Northern Lights

There's an amazing website that I have grown to know and love in my time in Alaska so far: http://www.gedds.alaska.edu/auroraforecast/ This is where you can get all the information you could ever want about the auroral projections in your area; unfortunately in Juneau, this doesn't generally do you much good because it's usually overcast. However, last Wednesday the rating was at a 4.5, which is basically a guaranteed sighting, there was a fairly new moon, and not a cloud to be seen in the sky. We drove out Egan towards the glacier, as once we got past the annoyingly bright roadside lights, you could clearly see the outlines of the mountains against the night sky. "This isn't the East Coast" my thoughtful driver helpfully pointed out. "Any light you can see behind those mountains is coming from a natural source, not some far off city, and the moon is currently behind us not the mountains." Upon closer look, there was in fact a green tint to the lighting at the mountain's edges.

As we walked out on the glacier, the green lights grew even stronger. Here's a really poor representation:

As we stood and watched, the green lights grew stronger and more noticeable, with a distinct half-circle band almost directly overhead. 

They waved back and forth like fast-moving clouds, with a couple vertical strips every once in a while.

After standing out on the lake for almost an hour, we decided that they were fading and it was time to go home. Surprisingly, once we got back downtown, the aurora grew even stronger. This time there were loops of greens, reds and purples moving back and forth above us, flickering and moving about. Of course, my standard for comparison was the Northern Lights in Balto, so I guess they did a pretty good job representing them in cartoon form. 

Cross that one off the AK bucket list!!

Sunny Days in Juneau

Even though it's currently raining (sometimes sleeting) and just a sheet of grey outside, all I can think of right now is the beautiful weekend we just had. I guess that's what you have to hold onto when 80% of the time it's grey and rainy outside, like it was for most of Dad's visit. This past weekend was 35 and sunyn the whole weekend, but ski lessons were unusually stressful (read: moreso than usual), so even with the weather I was feeling particularly angsty towards Eaglecrest by the end of Sunday night. Even the Superbowl commercials couldn't cheer me up, probably because the halftime show was so disappointing. I decided that Eaglecrest and I needed some relationship therapy. I borrowed a car for the day, and headed up to the mountain around 11 on Monday, blinded by the sunlight and beautiful blue skies.

So this is Eaglecrest. Parked in that little teeny parking lot in the bottom right corner and stolled through the base lodge, where I got roped into a meeting with Tristan, Lindsay, Kirk (the owner), and ski patrol about the harnesses we were using on the chairlifts. Finally done with that, I talked Lindsay into a few runs with me before she headed home. "OK fine, but let's go out the ridge" she said. Out the ridge? This was new territory. I had done most of the terrain on the mountain already, but wasn't quite sure how I felt about backcountry on a snowboard yet. If you look at the map of Eaglecrest, follow the Ptarmigan lift all the way up, and then go kind of right diagonally along the top of the west bowl until you reach the red dashed line. Looking back, our path looked like this:

That's the Ptarmigan lift in the center left, and the mountaintop coffee hut in the center. Looking out in front of us, we could see all of Admiralty Island (fun fact: highest population of grizzly bears in the entire world), the water behind Douglas, and even out past Admiralty through to the end of the Gastineau Channel.

That's just one small piece of what we saw, but it was amazing. Lindsay skiied a run and then hiked back out, but I just hung out on the ridge for a solid 45 minutes, taking pictures and soaking in all the sun I could. Luckily, there was no wind and no clouds, a rare occurrence anywhere in town, let alone on the top of Eaglecrest. Needless to say, I didn't want to come down off the ridge. Between that, and the sunrise on Douglas yesterday morning, I think I've got enough good image memories to last me through this next grey stretch.

Team Blogging

We have two minutes until midnight to have the post count for today, but I guess since we haven't gone to bed it still counts as Wednesday right? Today I had to go back to work (wompwomp) but Dad took the middle part of the day to explore Juneau for himself. After dropping me off and meeting T-money in all his long-haired glory, Jeff, unfortunately minus his Halloween monk hairstyle, and Joan, our fearless leader, he trekked out to the the center of downtown, which happens to be a mountain. He did a lot of exploring around Perseverance mine, which is in between the commercial part of downtown and the residential heights area. Here he found an old mine shaft, which had been deemed the home of "DJ Ghost" when we took high schoolers there this fall.

