Springtime in Denali National Park

Kate, Jason and I took a little jaunt down to Denali National Park on Sunday, April 17th. It was a gorgeous day, a little hazy and overcast to the south, but we still managed to get some great views. If you've never driven on the Parks Highway you should plan to someday. Although be warned, in the spring the frost heaves get a little ridiculous sometimes.


Get the doggy bags ready. A few frost Heaves on the Parks Highway. Some Mountains to the south. This is around where we saw the wolf.
We saw a wolf run into the woods on the way down to the Park, but unfortunately it was to fast for my slower camera skills. There was more wildlife to be seen, even though I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to see more.


An enigma of the Parks Highway: There's not much to see, but, oh man is there a lot to see.

The Parks parallels the railroad pretty much the whole way to Anchorage. This is just a few miles before the entrance to the park near the Nenana River.

Finally in the park! Feels like spring, right? That's Denali hiding in the clouds to the right of Double Mountain (The big one in the frame).




The Park Road was open to mile 30, at the Taklanika River. This is 15 miles further than it is typically open to the public. They open it for a few weeks once they can plow and before the tourism season starts. You couldn't really plan a trip for this because there is no guarantee that it would be open upon visiting. Road crews were halted last week when they got more than a foot of new snow.

This is why we can't drive into the park in the winter. Happy Spring! It must have been tough moving all this snow.
After parking at the gate we walked for a few miles further down the road and just enjoyed the scenery and some Spruce Grouse.

Down on the Teklanika River there was a little bit of water showing.

Some more breaks in the ice on the Teklanika River. I was a bit hesitant to walk out there at first, until I realized we were mostly over a gravel bar.

It's a walk in the park!
When we drove back we got some new nice views of a hazy Denali, the tallest mountain in North America (or in the world if you are measuring vertical relief) and a couple of Moose. We saw some Caribou too, but they were much to far away to photograph.

Denali

Never be surprised by what you see in Alaska. Fifteen miles into the park, in the middle of the frozen Savage River. Can you spot the father and daughter ice skating?

A cow and calf on our way out, just to say "thanks for coming"

Spring Denali Slideshow

I'll make a real post soon, but until then here is a slideshow from yesterday's trip to Denali National Park. Updates will happen today.


Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

Magpies

Also in Denali National Park on April 17th, 2011:

Spruce Grouse

Seen in Denali National Park on April 17th, 2011:

8 Months and Counting!

Kate and I have been here for 8 months!

My "This is Alaska" set has grown to 240 images strong (click to view in lightbox):

Be warned it's a large photo set. After the first year I'll post a trimmed down version.

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: BP Alaska president to speak on tax structure

Last week we got to listen to the ConocoPhillips Chief executive whine about how difficult things are in the oil industry and that they need tax breaks and incentives to do it. Now we get to hear it from BP. The bill in question doesn't make any provisions that the tax cuts given to these companies be used for drilling or exploration in Alaska. Which means there are no provisions that they would even provide Alaska jobs. It does however have a provision to look at the bill again in three years. In fact, the bill allows the oil companies to take all of the money out of the state. But, you know, I have a lot of faith that these oil companies will do the right thing.

BP Alaska president to speak on tax structure: "ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The group seeking changes in Alaska's oil tax structure is hosting another meeting featuring a representative of one of Alaska's big three oil producers.

BP Alaska President ..."

APRN had another good piece here.

And the Wall Street Journal here.

Have I Gone Mad?

1. . . 2 . . . 3 . . . Run, don't slip, wait it's behind me now, just sit still it will come back in a minute! Ahhh, what do I do? It's everywhere at once!



Tonight, under the twilight, the cobalt sky lit up with green highlights as the aurora exploded overhead. It all started a little before midnight, then I was out until 2am shooting the sky. Within minutes the bands were showing fantastic pinks and reds!



And all of this came before midnight! A little after 12 am the sky became mostly dark (although in a couple weeks that cobalt will be as dark as it gets). Of course, this means that this might be the last great show we really get until September.

Once darkness set in the display really began. I don't know where to start; I took 75 pictures that I am going to keep, so after today I'll probably just post a few a week to keep me occupied during the non-aurora summer. Oh, well we did get some strong 'moon dogs' for a while. That was cool and pretty unique:


The interplay between the aurora, clouds and moon was really cool, and since the aurora was also super bright it could really compete with all the other lights in the sky. It's motion was so fast I increased the ISO setting to a little over 1000 for many of the pictures and took 2 sec. exposures to grab some of the texture. This makes the images a little grainier, but still good.

I have to say that as much as I am ready for the snow to melt, I'm really going to miss seeing the northern lights over the next couple of months. I can't describe how cool it is to see them so bright and fantastic; not to mention directly overhead. It was hard to crank the tripod back far enough last night.

In total, I was outside for about 2 hours just watching and taking pictures. It was truly a wonderful, wonderful time.



I've decided to dedicate a whole set on flickr just to tonight since there are so many images. I hope you enjoy these few for now. Thanks for visiting!

To Do in Fairbanks 4: World Ice Art Championships

I briefly wrote about this event earlier, but as I have uploaded nearly of all of my pictures from the 2011 championships I felt that a new post was necessary. Also, the event needs your help if it is to have a future (read on below).



If you happen to visit Fairbanks during late February or most of March, you absolutely must visit the World Ice Art Championships. For 2012 this is tentatively scheduled to be February 21st through March 25th. The multi-block sculptures usually come about 1 week after the start and they start collapsing (weather dependent) pretty quick, so early March is probably the best time.

