All Aboard to Anchorage

Current temperature in Fairbanks: -2 F

“Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience.” ~ Chris McCandless

      Well, it hasn’t been long since my last post, but I have so much to share. I have been to Anchorage on two separate occasions. The first trip was a short day trip for the Governor’s cup. I don’t know if Anchorage can really be considered a ‘day trip’ or ‘short’ when it takes six hours to get there taking the most direct route. The road to Anchorage is long, but absolutely beautiful. When leaving Fairbanks, you drive along the ridge of the mountains outside of Fairbanks and can overlook the entire Denali mountain range. Once you come down off the ridge it is nothing but flat straight road lined by nothing but pine trees for over two hours. Phone service is lost for at least an hour at time, and when signal does come back, it is a sign you are approaching one of only ten towns in the 357 miles stretch between Fairbanks and Anchorage. The vastness of Alaska cannot be fathomed until you drive through it firsthand. Winding through the mountains of Denali was amazing; they look so majestic covered in snow jutting up high above the trees. 

      There is a tourist town located in Denali referred to by everyone I have talked to as Princess Cruise Town. In the summer months it is apparently a port for cruise ships and is bustling with tourists. But in March the town is a ghost town. Not one person can be found and all the buildings are closed until the tourists return. When driving through Denali something that made me chuckle was a caribou crossing sign. You know you are pretty far north when you have to worry about herds of caribou crossing your path. Caribou aren’t the only wildlife you have to worry about crossing your path, once you are south of Denali moose are a very real danger. At one point on the road to Anchorage is a sign that keeps track of the number of moose hit each year, last time I saw the sign, 189 moose have already been hit. Moose are practically pests south of Denali, you are almost guaranteed to see one, we saw eight moose just on our trip to Anchorage and back to give you an idea of how many there are here. They are also very different than moose in New Hampshire, they are freaking massive.
      I was so excited to finally go to Anchorage but I have to say, Anchorage is surprisingly underwhelming. It isn’t very pretty but I don’t really know what I was expecting, it is after all a city. It reminded me a lot of downtown Manchester back home, lots of the buildings are small and shabby looking, and every few minutes drunk natives would be seen stumbling down the sidewalk at four in the afternoon. The only thing that adds a touch of beauty almost as a reminder that you are still in one of the least explored areas on earth is the mountains that stretch up even higher than the buildings, wrapping around the whole city except for where the ocean is. I don’t mean to make Anchorage sound like a dump, there are definitely some nice parts of it, but especially this time of year with all the slush and melting snow, it just looks grimy. One thing I realized upon reaching Anchorage is that the temperature was 40 F, in other words, the first time I had felt temperatures above freezing since leaving home. 
      The Governor’s Cup is a two game tournament between UAA and UAF. Not to brag, but UAF usually wins it. When we got to the game, we put on our war paint and went inside. We had to flaunt our colors being so far from home. 

       There were easily five times for UAF fans there than UAA fans and we were also much more rowdy. The glass would shake from the constant pounding of the students and many of them almost got kicked out before the game even started. There wasn’t much security could do because it wasn’t entirely the fans’ fault. Thompson, the senior goalie for the Nanooks was on the bench right on the other side of the glass and every now and then he would beat the glass at the students and the students would do it back. The game started with a bang, UAF scored in the first nine second. Later on one of the UAF players rammed a UAA player through one of the panes of glass and a referee was pummeled by four players at once. The game was good but not incredibly close, UAF won 3-1 and took home the cup undefeated. This was the 20th and last Governor’s cup. We had plans to stay overnight in Anchorage with some friends, but none of us were tired and it was supposed to snow in the morning so we decided to head home the same night. We got home at 4am.

