Snooooooooooow!

Let me give you a small idea how much snow we've had this November.

Whistler is reporting 84 inches of snow in the past 7 days (that's right, one a foot per day)
There is a 75 inch base (a landmark we didn't reach until March last season)
I got face-shots. (Plural. Face-shots.)
Nothing above treeline can be opened until it stops snowing (ski patrol was triggering 3 foot deep slabs quote "with certainty")

I came home from the village today at 4pm. The roads were wet, but clear. At 9.30pm I went to shovel the driveway. It took over an hour. The snow in the driveway is knee-deep. Knee deep!!! In the Driveway! I was whooping and hollering so loud I probably woke all the neighbors.

My forecast for tomorrow?

Epic with a chance of legendary.

Awkward....but successful...and with dry legs

First day on the hill!!

I'd like to say it was picturesque and sunny and I slayed everything, but it wasn't quite that way.

First off, I showed up at the shop at 8am (a stretch to be sure), because I was meeting friends and my skis are in the shop. Problem: Sam has decided not to open until 10am until business picks up. So instead of skiing I went to two coffee shops and read two newspapers and waited two hours to get my skis out of detention.

Second, it was pouring down rain until one reached the roundhouse, where it was dumping snow and extremely windy. There is a lot of snow....about 3 feet in the past week....(yes)....but it's pretty wet. Which, actually, is fantastic because it makes for great base to cover the rocks. But it's heavy and not that great to ski. Especially when, at the end of last season, you turned your DIN settings to 6 and forgot about it, then tried to ski two feet of liquid concrete and double ejected facefirst into a snowbank. Fantastic.

Also, one should scrape summer wax from the bottom of one's skis so they can be expected to slide. Finally, don't ski in the rain. The only part of me that stayed dry was my legs, thank you sweet patagonia pants. Everything else was completely, wring-me-out, sodden.

The good news?

It's puking right now, there will be at least a foot of fresh snow in the morning, and the temperature dropped so it will be nice and fluffy. Also, it's supposed to keep snowing all week.

As for my skiing abilities, well, it's a work in progress. It took a couple runs to get the feel for the sport again, and at first I felt extremely awkward with two giant semi-slippery planks bolted to my legs. But I started to flow a little better towards the end of the day, so things are looking up.

Oii!

My Life as a Clock

I left Fort Collins one week ago today. Since then, my life has ticked like the smoothest of chronometers.

The drive was uneventful. I slept in the car only once, visited Alex and Lily in Portland, then cruised up to the border on Wednesday--an event I approached with some trepidation. Thankfully, my work permit was approved without hassle. After a brief victory dance in the parking lot, I proceeded to Vancouver where my visit to the city coincided with that of my mother, aunt, and uncle. This slice of serendipity resulted in a superb gourmet dinner, good company, and a 23rd floor suite at the Fairmont.

In addition, I got the job as the house manager. That means not only a place to live but discounted rent as well. Best of all, the house is currently empty, giving me the chance clean, organize, and generally prepare for the winter. It also means I get to indoctrinate all incoming housemates so things get done my way. Hehe.

This weekend I'm going hot-springsing with Mark and Meg and Co, and I start work next week. There's only 5 of us this winter, as opposed to 13 last season when I couldn't get enough hours. On top of that, I ordered the skis I've been dreaming about all summer, sold my snowboard to fund said purchase, and finally found some ski pants that fit to replace the ones I destroyed last season (see archives "R.I.P, R.I.P.").

But most importantly, it has snowed all week with no signs of stopping in the near future. Which means the resort may open as early as next week.

I hope last week was as good for you as it was for me.

Whistler, Round 2

Well, here we go again!

After much ado, I've secured a work permit to return to Whistler for one more winter.

I return this time under much different circumstances than my carwith, penniless, lonely, debut of last October. This time:

I have a job that I love.
I have a place to live.
I have friends.
I have ski pants which repel water and have not a stitch of duct tape on them.
I know exactly what I'm getting myself into.

Well, sort of. See, the Olympics are in Whistler this year, which adds an incomprehensibly large variable to this already-unstable town. So I don't entirely know what I'm getting myself into. I'd be bored otherwise.

I'll also have a few more responsibilities this season. I may be managing the international house (hopefully), and i'll probably be working more hours. I want to volunteer for the Olympics if there are opportunities, and generally life will be a bit more chaotic than last year.

That said, I don't know yet if I'll be blogging as regularly as last year. But tune in occasionally.

My verbosity comes in spurts.

Mouse-ion Impossible.

Your mouse-ion, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate the government facility we call "Volkswagon." Once inside, you must disable the windshield wiper aparatus. In incliment weather this should effectively immobilize the vehicle and the mouse nation can operate un-threatened.

So, last night the fam headed to a natural area just south of Wyoming to watch the Perseid meteor shower. The shower itself, while beautiful, wasn't particularly noteworthy, unless you consider small extraterrestrial chunks of debris making very temporary and ill-advised incursions into the earth's atmosphere to be noteworthy.

I should mention that this open space is in the middle of nowhere--about a 45 minute drive from Fort Collins--hence its selection for star-gazing. On the way home, after watching the stars for several hours, Cliff, Madeline and I headed back in the trusty VW Passat Hound. Becoming lost on the return trip, I stopped the vehicle to perform an "about face," when, unannounced, a mouse popped up from under the hood and scrambled on top of the windshield wipers! Now, a crueler person might have promptly wipered that mouse off into the heart of darkness, but, being the compassionate soul I am, I decided to remove the mouse more humanely.

