It's been quite the week...

Although I've been failing to get water for over a week now, I have been super busy & productive, after a nine day stint of hunting, hauling, & processing five caribou, which put every other aspect of life on hold.
(I have a dry cabin, so I have a bunch of five-gallon jugs I take into town and fill them up at the local water station. A quarter gets me about 15 gallons. I'm down to my last two liters, since everything is frozen outside and I can't use summer rainwater for watering my dogs.)

To the post office tomorrow go a pair of skis, bindings, & boots for Sir Lord Prince Jackson Gadamus, III in Nome. He's hard-pressed to find some good ones way out there in Nome, so I looked and found exactly what I recommended he get and exactly what I told him he'd never find used at a good price. Ha. Go figure.
I sold Colby a sweet pair of backcountry skis I scored in hopes of passing them on to a friend looking for some.
Took a much-needed day off work to sleep in and wax my own brand-new used backcountry skis. Awesome. Best decision of the week.
Then, I laughed hysterically, after finally going to the grocery store from perusing my cupboards and finding nothing delectable:



I bike-jored six dogs (two at a time) a total of twenty miles, starting their winter snow runs.
Brushed snow off my car almost every day!!!
Ate delicious caribou dinners with friends a few times.
Enjoyed the warmth from a huge bonfire on a cold, clear winter night with some cold, dark winter beers.
Helped some other friends with a few projects of their own.
Thought of and started planning the biggest solo trip I'll have done so far in life (if all works out - skiing 120 mi off-trail in 6 days).

Re-geared my single speed fatbike and then rode it a bunch on the new snow, which is becoming almost ski-able as I write this.
Worked on continually gear-testing a sweet soft shell jacket (now unfortunately discontinued and hence the reason I got it at half-off price) to do a video review for the local outdoor gear store.
Put some time into the fatbike rental business, as our season is just about to be in full-swing!

And, the real highlight of the week:
For the second year in a row, I snagged the first ascent of the year on Fox Creek, a frozen waterfall in the Alaska Range.
This year, it was barely frozen and I decided to free solo it - climb without ropes or any protection - a way to challenge myself in climbing and put huge emphasis on learning how to properly climb ice in all conditions. Pretty thin ice in spots, with the waterfall still falling in full force, which I traversed across in my climb, getting blasted by falling water like standing in a YMCA shower that is spraying ice cold water.
Fortunately, JR got it all on film, which I'm hoping to post soon, along with more pictures of all the adventures of this crazy past week.

Thanks for tuning in. More to come soon, but for now, here is the best packrafting video ever created:
From Luc Mehl, in Alaska, 2011.



Yes, those 70 balloons are filled with helium, and yes, Paul Schauer packrafted down all that BACKWARDS just to make this video.
Brilliant idea. Cheers to creativity at its finest.