Skiing in Denali National Park

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Adventure Tuesday

Spring in Denali?

    A few weekends ago, when we made a short appearance in Alaska again, we took the opportunity to go skiing in Denali. We were so lucky when it comes to the weather. It felt like spring, snowmelt, 45 degrees and sunny, with some blue sky! Denali is tricky, she can create her own weather patterns, that is why so few people actually get to see her. But we did, and we have so many times in the past too, countless times.

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Too warm to ski?

    The only downside to cross country skiing when its above 40 degree is that it is slightly too warm. But, we really really wanted to get out, and hiking was not an option since the snowpack was so deep. We decided to ski up this creek, towards the mountains. Sun was shining and the snowpack was thick, if you were trying to walk on the snow without skis you would sink through, well actually that tend to happen a bit with the skis too. We saw open water at some places but not a single animal, well, we did see some ptarmigan, but that was about it. We packed the snow down at our tunaround point and sat down for some lunch. I told W how lucky we were, lucky to be out here in the middle of Denali National Park. We glanced up the creek towards the mountains, and bot of us were thinking about the same thing. We wished we had a tent, more gear and time to actually get ut there and get somewhere. But we were pleased with the outing still. You take what you can get, right?

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    Snow will stay on the ground until late April, early May, sometimes even later in Alaska. In Madison it's completely snow free now, and I walked around in shorts this past weekend. 

Consider yourself lucky

It's not easy following your dreams, but you can if you really want to. I have lived in Alaska for 5 years now, and soon, very soon (hopefully) I will be moving to a different state. I am starting a new life over here, across the ocean far away from my original home. It's always hard to decide to move somewhere else, let alone to a different country, but sometimes you have to do what feels best for you. I consider myself very lucky, to be where I am today. The challenges and rough journeys I have taken has only made me stronger, or so I'd like to think. 

I consider myself lucky to live in the largest state in the US, to watch the largest mountain in the US from work, to have seen the northern lights so many times that I can't even keep a count of it, endless summer days in the field, being able to go to Denali national park for the day and lots of other stuff too of course. 

Right now I am happy that spring is on its way....well slowly.

Friday Theme * 3 again.. - Water, Right Now, and Green is Delightful

Friday Theme - Water

This is the second time water is on the Friday Theme list, but no worries, I love water and have lots of pictures of water. When I was back in Sweden for a short while I took lots and lots of pictures of water, mainly cause Stockholm, my hometown, is surrounded by water. When we left Fairbanks we hade temperatures below 0F and snow on the ground still, We arrived in Sweden with around 40F and sunny sky.

One day we went out to the archipelago and I took some nice pictures of Waxholm and the surroundings. Stockholm really is beautiful. Waxholm below, a beautiful little town.

W and I walked a lot when we were in Stockholm, public transportation is expensive, and if you are not in a hurry why waste money when you can explore your surroundings, and enjoy being outside. Ok, not everyday was beautiful and sunny, but you get the picture.

Friday Theme - Right Now

Since we got back from Sweden me and W has tried to make the most of the last time W has here in Alaska, in a couple of weeks W is moving to Wisconsin. I will most likely end up there too, but that is a long ways into the future. We have been on a couple of adventures. Like biking in Denali,

It was so beautiful, such a warm day. We biked around 15 miles, and then we turned around. Lots of tracks, like this wolf track (above). Wolves are so BIG, but so are also bears!

It was awesome, until we almost biked into a grizzly, and had to take the bus pass that point. On the bus I took a good picture of the bear. And we decided that biking in Denali wasn't really that nice any longer.

Both me and W has had bear safety training and we know what to do if you do run into a bear, and we did have bearspray, one can each. The whole situation was really unfortunate though, with 2 tour buses blocking parts of the view, the left side of the road being a vertical hill (as in the bear or us could not take to the left), the road was up a hill around a bend and the view was awful. Either way it turned out well.

It was such a beautiful day, driving down to Denali the leaf-out hadn't happen yet, but on the way back it had already happened.

The weekend after that we went down to Talkeetna, for a little more mellow adventure. We got great views of Denali, again.

Imagine all tourist that come to Alaska and don't get to see Denali. Denali is big enough to create its own weather pattern. Other parts of Alaska can can be really cloudy too and if you don't know, you would never realize that there in fact are mountains around. One second the mountains are there, and the next they are gone. When my parents came to visit there was a lot of times when I had to say, "no really, the mountains are there, I promise".

Talkeetna is a really artsy town/community. During the summer it explodes with tourists that are stepping off the train to get a different view of Alaska, or mountaineers whose only wish is to concur that big big mountain, that is big enough to create its own weather pattern. Denali isn't the one of the hardest climbs per say, but it is very challenging weather wise. Every year in the summertime you read about mountaineers who die trying to conquer Denali. And you say: how many have died so far..this year including this guy. It always adds up to a too high number at the end of the summer.

After Talkeetna we went to Byers lake, which I had never heard about, but it was a beautiful place. Kind of hidden in the woods, and we stayed at the nearest cabin to the parking lot.

The loon made an appearance every now and then which further amplified the spooky feeling we got walking around the lake.

We also spotted an angry otter with a fish, he was hissing at us as we walked by.

We had a wonderful weekend

Friday Theme - Green is Delightful

As I mentioned above leaf out just happened a couple of weeks ago, around May25th to be more precise, and that is extremely late. The trees have looked dead since October, that is around 8 months without green plants... But now when summer is back, we can finally experience that wonderful green and lush colour again

Oh well, that turned in to a pretty long one. Hope you all will have a wonderful week!