That was before he decided to take up residence on my engine block. After the wily bugger slipped back under the hood and remained undetected during 5 minutes of flashlight searching, we gave up and, hoping not to smell fricasseed rodent wafting in through the vents, resumed the drive. Well, 30 minutes later, I slowed down to make a left hand turn, and, sensing the decrease in velocity, the mouse reappeared!

This time, I was ready. Having mulled over the damage small mousey teeth could do to the more sensitive components of my vehicle, I was feeling considerably less compassionate. So when this, the boldest of mice, decided to step onto the hood, I tapped the brakes.

Imagine if you can (and I doubt you can, unless you dream far more vividly than I) the terror, the unfiltered panic of sliding helplessly into a dark abyss; picture the frantic scrabble of impotent mousey claws against an unyielding metallic veneer as faster and faster you plunge off the brink into nothingness.

Now try to express those emotions of terror, disbelief and betrayal on a tiny, brown, whisker-bracketed face. I swear to you, it's possible. Only the Tom Cruise of mice could so accurately convey emotion.

Now please don't fret; we stopped and shooed the dazed mouse off into the bushes, so today he's fine (though no doubt massively inconvenienced).

Counting backwards....49th to 48

Without question I will return to Alaska to fish, climb, or hopefully ski, but for now, the 49th state is behind me and I return to the familiar, crowded and tame lower 48.

The summer was spectacular. As of our departure on the 1st, it had been the hottest, driest summer on record in at least 20 years. Needless to say, we lucked out. Of the forty-some odd days we spent in and around the Juneau area, I used my rain pants a grand total of once. The statistic may be slightly skewed since the pants self-destructed after a 2 mile hike, but the salient point is this: we visited a rainforest and had stunning bluebird weather.

I wish that I could describe to you how wonderful the summer was--full of laughter, adventure, hard work, music, and gorgeous sunsets amongst other things--but I simply cannot. Many of my stories involve students, and for privacy's sake I cannot tell them here. Also, being an employee of Overland puts a certain restriction on what I can publish in this blog. But in large part I simply feel I cannot accurately convey the experience of the summer.

My stories, at least for this chapter of my life, must remain unpenned. My photos, however, I will happily share.

Shank the cameraman!

Virgin Islands? Nope. Glacier? Check. Must be Alaska. Sweet!

God-ray sunset near Haines.

My feet are freezing in this picture. This lake is pure glacial runoff. It is so cold that swimming just makes you angry. Augh! (Swimming = 10 second endeavour + cursing)

Dinner. Point Bridget State Park, near Juneau.

Section of trail the group built in Point Bridget State Park. Trail is a boardwalk for much of its length, and we spent many hours carrying planks, pounding nails, and leveling boards.

Sunset near Haines.

Southeast of the Northwest

Point Bridget at Sunset.

Alaska is not as expected. At first blush, all seems as it should. The landscape of Southeast Alaska is drastic; the sea gives way to dense forest, which gives way to enormous peaks jarring the skyline, punctuated by hundreds of glaciers. But get up close and personal and the ecosystem seems incongruous. First off, the forest isn't a coniferous forest as I would have expected this far north. Its a rainforest, plain and simple--a humid jungle minus the heat. To my eye it is an ecosystem more comparable to Costa Rica than anywhere else I've travelled. While there are conifers, other vegetation like the giant skunk cabbage, towering deciduous trees, and spiny and poisinous Devil's Thumb smack of a jungle. Above treeline things become decidedly more predictable. It is cold, windy, snowy and steep, and the views are as gaspingly intense as a plunge into one of Juneau's many iceberg-riddled lakes.

Insert into this dramatic landscape all the animals you've always wanted to see but never, or rarely, found--Mountain Goats, Bald Eagles, Grizzly Bears, Humpback Whales, porcupines, native Alaskans in brown rain gear and gumboots.

But I'm accustomed to all that by now, and after three weeks Laura and I have the drill down pat. One thing is slightly unsettling. Our first day, we both bought bright yellow rubber rain suits in anticipation of the 90 inches of rain Juneau receives annually. Since purchasing them on June 20th, we have used them: never. Contrary to all probablities, the past week has been sunny with record-setting high temperatures reaching the 90's.

Perhaps the next three weeks will make up for the lack of rainfall we've had, perhaps not. Either way, the next group will be hard pressed for a better trip than the one we've just finished.

In the past three weeks I've been reminded of how difficult and frustrating and exhausting this job is--how all-consuming and energy-sapping it is to reign in 11 energetic teenagers 24 hours a day. But I've also been reminded why I do this job; moments when 11 kids raft their kayaks together at Seduction Point near Haines and sing Billy Joel's "Piano Man" at the top of their lungs, while rare, make your heart glow.

Our next group arrives tomorrow, and I expect the first few days to be equally as taxing as they were with the previous group. But I know and remember how big the payoff can be, and I am ready.

As for me, I've had some incredible experiences. I saw a Grizzly bear and her three cubs and saw 28 mountain goats, both firsts, as well as some of the most spectacular scenery of my life. I am loving every minute, and while I must cut this short (7 minutes remaining!), know that I am having a blast here in AK.

Me, Eagle Glacier lake.


The Group

Point Bridget State Park, 11pm.

Me, about 1 hour's hike from Downtown Juneau.

Kayaking near Haines.

Endless supply of skipping rocks.

Part of the group, Point Bridget.