July In July, the day before my birthday (8th) we decided to go hiking Granite Tors. Granite Tors is one of the really accessible hikes from Fairbanks, well by that I mean only about 1hr drive from Fairbanks. The hike itself is a loop and you can do it in a day or camp at the top of the tors. The loop itself is 15 miles. Elevation wise you start at around 700 feet and continue up to around 3100 feet when you hit the top. We did the loop backwards, which mean we had a lovely 4 miles gaining 2400 feet. Out of which 1000 feet was gained in 1 mile. It was steep to say the least.

This picture above is showing the start of the hike, before we started to climb. It is a really nice hike, but bear spray is a must. I know a lot of people do not bring their bear spray on hikes like this, cause they think it is not necessary.....and then we get the stories like the woman with her two nephews? can't remember, two kids anyway, and they ran into a bear hiking Granite Tors. She did everything you can do wrong. If you are going to hike in bear country you have to know what to do, in case you do run into a bear.

This is a picture showing part of the steep climb. We were really lucky cause the weather was so nice.

The view itself is pretty amazing, and you have all these tors to climb around on.

August

My family arrived here in August, and we went to Denali, Palmer and the State Fair, Homer and back up to Fairbanks again. August is such a wonderful time of the year, the colors are Amazing!

We also have a lot of wildfires up here in August, well actually starting in May and ongoing. But this picture was taken in August.

September

In September the temperatures begin to drop and before you know it, winter is around the corner, well almost. Still amazing colors, but also rainy weather.

But you know what they say in Sweden, there is no bad weather, just bad clothes.

We got lots of beets from our garden this summer, so we canned all our beets, they were so good!

I also took my parents to the watershed. But my mom refused to leave the car since one of my friends saw two grizzlys running back and forth on the road when she was there a couple of days earlier.

I showed my dad and mom how to operate the ATV, fun times :)

After that we had lunch at the famous Chatnika lodge.

October

Snow and darkness, but beautiful sunsets.

Before the snow we also had the Forest Festival, but I already mentioned that in a previous post, but that called for some nice pictures. At this point it was mainly a long wait for the snow to start falling for real, so we could bring out the skis.

November

Finally snow. It had been snowing for a couple of days and we decided to drive up murphy dome and hike in the snow. Do I need to emphasize any stronger how much I love snow, and playing in the snow? Me and my traditional handstand. We also have excellent ski trails on campus, which means we can easily get a nice ski in during lunch break. Olive seem to like the snow too, most of the time anyway.

Tycho on the other hand usually doesn't wander off outside, he likes to stick around in front of the wood stove.

December

December arrived and we went to San Francisco for a conference. And I took some pictures from the plane of Alaska.

As of now, we are already past the shortest day of the year, and we are gaining around 6 minutes every day.

With all the snow we have gotten so far, I am sure we will have lots of spring adventures in the snow. Happy Friday!