Midsummer - Longest day of the year

Midsummer

The Swedish Midsummer is suppose to celebrate the longest day of the year. After midsummer the days actually get shorter and shorter. Living this far south all of a sudden makes this very different. In Alaska the longest day is 21 hrs and 49 minutes. With that long of a day, it doesn't really get dark. Here it is a lot different. 15 hours and 22 minutes. That is a big difference. I actually haven't really reflected over this fact until right now. 

Alaska

Here are some pictures, memories, from Alaska, solstice weekend 2014.

Last year the smoke was so bad, so I didn't even bother taking any pictures of the beautiful summer night. I did get a few of the smoke, and the blood red sun, yup, sun around 8-9 pm. We had bad smoke from the forest fires for several days straight, more than a week I think, to the point where I was actually wondering if I would ever be able to see the blue sky again. Luckily the smoke did disappear, and I took some pictures around midnight a week or so later. 

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Madison

We celebrated the Swedish midsummer with some other Swedes around Madison about a week early. It was a really fun time, and the first time I really danced around the midsummer pole in the US. I made a dessert, strawberry mousse cake on a brownie bottom, needless to say, it was very very tasty! Compared to Alaska, it got pretty dark fast though, when we were biking home around 8 pm the sun was already starting to set..

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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!!