jeff's RAAM

Ran into Morgan at Lulu's yesterday and got to hear some of the crazy stories from Jeff's RAAM - bike race across america. 3000 miles in 10 days, he averaged 11 miles an hour and 2 hours of sleep a day. Crazy crazy amazing accomplishment - check out his blog.

solstice backpack

Great 5 day backpack with CO Tim over the solstice - near Tangle lakes off the Denali highway. No trails and very rugged terrain, but great weather and a short route.


i drew in our loop and camps on this map, but still it's hard to get a sense of the steep terrain from this map.





solstice sunset from the tent - this photo was taken around midnight.

bday

I had a great birthday. We had this phenomenal campsite at the base of this cirque, I hiked up to this ridge and was treated to watching a small group of caribou in the saddle below for over an hour, and to top it all off - tim packed in lots of chocolate as medicine for my bum shoulder.




amazing - my birthday cupcake didn't get crushed in his pack!

anchorage

after the hike i spent a few days in Anchorage for work and to meet the newest babies. Anne (Thomas) and Chris had a boy on June 20th - Corbin Spencer, and Anne Remick and Tim had a boy as well - Micah Schoen, in May. All of them are doing great, and both boys are absolutely adorable. Caz wasn't too interested in the babies, but she did get to meet her first grizzly - fortunately from the comforts of the car! This is on the road less than a mile from anne/tim's house in eagle river.

trail run

nice weekend round town. my friend caroline from anchorage is in town for a month taking a wildlife toxicology class, nice to have her around. we got in a great trail run/hike today...
caz is more interested in the marmot's alarming than the camera...

ira in alaska

NPR's Science Friday was broadcast from UAF yesterday. It was pretty interesting to 'watch' live radio. I know most of the panelists they interviewed - I worked with Torre several years ago on the YKD, Terry is a prof in the biology dept, the guy that calls in from Barrow is Mette's boss... Unfortunately they all seemed a bit nervous to be on national radio and didn't seem like Ira got them to go out on a limb and say anything bold and alarming about climate change - like and seemed he wanted and I agree is needed at this point.
Now if only we could get NPR's other Ira to come up here...

delta weekend

it's hot here! a very dry interior 87 degrees yesterday. fairbanks feels kinda crazy when it's like this, makes me crazy to get outta town. so i headed out to the mason's farm last weekend to help with the latest projects and see the little wyatt man....
ellie and i built a gate to keep dogs out of the garden, with supervision from wyatt and caz. the big project was we moved that shed behind the cabin to make room for the new addition coming later this summer.

i guess ellie was bored with only 3 dogs, 2 goats, 12 chickens, 1 baby, and 1 husband to take care of - so now she also has 1000 bees!

no visit to the farm is complete without a good dogfight.
mama and her babies.
hopefully - for papa's sake - wyatt will outgrow this hair pulling phase pretty quickly. but i must say he is pretty darn cute these days with his one tooth.