Off and away!

Off to Shishmaref for a couple days tomorrow! High of -5 for the week, lows in the -30s. Bring it on!

A day in a village

The sky is just beginning to get light as I walk into the terminal for Bering Air to check in for my morning flight to the village of Deering. I'm only going for the day, to help out a park ranger from the region and speak to the high school class, but as always, I'm prepared as best I can for the unexpected. My pack is stuffed with classroom materials, extra warm clothes, my camera, a few survival essentials, and a satellite phone for emergencies. It seems a strange combination of things to pack, but necessary, I suppose. 

It turns out I'm the only one on the flight besides the pilot, so we walk out together across the windy tarmac to the little 9-seater Navajo charter plane and I settle in for the 45 minute ride. 

Sunrise from the morning flight

When we arrive in Deering, I can't even see it until we're almost on the ground, it's so small. The village is one long row of houses and buildings on either side of a one-lane road, with the airstrip a little ways out on the tundra. A snowmachine with a sled on back is waiting for me, and I am greeted by an older, nearly toothless man in a fur parka: my ride to the school. I throw my backpack and sat phone in the sled and hop on behind the driver. As we take off, I realize I have absolutely nothing to hold on to as we speed down a path, painfully cold wind biting into my face. I alternate between holding on to the driver for balance, and gripping the narrow back of the seat during the 5 minute ride into town. 

Once at the school, I meet up with the park ranger and we hang out in the kindergarten classroom until it's time to start our programs. As soon as the kindergarteners see me, their faces light up and they all ask me my name; I feel a little guilty for being such a distraction during their class period, but the teacher seems delighted. 

Over the course of the day, I shadow the other park ranger and help out wherever I can, watching as she conducts lesson plans on various topics. The little kids get a lesson on insects, the middle schoolers get a lesson on Alaskan bears, and the 3-5 graders get a lesson on the water cycle. I am in charge of the high school class (about 12 students), and present information on the hot springs and try to help them prepare for their upcoming class trip. There are only about 30 students in the whole school, so I see almost all of them in that one day. 

After school lets out, I wander through town with the other park ranger; we stop at the Native Store to pick up some stuff, and I am once again reminded how remote we are out here. Though the town has no running water, there is also no water sold in the store -- just juices and sodas. Cardboard boxes of rotted fruits and vegetables that didn't sell in time or arrived spoiled are sitting by the door, free for the taking. Most other food items sold are nonperishable and prepackaged, and sell for 2-4x what they are even in Nome. 

We walk all the way down to the other end of town to enjoy the sunlight and cold air. Some of the houses have seal carcasses or hunks of other game meat frozen outside their front porches; there are no cars either, just snowmachines and 4-wheelers. The town is on the coast, but it's hard to tell because of the sea ice; nonetheless, I can recognize huge cliffs that come all the way to the water's edge, where I heard the kids talking about collecting bird eggs during summer. We see a couple bush planes come and go, but for the most part, the village seems very isolated.

I call the airline to make sure they don't forget to pick me up, and sure enough, as scheduled my return flight comes in around 6pm. One of the teachers has agreed to snowmachine me back to the landing strip, and this time I elect to ride in the sled, thinking it would be a more comfortable option. 

False. Next time, I'm riding up front again. First I breathed in a lungful of exhaust, followed by getting blasted in the face by snow and ice kicked up by the snowmachine tread. As the sled fishtailed back and forth around every turn, I had to pull my hat and hood completely over my face to avoid the seering cold air and ice freezing to my skin; by the time we got to the landing strip, my eye had frozen shut and I had to blink it open again. 

There was one other person on the flight on the way back, possibly another pilot but we didn't really talk as the plane was pretty loud. On our return home, the sunset painted the frozen tundra in pastel colors, pinks, blues, purples, and peaches.

bored in the back of the plane = dorky self photo

Sunset colors over the Kigs

We were nearly back to Nome when the turbulence started; I could make out the Kougarok Road beneath us in some spots where it wasn't obscured by snowdrift, but as we came over the other side of the mountains, the wind must have picked up.  It was the first time I have ever actually been legitimately worried for my life in an airplane. It started with some hard fishtailing and then a back and forth wobble and then the nose of the plane pitched up for several very long seconds before coming down again. Every few seconds I got that dropping feeling in my stomach like being on a roller coaster. The pilot seemed calm and so did the other passenger (though he was looking around a lot), but after the second bump where we both came clear out of our seats, I saw him tightening his seatbelt. 

It wasn't terribly upsetting, but more of a realization as I tried to find sanctuary in the calming sunset colors outside, that we were going very, very fast, and very, very low over the mountains. For a brief instant, I wondered how quickly I would know if we were crashing, and if I would feel anything on the impact. Those aren't thoughts you ever want to seriously consider, but in a period of about 1/100th of a second, that's where my mind was as my stomach dropped out again and we swerved in ways that I don't think airplanes should swerve. 

Sunset over the sea ice

And just as quickly as the turbulence started, it was calm again, and we banked gently from one side to another until we wove our way out of the wind and over the sea ice. The brilliant sun cast bold colors on the clouds now, as if teasing the momentary chaos we'd just flown through.

Another for the books. And next week I get to do it all over again for Shishmaref! Except this time I'll be spending 2 days in the village and have hopefully learned quite a bit from working with the Deering classroom that will help in making a fun program for the Shish students.

