Spring is around the corner?

The weather has been playing tricks with us all winter, and of course this little game has continued. Currently the weather is mediocre, but really warm for this month comparably to previous years (currently 46F at 7 pm). It's always fun to go back and look at old pictures and see when the first snow arrived, when the first sign of spring arrived, when the snow disappeared etc. A lot of people of course define spring differently. Even though spring has an official definition. My definition is bud burst. First you have a bud, and then the bud burst. Life has returned, spring has sprung. 

This normally doesn't happen until May, and believe it or not, but I usually kill my first mosquito before this happens. 

Spring never had such a great impact on me when I lived back home. Mostly because back home the season of spring is kind of long. Here you can miss spring if you are gone a couple of days. I have gone to Denali for hikes previous years and the way down looks kind of dull, coming back you notice a color change, the bud has arrive. Within a day or two bud burst has arrived. 

But, for now I am still waiting, waiting for the first mosquito and spring. Weather forecast says it's gonna snow on Saturday and Sunday, but I stopped believing in them a long time ago.

Bitter cold but oh so sweet

The past few days have been pretty warm compared to last week when we had a really bad coldsnap. But today for some reason the weather gods decided to drop the temperature once again. This morning we were back down at -39C. 

I have been skiing to week as much as I can lately, barring bitter cold temperatures of course. But certain days I really have to get into to work, and my best option is skiing. With my car close to breakdown and a not so winterized bike, that is what I am left with. I don't have to ski that far. It's actually pretty close to get into work, just around 2.4 miles. The worst part is of course to ski in the darkness. This, because I have this great fear of running into a moose. 

I love when you can see all the snow covered trees, and the pink sunsets and sunrises. It always makes me smile and craving more, more nature. I could however live without this bitter cold.

Endless snow

Sometimes we tend to forget about the fact that winter in Alaska stretches over several months. A couple of weeks ago I for sure thought it was spring time, snow was melting and they finally plowed the bike/walk lane from my house to work. Blue sky and sunshine, bad skitrails and I was really looking forward to an earlier spring this year. [gallery type="rectangular" ids="1867,1866,1861,1863"]

But then the weather in Alaska switches pretty fast, and before we knew it we were back with snow and below freezing temperatures.

And then again the weather turns and we are back to that endless dripping. Drip, drop, drip, drop, all day the snow that accumulated is continuing to melt. According to the research group at UAF we actually had less snow than normally, but we don't really care about that now, now we just want all that snow to go away. Well, at least I want.

Tycho doesn't really like the snow when it's this crunchy and unstable, and he tend to freak out when he sinks into the snow.

We tend to have a frequent visitor by the house, a squirrel....I guess it is a love hate relationship. He/she is not affecting the cabin...but he is stealing the bird food....sneaky little creature.

Anyway, we have above freezing temperatures and the sun rises early, and sets really late. So the spring is definitely on its way (cross your fingers).

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