Kesugi Ridge in Denali State Park

for memorial day weekend, Jason and I headed down to Denali State Park to hike Kesugi Ridge...I have to say this was a much nicer way to spend Memorial Day weekend than the Memorial Days of my youth -- the opening of tourist season and shleping pizza or coffee or waiting tables or cleaning rooms, etc etc etc etc.

We drove down, about 3.5 hours south of Fairbanks, on Friday after work and camped out with a beautiful view of the Alaska Range. Saturday morning we prepared our food and packs. We stuffed the bear bin with as much food as possible, and still had some loose to eat. There was some concern about overdoing it with food, but come to find out the two of us can put away quite a lot....! I think the only major leftover was the oats. And some Tastee Bites.

** I am currently soliciting any and all suggestions on good backpacking foods --> high calorie, low weight. We're going out for six days in the Brooks Range in ANWR in July and need some new ideas! **



Day one was beautiful. The trail heads up immediately to the ridgeline, and then follows it for a long ways. We hiked a total of 17 miles, from Little Coal Creek to the Ermine Trailhead.


A leisurely post-lunch tundra nap....


The first night and through most of the second day the weather fluctuated between overcast, raining, hailing, windy and solid snow. Pretty much typical of my experiences on the trail, almost always. I'm just lucky like that, I guess...

It was beautiful, though, and felt kind of hardcore when we were up at this point where it cliffed out on one side quite sharply. Sadly my camera had a streak down the front of it and I had nothing dry to wipe it with on hand...


We camped out the second night near the trail junction with the Ermine Lake trail. The granite rocks and general tundra landscape is incredible. We had a great dinner, hung out on the rocks, watched some Pacific Loons in two separate tundra ponds on either side of our camp, and had a lovely last night on the trail. Monday we hiked out, down an incredible lush trail to the Parks Hwy. We hitched a ride with a very colorful man back to the car at Little Coal Creek. The ride back was rainy but nice.

Overall a fabulous trip - good company and an incredible landscape. You really can't go wrong...

biking in denali

last weekend Blaine, Katie, Jason and I headed down to go biking in Denali NP before the park road opens up to the busses. during the off-season you can drive your own vehicle in to Teklaneka, which is about mile 30 on the road. from there we were hoping to maybe make it out to Polychrome Pass, which looked like a pretty good possibility until we got closer and closer to Sable Pass.....

needless to say, it was a bit snowy! there was some hail, some snow, some wind, lots of mud. we had a great time despite making a short distance. good company, good scenery, and good exercise, heading up the pass! i think i may have hit my pedals twice on the entire way down...we ate a good amount of mud
katie and blaine biking across the Teklaneka River
Jason checking out the sow grizzly and cub on the banks of the river. Note that he is covered in mud. i {heart} being covered in mud!

the bears on the river for all the tourists to see...Jason drove home and we talked while Katie and Blaine passed out hard. We had just stopped at Rosa's Cafe on the Parks Hwy for dinner (which is usually quite good, but rather disappointing this time around. i don't recommend the halibut dinner... four fishsticks will not sufficiently feed two people, come to find out.)

some serious northern exposure.

this last week i headed up north. really north - to toolik field station north of the brooks range.
here, of course, is my picture next to the sign declaring that we were at the arctic circle. come to find out some friends have GPS'd this sign, and it isn't really spot on. but i'm not going to split hairs here - there's no doubt that around this point at some time we crossed the line. and i now have joined the hoards with the same picture, different person, to prove it.



to get up to Toolik I drove with some guys heading up from Fairbanks to do various GIS/sampling tasks for a week. the road is several hundred miles long, largely dirt. not being authorized i couldn't help on the driving. honestly that was really quite nice- jason and andrew were fabulous in getting us up and back safely, and i was happy to not have to dodge huge trucks barreling down in the other direction.

andrew acted as a great tour guide up and back, having himself done the trip approximately a billion times. not only has he driven back and forth, but has spent a great deal of time off exploring and was a wealth of knowledge.


alright- this is a terrible picture of toolik. but really it is a bunch of outbuildings in a compound up just north of the brooks range. it was one of the coolest science facilities that i have spent time at. the staff was great, the food was *incredible*, and all in all i was disappointed to not have more work to do up there. one week was fabulous, but it would be well worth more time.