It looks kind of different in the snow. Next he trekked partway up the trail that follows the old mine road. Not much of a view today, it was pretty foggy. Oh and it dumped like two feet of snow over the afternoon.

His stopping point was this really cool frozen waterfall, a great example of how cold it was here last week.

He finally shares and understands my frustration of pictures here not capturing the scale and depth of some of these sights; if there had been a person in this picture, he would be about the same height as the pile of snow just to the left foreground of the waterfall.

In the afternoon, Dad met me at work and came on our Elementary (Young Adventure Club) activity, where we went snowshoeing up the Dan Moeller trail. The snow was still coming down, so Dad nicely broke the trail for us, while our third-grade companion happily ran along knocking snow off of all the trees "so that nature would be warm!"
Met up with Tristan and Lindsay at the Hanger for "apres ski" night, which basically just meant the four of us having beers and dinner (thanks Rick!) and then met the girls at Silverbow to watch the free movie of the week, "Wandering Bones" The movie was set in the Ozarks, but was a fast reminder of what life was like in Ivanhoe, VA. Ended the night with our weekly community meeting at the house, and now it's off to bed for the both of us. Dad's tuckered out from spending the whole day outside. In the snow. In Alaska. Tough life huh?

Winter Wanderings

Busy day today! Poor Dad was still on East Coast time and wide awake at 5 am. Luckily, he let me sleep in till around quarter to nine, after he explored the town, got coffee, and watched the sun come up.

Dad turned into a giant as soon as we left the hotel, trying to show you all the perspective size of the mountains. We drove out to Auke Bay and visited Southeast Waffle Company, which makes the best waffles ever. Here's Dad contemplating the waffle he's about to enjoy:

Or maybe he's enjoying the view. Then we drove out the road, stopping to see some sights along the way. When we got to Echo Cove, Dad was dying to put his hand in the Pacific. Even though it was cold.

"Did you get that?"
We even went to Sunshine Cove, setting for the "marriage pictures" that Andie and I took together. He tested out the rope swing

and then we explored out around the point to see all the mountains that we could possibly watch the sun hit. We ended the day at the glacier, where Dad cleaned and posed on his own iceberg

Look, what a mountain explorer! Then he trekked out the rest of the way to touch the "real live glacier."

Can you see him? He's got on a red coat! We just did some grocery shopping, and later we're going to order pizza and feast with my housemates, but I think now has been designated as "nap time" judging by Dad in the chair across from me. Which I guess is ok, technically it's 10 PM for him, his usual "sleep in front of the tv" time. Back to work tomorrow, wompwomp.

Look Mom, We're Alive!

Spent Dad's first full day in Juneau today. Thank goodness the flight got in last night, cause with all the snow today he wouldn't have gotten in until probably (no lie) Thursday. Woke up early this morning and went and got Silverbow bagels for the house:

Roomies were super pumped haha. The snow just DUMPED all day, so we went up to Eaglecrest for the afternoon, and the fresh powder was incredible. Dad met some of the EC pals, and the snow stopped around 3, just in time to see a beautiful sunset through the clouds. We snapped a self-pic at the end of the day:

Thanks Mom for the fleece! and Brenna for the self-picture skillz! Dad participated in spirituality night with everyone, and then we hit the Alaskan (Bar, not Brewery, not to be confused) for some beers and chatting. Tomorrow, we explore the glacier, and other fun adventures, woo woooo!

Dad!

Dad's coming today!! Hopefully, so far so good with flights, he'll be here in an hour. Once he sees all the fun stuff I have planned, he'll probably just never leave. So it's totally a part of my dastardly plan to get everyone I love to move to Juneau so I don't have to leave...

I wonder if they have Segway glacier tours?

Breezy

I was sitting in the big blue recliner, and all of a sudden the tree in front of the porch was literally sideways, and the dust/snow was blowing so hard up our street (an interior pass on Douglas) that you couldn't see through it. This held up for about 3-4 minutes, and repeats itself every 20 minutes or so. Rethinking any decisions to go walk around on our street!