My next trip to Anchorage was for much longer, it was for this past week for spring break. I stayed with my friend Lance and his family that live right in Anchorage. We got into Anchorage a little after midnight on Friday night. It was too dark to see the outline of the mountains surrounding Anchorage, but I noticed a star made of lights high up on the side of one of them. When bringing my roommate Katia home the next morning we saw two bald eagles in a tree just off the road. Those were the only two I saw while I was there, but apparently they are quite abundant. Katia lives in a town about half an hour north of Anchorage called Chugiak. We went to the mall a few times during break and I was expecting something like the mall of New Hampshire the way it was described to me but it was massive, it was at least five floors and seemed to go on forever. We also watched a lot of movies over break, and I found it quite funny that Alaska still has Blockbuster stores. I can’t even remember the last time I rented a movie from Blockbuster or even saw a Blockbuster store back home. 

        One day Lance took me to Hilltop which is a place part way up the mountain which overlooks all of Anchorage. It was so beautiful to see mountains everywhere right on the ocean. There were also a few mountains visible far out at sea which are active volcanoes. 

      It was so clear you could even see Mount McKinley almost perfectly, which over 200 miles north of Anchorage. Even from 200 miles away its immensity is obvious. For those of you that don’t know, McKinley is the third tallest mountain in the world and the tallest mountain in the world from base to summit. We were incredibly lucky to have been able to see McKinley so clearly, it is only visible from Anchorage a few days out of the year.

      While driving around one day, we saw a mother moose and her calf stuck on opposite sides of a fence. There are long stretches of fence with intermittent gates to help keep moose off the highway as much as possible but to still allow them a place to pass however the calf couldn’t figure out how to get through the gate. It was a little sad to see them struggling but I am sure they figured it out. 

      On Saturday I finally got to go skiing for the first and probably last time this season, but boy, was it a good one. The ride to Alyeska is absolutely gorgeous. On one side of the road is mountains, the other side is a small stretch of ocean with more mountains on the other side. The road weaves back and forth along the frozen ocean nestled against the base of the mountains.

      When you first enter the stretch of road that winds along the ocean, which is also the most dangerous road in Alaska, there is an area called Beluga Point which got its name because it is an excellent place to see beluga whales in the summer. Soon Alyeska came into view, and I have to say looking up at the slopes while driving in I was a little intimidated by it. It turned out to be an excellent day of skiing though. Perfectly clear skies allowed for breathtaking views and pictures from the summit. From the summit, all the skiing was treeless groomers or areas of powder. There was lots of bowl skiing and a wonderful place to traverse to. 

      All good things come to an end however, and it was soon time to head back to Fairbanks. As if a six hour drive isn’t long enough, we decided to take the ‘scenic route’ back to Fairbanks. This route takes about eight hours. It may have been a long trip, but it was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever been on, I almost wish it was longer. The road less travelled by is much smaller and much more windy than the main road, making it a lot more fun to drive. Once you are outside of Anchorage you rapidly begin to enter a mountain range that goes on forever. The mountains are enormous and jagged Stretching high up in the sky and for over an hour you just wind in and out up and down through the mountain range. 

      There is even a large glacier in the valley of some mountains. 

The mountains were beautiful and seemed like they would go on forever, but eventually the terrain flattened into the familiar endless pine trees. Soon after these pine trees became the new norm on this drive, a giant mountain became visible out the windshield, the arrow straight road seeming to lead directly to it. This mountain is called Blackbird Mountain and is visible on the drive into the town of Glenallen. This unusual mountain stands alone in the endless plains of trees. 

Again the road steered away from the mountains back to the endless pine trees winding slowly higher and higher. You may think I exaggerate just how endless the pine trees are here, but I am really not. You could drive for hours and the trees will still stand guard along the side of the barren road. They stretch as far as the eye can see. 