Through the Lens: Winter

Cemetery

Boat frozen into the harbor

Frosty

More of the cemetery

Nome sweet home

Color in a white land

More frostiness

Ups and Downs

This has been a week of ups and downs in more ways than one. The day after my birthday was the worst. It started out quite well -- we spent the snowy day snowshoeing up King Mountain and sledding back down.  

I got the most epic GoPro shots yet, but alas, I will never see those shots. Somewhere in the last mile or so of the hike back as it was getting darker, windier, and snowier, the GoPro must have fallen out of my pocket. I got back to the car and reached in my jacket to pull it out, but all I found was a pocket full of snow. I snowshoed back as far as I could following our footprints, but the further I got, the more I lost the trail under the blowing snowdrifts. It was nowhere to be found, and for all I know, could have been buried in the time it took me to realize it was gone. I wanted to cry -- I still do, just recounting the tale! It was my own fault for losing track of it, and I feel absolutely horrible after having spent so much time to get it, spending nearly a week's paycheck to buy it, and then losing it just a few weeks later. Of course, I knew that could happen with it and I'll just have to live with the guilt, but it doesn't make the blow to my pride (or bank account!) any softer. I am still in mourning. 

I guess the good thing is, of all the ups and downs this week, that was the worst thing that happened. The rest of the week we had winter training at work, which involved everything from winter safety and survival, to environmental interpretation talks, to talks with park researchers. I gave a presentation as well, on our social media strategies, which was a lot of fun.

In addition to a schedule packed full of training session, I also found out that I'm going on a kind of spur-of-the-moment trip out to the village of Deering next week. This is one of the smaller villages, but the high school students are taking a trip to Serpentine Hot Springs this spring so they're sending me there to talk with them about the hot springs and hopefully get some materials (photos, videos, quotes) to use in my visitor guide project. It'll be an overnight trip, and then next week I'm taking another overnighter in Shishmaref to work with their high school students as well on the same topic. It's pretty exciting, but also somewhat stressful!

Another "low" point in the week occurred temperature-wise! Last night and this morning the air temps lingered at about -30 degrees! Brrr....

Nome "National Forest"

Despite the obscenely cold weather, we took a walk out on the sea ice yesterday to enjoy the rare sunshine.The beginnings of Nome "National Forest" are showing up as people leave their Christmas trees in the sea ice for the rest of the season. Apparently when the ice breaks up in the spring, they just let the trees sink to the bottom or float away. That's one way to get rid of your Christmas tree, I guess.

At any rate, I expect this week to be a little crazy with traveling and preparing for Iditarod. Can't believe I only have 5 weeks left here!

Snowmachining a couple weeks ago

Birthday bowling and bonfire

A relatively unremarkable (but enjoyable) birthday yesterday turned into one I'll never forget. I was happy enough just to be in Alaska for my 23rd, but sometime after dinner I started hearing people coming into the bunkhouse. I came out to see what was going on, and ended up spoiling what was supposed to be a little surprise birthday. But hey, I was still surprised to find people in my house.

Had some delicious cake with a small group of friends and then headed down to the rec center for a couple rounds of bowling in Nome's 6-lane bowling alley to the beat of bad 80's music in the background. And I managed to only score the second lowest!  :)

Afterwards, a few friends proposed having a bonfire out on the sea ice, something they've all been talking about for several weeks now, but it keeps getting vetoed due to the freezing cold weather. This time it was a go though, and after everyone dispersed to go change into warmer clothes (I wore 3 pairs of pants and 4 tops), we met up on the beach and hauled a bunch of wooden shipping pallets down onto the ice (it's minimum 3-4 feet thick, frozen all the way to the bottom in some parts).

For the next couple hours we huddled around the roaring fire as snow fell gently around us, dancing with the sparks flying up from the flames, and the northern lights swayed just out of sight above the clouds (I thought I saw a glimpse of them, but it could have been lights from town). Whoever would have thunk I'd spend my 23rd birthday in northwest Alaska, standing around a bonfire on the sea ice?

Life is so full of surprises!

Mush!

Instead of watching the Superbowl on Sunday, I found myself at a dog sled race, driving a snowmachine. A friend from town was helping out with the Nome Kennel Club Dog Sled Race, and offered to let my roommate and I borrow his snowmachine to go out on the trail and take photos.

After a short practice run around the block, we sped out across town at a breakneck speed to make it to the start line before the mushers took off. Riding in back that time, it was all I could do to keep from getting bounced off. The GoPro had a hard time of it too; I thought it was filming the whole time, but when we arrived, it turned out it had frozen up, probably from the cold affecting the battery. Bummer!

Nonetheless, once we were there, the snowmachine was handed off to me and we spent the afternoon between the start line and various points on the 7-mile loop trail watching 9 teams of local mushers racing across the tundra.

First teams in the lead

This guy above was racing with his daughters, and taking pictures of me taking pictures of them! They ended up winning with the fastest race time. Some racers were fairly competitive, but for the most part it was all very lighthearted.

Coming back around the loop

Team of Greenland dogs

After the race we got to talk to some of the mushers and help send them on their way -- some drove in with their dogs in the backs of their trucks or towed in sleds behind their snowmachines, and others just mushed back to town.  One woman asked me to direct her lead dog onto the road, and I was amazed at the strength of the team as they strained to run once she got on the sled -- it felt like holding back a bunch of horses, but lower to the ground!

It was a great time though, and although the GoPro was being a bit fussy with the cold, I salvaged a few decent shots, edited together in the shot film below. Enjoy!