been a lot of bear activity in my neighborhood lately.  The family down the road lost their goose and ducks, and another lady on Nora's paper route told us how a bear had tried to get into her house.  It seems a hungry bear has been wandering up and down Cliffside Road looking for something to eat.

Last week he tried his/her luck at our place.

I have a fenced in backyard and that is where I store the tin cans slated for recycling, keep my compost bins, and the dogs chew on the various elk and deer bones leftover from my hunting trips.  If you are in the kitchen you will often hear a thump from the back deck as the dogs chew away on a bone and it hits the wood porch.

Anyway, early one morning last week I was in the kitchen with all 3 dogs when we heard a 'thump' from the back porch. It was pitch black outside.  I looked at the 3 dogs and looked at the black kitchen window.   'Thump' - 'uh oh,' I thought.

I went to investigate and immediately the dogs all went into high alert, dog pack mode  Woof, woof, woof - scrabbling of doggy toe nails on the wood floor, and then whap, whap, whap as they raced out through the dog door one-by-one, and out into the backyard.  I followed out the door and all Hell had broken loose in the back yard.

The bear had tried to hide in behind the oil tank, and the dogs had him cornered.  The barking hit a crescendo. The bear bolted and the dogs chased him around the yard.  The bear could not get out of the yard.  Finally the bear tried to jump the fence.  He landed on top, smashed it down, and climbed over to make his getaway.  The pack had 'hounded' the bear!

No way will the dog pack let a silly bear steal their bones!  Patrick

Post script: As an aside the dog bones did not even have enough meat on them to attract birds.  The bear seems to have been attracted to the tin can recycle bin.  He had come in through a hole in the wood fence that lead to the neighbors.

The bear has not come back.

Anchorage

My fellow hikers on top of 'Near Point'

I just spent the weekend in Anchorage.  I stayed at my friends Julie and Ray's house, and did a lot of mountain biking and hiking.  And in the evenings I got to eat fancy restaurant food.  A very different experience than my typical weekend on Kodiak!  And on the last day it even snowed!

I usually go to Anchorage in the winter and my outdoor activities are confined to skiing.  So it was pretty cool to go hiking and mountain biking and see the XC ski trails I usually ski completely bare of snow.  Anchorage is a very different place when devoid of snow.

The mountain biking was REALLY fun.  I just took up the sport again this summer after an almost 20 year hiatus, and until this weekend I had only experienced Kodiak trails.  I was a little worried about keeping up on the Anchorage trails.  I need not have worried.  Anchorage mountain bike trails are really well engineered with banked turns and excellent tread.  None of the sudden surprises, HUGE rocky drop offs, trees whacking the handle bars, or extreme mud that you experience on a Kodiak ride.

It's funny but I have always said that Kodiak's 'challenging' XC ski conditions make for better skiers, and I think the same is true of our mountain bike trails.  That said, it certainly is fun just to go fast and not worry about hitting a tree, falling off a cliff, or ending the ride covered in mud. Patrick

Pretty windy up on top!

Hillside snow - we need some of that on Kodiak

Sunset on the flight home

Abercrombie Light

The light was beautiful for my walk with the dogs Sunday morning.  We hiked into the park and the sun came out.  It had been stormy but cleared off in spectacular fashion during our hike.  I tried to catch a good picture of the light and tried a couple of variations on each picture.

For the top 2 pictures one is a close up while the other is a panoramic. The goal was to catch the golden light streaming through the trees.  I think I like the top one where if you look closely you can see a clearly happy tank the dog.

For the next 2 of the rainbow (both panoramics) - I tried framing one from a higher vantage point point to get more of the beach in the foreground.  But the other make the rainbow look higher.  Not sure which one I prefer.

Finally for the bottom 2 I wanted to catch the blue skies and stormy seas on the right and the rainbow and dark clouds on the left.  Not much difference between these 2, but I like the top one because there is a bird in it and it shows more of the scene.

Patrick