       The slow climb eventually led to an area called Summit Lake. It is a lake in the valley of mountains, 4,000 ft above sea level. The trans-Alaska pipeline is also visible for most of the drive from Summit Lake to Fairbanks. The trans-Alaska pipeline is really nothing spectacular to set eyes upon, but the fact that it is an endless pipe that spans the entirety of Alaska and took 7 years to plan and 3 years to install, is pretty impressive. Summit Lake is a beautiful area; it honestly feels like the top of the world. The mountains are covered in flawless, windblown snow, reaching high above the lake. Small bush like trees stand along the edge of the frozen lake looking like little people. The snow machine tracks make the surface of the lake and the plains at the base of the mountains look like a giant’s doodle.

Eventually we headed back into the bowl of Fairbanks, past The Knotty Shop and through North Pole. After traveling 435 miles, we finally arrived back to campus.

I've Got Sunshine

Current temperature in Fairbanks: -9 F

“Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their loves. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that care nothing for hope or longing.” ~Jon Krakauer

       The sun has begun to return to this cold part of the world. The days are much longer now than they were when I arrived. When I first arrived there was a little over 4 hours of sunlight a day. Sunrise was around 10:30am and sunset was at about 3:00pm. Now I am starting to see significant changes. The glow of sun can be seen peeking over the horizon on my way to class at 8:00am and is visible until right before 6:00pm. The sun now hangs much higher and much brighter than before, it is beginning to feel like a winter's day back home again. It is hard to believe the length of my day has practically doubled in just a little over a month. 

The Magic of -40 F

Current temperature in Fairbanks: -12 F

So I promised a video of boiling water evaporating in the air however I don't think it is going to get cold enough again to do it, so just in case here is a video of someone else doing it!

Let's Go Nanooks

Current temperature in Fairbanks: -6 F

Nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun." ~Jon Krakauer

     Hey guys, sorry it has been so long, my number of adventures has been inversely proportional to the amount of work I have had lately, but I do have a lot to fill you in on from this past month. At the beginning of the month I went to Chena Hot Springs Resort which is about an hour northeast of Fairbanks. It is a resort with cabins, a museum, a spa, pools, and best of all, a huge natural hot spring. I went with a group of friends on a Thursday night and if I didn't know any better I would have thought I was in a horror movie being driven into the wilderness which would become my final resting place. The road to Chena was long, straight as an arrow, and barren. Once outside of Fairbanks, we didn't pass another car for the rest of the drive. Being miles away from the closest city the road was shrouded in darkness and lined with pine trees that seemed to edge ever closer to the road, swallowing it up. I was waiting to see a disheveled stranger standing on the side of the road slowly becoming illuminated by the glow of the headlights. Or for the moment a bright light appeared and begin to lift the car off the road. 
    When we got to Chena, we changed in the locker rooms with heated floors and made our way to the spring. We stepped outside into a wood tunnel lit by a dim orange glow that led to the spring. The tunnel ended with a door, I pushed it open and was greeted by huge clouds of fog and steam and the pungent smell of sulfur. I stepped forward expecting earth when my feet started to become submerged in warm water. It was dark with intermittent spotlights, but nothing was visible more than 4 feet in front of you through the steam. The spring was the size of a pond and got no deeper than my neck. When you got close to the boulders lining the spring, the water would get uncomfortable warm due to the natural water seeping into the spring. Cold water is constantly pumped into it to keep it at a tolerable temperature. I am told that it is believed that in the spring under the aurora provides the greatest possible chance for conceiving a boy.

    Oh yeah, and they had a huge snowman at Chena too. 

    One thing I have observed while being here is that almost every single car has a cracked windshield. This is because instead of salting the roads, they rock the roads. It is actually okay to have a cracked windshield in Alaska as long as it doesn't impair the driver's view. I also learned that my dreams and thoughts about UAF were actually not as far off as I had originally thought. I have been told that there are underground tunnels between buildings for the water lines that students used to be allowed to use to get from class to class. There are apparently maps down there and everything. However, they had to stop letting students use the tunnels due to the high number of assaults and rapes reported. As far as the skiing to classes part of my dreams, that wasn't terribly crazy either. There is currently a decent terrain park right on the hill on campus and the other day I actually saw someone skiing to class. I was walking up the hill to upper campus alone when out of the woods ahead of me popped a guy with classic skis and a backpack on. He stood there for a minute, the tips of his skis suspended over the small sharp drop ahead of him. After a slight hesitation he jumped, nearly fell, then disappeared down the hill in a tuck. 

