Natures Magical World

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Diamond Dust

Flashback Friday

Sun dogs and Diamond dust

    When the temperatures drop enough ice crystals form and together with some sun we get these beautiful sund dogs around the sun. If you are lucky enough, you can see part of this ring (the sund dog) right in front of you. This phenomenon is also called diamond dust, because obviously that is what it looks like. 

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Sun dog

Skiing

    These pictures makes me miss the snow and cold weather a lot. Being able to ski every day, in one way or another. I could choose between biking (as long as the temps were not too low since I never winterized my bike) or ski to school. The morning commute was always worse than the afternoon, not because of the cold, but because of the darkness and moose. Imagine skiing into a dark forest on narrow skitrails at 7 in the morning. Sure, a headlamp helps, but the forest is really dark at that hour. In Alaska you loose about 6 minutes of daylight leading up to equinox, however after that you start to gain several minutes per day. So, before you know it, the mornings are light and soon the summer arrives, well after like 4 months.. 

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Aurora Borealis

    Fairbanks is the main hot spot for Aurora in the whole world. I can say that the last year I saw aurora almost every day, to the point where I chose when I wanted to get up and out in the cold to take pictures depending on social media and live aurora cams. Now, of course, I really really miss having this opportunity, I mean even just going to pee in the middle of the night (to the outhouse) and look up and see this magical phenomenon going on. It's out of this world.

Aurora

Northern Lights

Magical Lights

    I have a deep connection with sunrises and sunsets. Nowadays I seldom get the opportunity to take as beautiful pictures as the one below, because I do not have that view while leaving work any more. 

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    What is your favorite thing about nature? Have you ever seen Diamond Dust?

Solstice Hiking - Rainbow Ridge

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July 16th

Hiking

    I went hiking for solstice weekend, because what better way is there to celebrate the longest day of the year, than to be outside in the mountains. It had been raining for days, and actually I just heard that Fairbanks broke the record in precipitation for the month of June since 1945, and the most rainfall during a 24 hr period, even breaking a record from 1967 just a couple of days ago. We received about half of the annual precipitation in just around 2 weeks, 6.63 inches....that is a lot of water. And it still rains.

Surrounded by Mountain views

    As we were driving south-ish, it started to clear up a bit. And you could finally see the mountains again. At the trailhead, we had the issue of actually finding the trailhead. We thought we kind of found the trail, but were soon bushwhacking up a steep hill. Little did we know, but on the way down the next day we saw that we basically missed the real trail by half a meter...but when we finally got up, the view was amazing of course, nothing to complain about.

    As we continued up the sun hit the ridge just right, and all I could grab was my iphone to snap this lovely picture below:

Feeling like the luckiest person on earth

    The rain could be seen in the distance as we put up our tents and ate a snack. The view from our food storage place was amazing. And I felt complete, surrounded by mountains and braided streams. As the evening progressed the clouds and mountains put on a show for us, a solstice show. It never started to pour down, just a little drizzling. I could say goodnight watching my braided stream and the mountains.

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Clear blue skies

    We didn't know what weather to expect the next day, in the mountains anything can happen. But we were surprised to find a mostly clear blue sky. As my friends decided to conquer a steep scree slope, I decided to go on my own little hike along the ridge we were on. I have done enough scree slope hiking to know that I don't appreciate it. 

Ridgeline

    The ridgeline was pretty, and I was smiling my whole way. The solstice weekend was one of the best weekends I have had so far, mostly because I tend to work every single weekend. Getting out in the mountains can do miracles for a tired brain. And who doesn't like mountains anyway? Happy Week!! 

Friday Theme - 6 Month Check Up N.O. 2

June 27thA while back I started with Friday theme through another blogger. I liked the concept because it was meant to show your pictures for a specific theme. One of the themes is always the 6 month check up. The Friday theme kind of "died" a while back but the 6 month check up persisted.

January Colors I came back from W in early January and landed in very interesting weather. Temperatures increased enough to make the snow start to melt, but then the temperature dropped again and created magical color shows. [gallery type="slideshow" ids="1948,1949,1950,1951,1952,1953,1954,1955"]

February Lights Temperature dropped and brought some beautiful light shows. [gallery type="slideshow" ids="1958,1959,1960,1961,1962"]

Cold weather and ice bar go really well together. [gallery type="square" ids="1967,1968"]

March and "spring madness": When March arrives people go crazy, not literally but we gain so much daylight and birds are starting to find their way back.

And I all of a sudden had done my very first marathon, it just happen to be a ski race, something I realized after the fact.. The day of the ski race I woke up to -30C...and I did not feel like doing any kind of race at that point. But i finished!

[gallery type="square" ids="1964,1965,1971"]

The temperature increased enough for Tycho to venture out into the snow. [gallery type="square" ids="1970,1969"]

We went to Denali, one of many trips to Denali this spring, just so we could get enough of it before tourist season came around [gallery type="square" ids="1980,1981"]

April: We went to Denali again and again. And I think that spring officially arrived with the blooming willow. [gallery type="square" ids="1982,1983,1984"]

May: In may we drove down to Anchortown to catch the flight to Portlandia, and that was about it for may, except a couple of days on the trails [gallery type="slideshow" ids="1985,1986,1987"]

June and summer madness!!!: June finally arrived, and so did the rain. We have had so much rain, but still quite a few sunshine moments. [gallery type="slideshow" ids="1988,1989,1990,1991"]

And the summer just keeps going and going. Lots of Rain, but still summers in Alaska are pretty fabulous.

Hope you guys have an Awesome weekend!!!