science certainly was done while i was there, but additionally ken and i got out to have some fun.
we took a half day and got a ride to adigun gorge where we hiked in to a really great waterfall. indeed, this was hiking within the arctic national wildlife refuge. i can now say, i've been to anwr, but this can't even begin to scratch the surface. it was incredible, and well deserving of a great deal of time....i'll definitely be back.


it had snowed the day before, and the sheep trails were super highlighted along the sides of the mountains


this giant frozen waterfall came out of a hole! there's no scale here, but it was at least 40 ft high (i'm terrible at this kind of estimating...i could be way off, but it was big. really really big)

ken scrambled up to try to capture the sheep trails. and i captured him trying to do this. note the rubber boots...maybe this is common up north, but it's the first time i've spent so much time in rain boots without any rain.

a view from our lunch spot.

the necessary self-portrait.

another day we skiied out to check out some overflow. caribou = everywhere


please note that camping opportunities abound.




willows trapped in the overflow.


many many thanks to ken for such a great week!!!
music was played. buds were counted, buds were lost, science happened.
i greatly appreciated the ideas and thoughts throughout the week that went back and forth
please stay tuned for a ground-breaking paper on ptarmigan and willows...so much counting must count for something.

my backyard.

the weekend i got back from juneau, jen, rob, justine, aerin and i headed down to delta to float the clearwater river. we were a little early on the bird-front, but it was a wonderful welcome-back to the boreal forest and home after being gone to southeast for over a week.

justine, checking on the bird-situation.

it was kind of like being a small child, sitting in between jen and rob and just basking in the sun...

here's an ice shot. we figured we'd try to get some hardcore picture of us with icebergs, but this is as best as we got. looks intense, huh??

mama and her calf, munching on the aquatic veg. yeah for the end of winter!!!
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** the next weekend (just this past saturday) cory, lauren, morgan, zoe and i headed up and hiked from angel rocks to chena hotsprings. it was a beautiful day, with good views, good people, finishing with a good soak in the springs.



stopping to have some food at the top of the ridge, looking southeast

cory demonstrating something or another that was, apparently, quite funny...


zoe had a great time and was one fast dog along the trail!!

lauren, morgan and zoe hiking up to the ridge

who knew returning an ipod could be so much fun..

after chris' ipod stopped working i realized that i had become hopelessly addicted after just a few short months. so yes, i caved and on monday went to the tech center to buy a new ipod.
so then i'm all happy and listening to 'this american life' on my run yesterday. after two episodes i still had a few miles to go, and was all excited to listen to the 'run run run' playlist i had made myself (which begins with the first part of the 'hippity hop' hiphop cd megan made me!!)

right.
except that the middle 'select' button had ceased to function. ack! i had to run down sheep creek road, the longest most boring road in my head, without music.


today i decided that the 'select' button was never going to come back on, and so went back to the tech center to return it. this, as i should have figured, took forever.
but in the meantime, justine and i got to play with the apple computer for sale with a built-in camera!

pray that we don't have to return to the tech center soon....who knows what other options may be available with that computer. i can't imagine how much LESS work i would get done if i had one of those camera things. lordy

well, springtime is so very much here and i love it.
a few days ago i busted out my bike, an example of which is pictured above (thanks to the gary fisher website) and rode up chena ridge to play scrabble with em and melissa. i lost horribly (i'm not usually quite that bad....) but melissa and tom have a great new house - though i had definitely forgotten how very steep it is getting up to the top of chena ridge!

the ride home was *amazing* and beautiful, with the alaska range in the distance and the sun setting lower in the sky at 930 and the temps still high enough to not be cold flying down the road.

i forget how much i enjoy biking.



here's nola and i, me with my old bike, last april in denali.
the park road should be opening soon - gotta get back down there again before that happens!!

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in other fitness news, i ran my 16 miles yesterday.
http://www.mapmyrun.com/user_profile?username=rachelerrin
this is a great website (there seems to be quite a few of similar ones out there) to map out run routes and view them on satellite images. the elevation feature doesn't seem to work here, but it's still nice to map some things out from my desk before having to drive it all.

so after the 16 miles i feel pretty good, remarkably! shins are okay. achilles is well, not as good as it was before i ran, but not terrible.
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maintain & gaurd your idealism...

this is for mark. i am all about idealism, but with just ever so slight a hint of cynicism....