    There have also been a few girl group events. Me and a few of my girl friends here went window shopping around town. For those of you that think New Hampshire is limited on clothing stores and options, come to Fairbanks. There are thrift stores, Sears, a store akin to Super Walmart called Fred Meyer, and a mall that I don't think can actually be considered a mall. It has no more than 20 stores. If you want anything remotely name brand in these parts, you need to buy it online. I also went bowling with a few friends one night. For my statuesque roommate's birthday, who towered over me in heels, we dressed up and went out for sushi. My roommate and I split a screaming orgasm sushi roll. 

    It has been quite warm these past few weeks, well, relatively speaking. It hasn't been colder than -20 F in weeks. There was actually a chance of rain a few weeks ago, luckily we didn't get any. Here rain in the winter is even more dangerous than snow.

    I have gone to a few hockey games this month as well. The games are played at an arena downtown, which is a good deal larger than the Whittemore Center back home. Amazingly, you can actually get a student ticket on the same day as the game, and even get a seat without getting there over an hour before the start of the game. At the beginning of the game, the Nanooks skate onto the ice through a huge blow up polar bear.

    The first game I went to was against the Ohio State Buckeyes. They had won the first game of the weekend against them 6-1 so I was expecting a fun and victorious game. We lost 2-1. I have been trying to bring some of the racy UNH cheers to the Nanooks, but they haven't caught on. One cheer they do, and I am so glad they do, is "sit down, bitch!" when an opposing player gets a penalty. 

    The next two games I went two were this past weekend against the last place Michigan State Spartans. I got to the game an hour early with my friend Will because he had to do color guard (not the flag twirling kind). Michigan state scored a goal early on, but thwarted every attempt by the Nanooks. I swear to God Michigan's goalie has more luck than a pot full of gold horseshoes at the end of a rainbow growing in a field of four leaf clovers. We lost 1-0. At this point I was starting to think I brought some kind of bad New England joo-joo with me or something. 

    The next day they had another chance at a win against Michigan State. While doing homework, We Will Rock You and Another One Bites the Dust played on my Pandora. I thought it must be a sign. I put on my UAF shirt and my polar bear underwear. I was pulling out all the stops. When walking to our seats at the game, a puck from the practicing players flew over the glass and whizzed over my shoulder slamming into the empty seats. It nearly killed me, but I got a puck! The game started out much like the night before, Michigan got off to an early lead. The Nanooks pulled ahead in the second period but Michigan tied it up again in the beginning of the third. With a minute left in the game the Nanooks pulled ahead, the stands went wild. It was the first time I was seeing them win! With 8 seconds left to play the Nanooks scored again. This resulted in a long brawl which left the ice littered with gloves, jerseys and pads. The Nanooks won 4-2. It must have been the lucky undies. 

    I may be going to Anchorage this coming weekend for the Governor's Cup hockey game. I was also invited to the military ball at the end of March. When I found out my first thought was 'where do you get a formal dress up here?'. The answer? Online, of course. Although my mom kindly suggested I make one out of animal hides. Speaking of animal hides, I am working on making a hair clip in my Native Art Studio using moose hide, porcupine quills and caribou hair. I will post a picture when it is finished. I saw the northern lights again, but they weren't bright enough to get pictures of. I learned that it is believed they are dancing spirits of those who have passed and there is a myth that if you whistle at them, they will come down from the sky and take you away.