There are currently issues with the venue, and it may close down for good. Ice Alaska has info on their website about what is going on, and who you can contact to help not let this event fade away!

The pictures speak for themselves, and if you have kids this is probably one of the coolest things they could witness and play on. The artwork is amazing, with contributing artists from all over the world. It takes a few hours at least to see all the sculptures and the multi-block works are huge!

People come together from all over the world to create these gorgeous things that only last for weeks. No one will ever see the same sculptures again in following years. You don't get more original than that.

Here are my recommendations:

(1) Dress Warm: You will stand for a while, and walk slowly. This is Alaska; it is cold here.

(2) Visit at night: You have to be here when the sky is dark to get the full effect from the lights on the ice.

(3) Bring a shabby old sled: You will want it for the slides in the kids park. If you are an adult, you will probably want it more than if you are a kid. Later you can drag your kids around on it.

(4) Bring a little cash: for hot chocolate, cotton candy, and snacks.


Big kids like slides too. Jason hits the super-fast killer ice slide.

I will soon have all my pictures from 2011 in my flickr set, or you can look through the thumbnails below.

Melting, Pause, Melt Again

The last couple of weeks have been good. The days have been warm in comparison to recent months. We've even had temperatures reaching the 40's on the warmest days. Last week, for the first time in a while I saw water on the ground, puddling, making a muddy mess. What a glorious muddy mess! Almost simultaneous to the mud was this water running on top of the ice:

Water flows just off the Steese Highway northeast of Fairbanks.

What's left of the snowdome outside the office. Water, liquid water and reflecting blue skies!

Thankfully the blizzards last week all went south of us:
April 8th we watched enormous blizzards go by to the south of us. Closer to the Alaska range, places were getting 100+ mile per hour winds and snow dumped by the foot. We were safe in Fairbanks. About 1 inch of snow in the morning. It ended up being a beautiful day for us.

Blue skies have made for warm days and cold nights. It looks like mid-week temperatures are going to be less than freezing for hi's and back into single digits for lows. It will definitely put a damper on the melting, but I'm still hoping that by next week it will mostly be gone. Ready for color!

No Darkness for Us

A few days ago I mentioned that it is staying twilight until really late. My friend Jason pointed out on facebook today that as of yesterday the Sun no longer goes lower than 18° below the horizon. By the definitions given by the U.S. Naval observatory, this means that at the darkest part of the night we are officially in 'astronomical twilight'.

Astronomical twilight is defined to begin in the morning, and to end in the evening when the center of the Sun is geometrically 18 degrees below the horizon. Before the beginning of astronomical twilight in the morning and after the end of astronomical twilight in the evening the Sun does not contribute to sky illumination; for a considerable interval after the beginning of morning twilight and before the end of evening twilight, sky illumination is so faint that it is practically imperceptible.
USNO Rise, Set, and Twilight Definitions

I took a few screenshots from Stellarium to illustrate the geometry:

At solar midnight, the Sun will be located somewhere behind the horizon in the north direction.

If you take away the ground, the 'elevation' of the Sun behind the horizon can be seen:

As we move toward summer solstice the Sun will keep getting closer and closer to the horizon until it is only about 2° below the horizon. If you drive a little further north to the arctic circle the Sun won't even set, it will just do a little bounce off the horizon on the solstice.

Blah

We woke up to an inch of fresh snow on top of the old crusty snow and ice. Trying to look at the bright side of things, I decided it was so fluffy that it really only amounted to a half-inch.



The forecast is for 1-3 inches today, then a little bit of a cool-down for the remainder of the week. It could be worse though, we could live just a little bit south or north of Fairbanks where 100+ mile-per-hour winds are blowing roofs off of homes:

From the News Miner:
Storm packing hurricane-force winds slams Alaska; travel advisories issued for Richardson, Parks: "Updated at 6:20 a.m.

FAIRBANKS — High winds and heavy snow brought travel trouble across most of the state Thursday, although the severe weather generally skipped Fairbanks.
However, the snow..."

Right darn crazy Alaska weather.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

The snow was falling hard earlier today on campus.

We still have snow, and quite a bit of it at that. I am absolutely ready to see some color again. The hardest part for me this winter has been the lack of color. The pines are all this grayish-brown color that makes me feel a little comatose a lot of the time. We had some pretty afternoon light on the mountains though, so we all took a break to go out and enjoy it, take some pictures and breath some real air.

Manbharat, Alex and Jason all at the overlook in front of our building.

It was overcast and snowy by us, but 80 miles to the south the Sun shone down on the Alaska Range. Luckily the air was clear enough that we could see it!

Everyday

Office conversations. Also, this is what happens when a professor gets sick and cancels class.

Twilight Nights

The light is staying late! Taken at 10pm on April 6th after the end of the homework session. Absolutely gorgeous night with the crescent moon descending behind the museum.

March hit us pretty hard with light! We already are up to 14 hours 15 minutes of sunlight a day, and gaining just under 7 minutes a day! The Sun sets after 9pm now and stays fairly twilighty, especially looking north, until about 11 pm. It's cool, after the Sun sets we can watch the light sky move from west to north as we rotate away from it.

Hoping for Denali Trip Soon

Plowing started a few weeks ago down in the park, and they have the road open to the Savage River. Hopefully we can find some time to make a few trips down this spring. The definition of road work is different down in the park:


The plows hard at work: photo courtesy of nps.gov

The park has updates every few days on the status of plowing as they work their way out to Wonder Lake.