(the shirt is from www.qwantz.com wicked funny dinosaur comics. well, i like them anyways.)

trapped at a bar in fairbanks

i'm not sure if anyone reads this any longer... i don't update it all that often. however, since i'm trapped at the bar currently, i thought what the hell.
so yeah. i'm trapped at the red fox in fairbanks. after a failed attempt at the post office, i went to the coffee shop to do some work before meeting a friend just down the way at the bar at six. so six came and i went to the bar, we ateand had some beer and generally fabulous conversation. so then nine rolls around and it's time to go warm up the cars and head on home. right. except come to find out it's hovering around at least -30F and my car, after 5+ hours of sitting there, is entirely uninterested in starting. awsome. so adrian gave me one of her extension cords, and that combined with mine reached to the building to plug in my car. so now i'm sitting here in the red fox, waiting for my car's battery, oil pan, and engine block to warm up enough to allow oil and all that other good stuff to flow around properly. let's cross our fingers that it starts.....the music was terrible terrible on the jukebox, so i put in $1, but my songs haven't come up yet. someone loaded it up with generally horrible music, but i have yet to resort to my headphones. that seems like it would just be weird.
to my rescue, emily has come to hang out and drink a beer with me while i wait. ahhh, winter in fairbanks. indeed it was +20F just a week ago. how quickly things change...
in the words of manu chao:
hay dos cosas ciertas - el muerte y el cambio.

Santaland Diaries

So i'm heading out tonight to see the Santaland Diaries, a play adapted from David Sedaris' semi-tragic story of being a holiday elf.

Listen to it HERE
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an excerpt that, for various reasons, particularly speaks to me:

"...they asked us why we wanted to be elves.

which when you think about it is a fairly tough question.

i told the interviews that i wanted to be an elf because...because it was
the most ridiculous thing i'd ever heard of. i figured that for once in my life
i thought i'd be completely honest and see how far it got me."
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I can't even begin to describe how funny it is. I love David Sedaris and have to say that I am floored and excited that he is coming to Fairbanks on May 1st.

Happy Birthday, Chris!!
i figured, with you being down in Nicaragua and all, I could most effectively send you virtual birthday wishes. in addition, I have all of these old (and some not so old) pictures that were worth putting up. All of my love to you, little brother.

always sleeping in the sailboat....it's amazing that you stayed awake for Sea Semester given your history.

i love this picture of dad. it's from 1978 and it's classic.

i have no doubt that you remember my 18th birthday and our trip up tuckerman's ravine. you had amazing patience that day with your sister and i thank ya for it...what song did we listen to on your weather radio up in the bowl? that was a great day...and you're so cute and little looking!

just a reminder of what your sister looks like. okay. looked like.

haha. you were so sick when dad took you lobstering. man he was worried about you out in the carribbean


again, your sister. lookin' good on the AT back in the day


and finally, here we are with Body back in the day.

time moves in a linear direction

so i'm at lulu's bread & bagels - a great coffeeshop in fairbanks. free coffee refils as long as you want, good music, free internet. in addition, at least on saturdays and on several other days of the week as well, you're more than likely going to see a solid percentage of people you know and enjoy in fairbanks.

alright. but i'm here to do work (ack. on my plant physiology lecture tomorrow on 'Mycorrizal Associations' don't you wish you could be there?) however i just went to get some water and felt inspired to throw something down in words. maybe not too eloquently, but i'll put it down anyways.

so why did getting water in my nalgene prompt this inspiration? it was the water bubbler. one of those like in an office, blue 5-gal bubbler. the very same as i had all of last year for drinking, brushing my teeth, washing my dishes, cooking my food. and now how easily water just flows out of a tap!
so i'm getting water out of the bubbler, thinking about last year in my wee cabin. and there's folky music on (maybe kris delmhorst?) and i'm flashing back to new england. to the various concerts, folk festivals, beautiful people i know and love. and it feels like a lifetime ago.

daily i've been feeling incredibly thankful for such a rich and ever-changing life. time, indeed, moves in a linear direction. (but, as john put it during a strange game during thanksgiving, light does not) each day in this world is everything - it can be all you have. but at the same time, it's just another piece of life, of the adventure that is day-to-day which becomes month-to-month, year-to-year and so on and so forth.

and as i head to school, sun still not up at 8am, full pot of coffee drank & granola eaten, singing and dancing, i am forever grateful for all of this time and my everyday piece of the world.