Lost in the Wild

Current temperature in Fairbanks: 7 F

"We like companionship, see, but we can't stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again." ~Chris McCandless

     Today, I decided to do a little more solo exploring. My intended destination was the Large Animal Research Station, which is five miles off campus and home to musk oxen, caribou and reindeer. After a late breakfast I laced up my shoes, put on a hat and some mittens, grabbed my iPod and camera and set out. I was going to walk on the roads to the large animal research station and Google maps directed me down a small road at the edge of campus. When I got to it, it was more like a hiking trail than anything. It was a beautiful clear day in the balmy single digits. I wandered into the woods, the tall pines all around me made me feel so small. It felt so good to be out exploring alone. I came across a map of the trails, primarily intended for nordic skiers and I must say I saw a lot of them. I realized there was a walking trail all the way through the woods that came out right at the Large Animal Research Station. I started walking, my feet were wet from trudging through the snow but with the endless nature, Into the Wild soundtrack and complete solitude I was in my own utopia. 
      After over an hour of walking, with many photo stops, I finally popped out in front of the Large Animal Research Station. Unfortunately it was closed, but I was able to see some of the animals way off in the distance. I then made my way back towards campus, the sun was on its way down and the sky was a beautiful orangy-red. I could have stayed out there forever, I really didn't want to go back. I am sure I started to feel a little bit of what Chris McCandless felt when he saw the beauty of the wilderness here. Fifteen miles and three hours later, I made it back to civilization. Here are some of the pictures I took on my exploration. 

Join the Club

Current temperature in Fairbanks: -35 F

"The sea's only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once. To find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions. Facing the blind death stone alone, with nothigh to help you but your hands and your own head." ~Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

          It’s been a little while since I have posted and I have a lot to catch you guys up on! I have started classes and they are going great! I dropped my graduate level class for psychology, I decided I wanted to spend less time on school work and more time exploring. My organic chemistry class and immunology class seem like they will be challenging but manageable. My immunology teacher is a very interesting individual. He is a tall, lanky and rather quirky Italian with a thick accent and a slight lisp. The back of his head looks like someone hit it with a frying pan and he always comes in dressed like your stereotypical European; Italian dress shoes, and vibrant ties that somehow match the rest of his flamboyant attire. My native art studio class is the class I am most excited for. Starting this week we are going to be carving ladles using hand tools, the same way the people of the native northwest would make them.

            Something that both surprises me and repulses me about here is the fact that EVERYONE smokes. It is really rather gross, especially since the cold traps all the cigarette smoke and car exhaust close to the ground resulting in a persistent air quality alert. I would think the idea of having to expose your hands to -40 F weather would be enough to deter one from stepping outside for a butt and may even be a sort of motivation to quit, but apparently not. I was outside taking pictures for 20 minutes in such weather and ended up looking like this:

Speaking of cold weather in this sub-arctic climate, there are some pretty neat and unusual things that come along with it. For starters, whenever a car is parked, it is plugged into an outlet set up at every four parking spots. This is done to help keep the battery and other vitals from freezing. 

It is funny to see people driving around campus with three prong cords sticking out of the hoods of their car, almost skipping along the ground as if even the cars are sticking out their tongues in protest of the cold. Even the trees have resorted to wearing sweaters!

            Back home when people see fog, they associate it with warm, humid weather. Here, it is associated with frigid, dry conditions. It isn't just called fog here, it is called ice fog or by a name that doesn’t sound quite so menacing, pogonip. It happens because the water in the atmosphere is freezing. This usually only happens when it gets to be about -40 F which is the coldest atmospheric water can get before freezing. I also learned that it gets so cold and dry here that if you blow bubbles when it is below -20 F, they freeze and you can actually put your finger in them without popping them. I also learned that you can also throw a cup of coffee, or any hot water based substance in the air and it will evaporate before hitting the ground. Yes, evaporate, not freeze. I plan to try both and will post pictures and videos, so don’t worry!

            I had my first moment of truly feeling like a foreigner the other day, of course besides occasionally being called out for saying “wicked”. I was sitting in the dining hall with my gentle giant friend Matt who was enjoying a grapefruit, the same way I would eat an orange. I asked him why he didn’t use a grapefruit spoon. He just looked at like me like I had sprouted another head. Of course a grapefruit spoon was mentioned right after our discussion about how New Englanders have a tendency to be rather rude and fast-paced, almost snooty. I then began asking anyone I could find in the dining hall if they had ever heard of a grapefruit spoon. No one. But I did get an “I don’t know, but I think I saw one the other day,” making it sound like some unusual ancient artifact. Apparently grapefruit spoons are an east coast thing, who knew?

            The other night I went to the College Coffeehouse with my roommate Katia, for some coffee and bluegrass music performed by a local band. It was quite cute! Definitely a place I will go back to for another band or open mic night.

            Last night was by far my most successful Alaskan experience so far. It started out seeming like it would be a pretty bland evening, I was about to get ready for bed when I checked the weather and realized it was -40 F. Time to join the 40 below club! I texted Katia and a few other people who were planning to join the club that night too, but everyone started to chicken out. I found my friend Matt who wanted to do it still, and we proceeded to try and find a sober driver to take us down to the school sign. We went to Matt’s room to ask his roommate and found a gathering of rather intoxicated individuals. A nice enough native girl came up to me with the intention of a normal introduction, but ended up falling on me and slobbering on the side of my face a bit as she spoke directly into my ear, my hand clenched in hers. Her boyfriend had a car, and decided we could use it so we could all join the 40 below club. We packed his car like a clown car and drove down to the school sign for a picture. -38 F. Damn! We drove around campus a bit waiting for it to cool down when I looked up at the sky out the passenger window. “The northern lights!” I shouted. Someone asked me what color they were. Knowing I had never seen them before, they were testing me. They were green, the most common color of aurora borealis. I almost started crying I was so happy to see them. I announced to everyone that it was my first time seeing them and that I had just checked something off my bucket list. Everyone always says how beautiful the northern lights are, but nothing compares to seeing them in person. It is like a green wave slithering across the night sky. It is amazing to watch them change right before your eyes, almost disappearing at times, ebbing and flowing like a cosmic ocean.

I was told it usually isn’t possible to get pictures of the northern lights, but I managed. I will try to get better ones on a night they are more intense and it isn't so foggy. Depending on weather conditions, they can actually be seen as often as a few times a week! For those of you interested, aurora borealis is caused by the collision of gaseous molecules in the atmosphere with charged particles released from the sun, these particles then get sucked into the Earth's magnetic field and are then channeled toward the poles. This is why it can only be seen near the poles of the planet. The colors seen in the lights are dependent of the atmospheric molecules involved. The green is produced by oxygen molecules about 60 miles above earth, nitrogen produces blue or purple auroras, and rarely red auroras can be seen caused by high altitude oxygen, at heights of up to 200 miles.

Not only did I get to see the northern lights for the first time last night, I also joined the 40 below club. After unloading the car and being given the keys by the owner of the car who neither Matt nor I knew, we decided to drive around town while waiting to join the club. This is a tradition here at UAF where students go down to the sign at the main entrance to campus that tells the temperature outside and take pictures in their bathing suits or underwear. It sounds crazy, perhaps even stupid, and it really kind of is. I don’t really know how to describe it, but -40 F really isn’t as cold as it sounds. I am not saying it is warm, I certainly wouldn’t break out the sunscreen and beach towel, but for about 2 minutes in a bathing suit it isn’t all that painful. The cold is really only bad when you try to breathe. It feels like your lungs are freezing like the wooly mammoth in The Day After Tomorrow that was found frozen with food still in its mouth. It is definitely essential to cover your mouth when it gets that cold. This is by far the coldest it has been since I have arrived, though it does get much, much colder. There is also a 50 below club and a 60 below club, but it hasn’t gotten that cold. Yet...

Good Morning Fairbanks!

Current temperature in Fairbanks: -13 F