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.

It's Back!

Winter is here and settling in for another seven months in Interior Alaska. The past few weeks have been crazy busy, preparing for the season and putting the final touches on some summer projects, including a spattering of good times thrown in the mix.

For five days last week, two friends and I headed up the Dalton Highway 350 miles to the North Slope for a caribou hunt, in hopes of filling our freezers with meat for the year. I had been watching the weather the week before and expected highs and lows of 35 & 10 F, with a discontinuous snow covering, just enough to pull sleds loaded with caribou meat.
Following a bachelor party for a long-time friend and co-worker on Saturday night, I slept and puked for the entire ten hour car ride to the north side of the Brooks Range. I am now very acquainted with the dips and frost heaves in the road and only was upright for about ten miles of it.
Nonetheless, the next morning, Monday, I was rip-roaring, ready to go and we hiked out five miles to get beyond the no firearm shooting corridor. We had already seen about 1,500 caribou and at five miles from the road, we dropped our gear, hiked up a low ridge, and saw a herd, which we stalked and took two cow caribou from.
After gutting, quartering, and dragging them back to our camp we set-up at 5.5 mi off the road, it was finally time for bed. The next morning, we essentially did the same thing: hiked up a ridge, saw some 'bou, stalked them, and took three from the large herd, including two nice bulls. Both the cow and bull I shot dropped in their tracks. My shot on the bull was 275 yards and I anchored him with a spine shot, followed by a double-lung to humanely finish him off.

Nick & I with my first bull caribou and second big game animal taken in Alaska. The cow caribou was the first.

The next two days were spent hauling the five hundred pounds of caribou meat back to the truck 6 miles away, on our backs and in our sleds. It was exhausting, but worth every drop of sweat.
More photos located here.

When we returned to Fairbanks is when the real work began, however, in cutting up and packaging all that meat. Two full days of a four to five man team and we're finally done, with over 100 lbs each in our freezers.

Also, snow greeted us in Fairbanks on our return to town. It's now a white world here and I hope it sticks.
That means time to start running the dogs and get the skis waxed and ready.
It's the best time of year!

First winter training run

It's so hot in summer (yes, even in Fairbanks, AK), that I really don't like to run the dogs too much unless there's ample water for them to drink regularly and the temps are below 55 or 60 degrees. Usually, the only time the latter happens is after 11 pm or if it's cloudy and rainy. Otherwise, our semi-arid arctic desert climate produces some pretty scorching temps for thick-coated huskies and pale-skinned woodsmen.

I took Cooper, River, & Frostbite on the first training run of the summer for the upcoming winter season and although I only bike-jored them 3 miles, they were very hot at the end of the run and slurped up a ton of water. It was a good reminder for me of how important it is to give them plenty of breaks and find water on the trail.

If you read some of my Nomadic Ramblings, you'll see that this complaining about summertime weather is typical for me... it's summer solstice and I'm wishing for temps below freezing and snow. Excitement for the upcoming season happens every solstice, for both summer and winter.
I guess it's time to start planning winter trips...

Bike-joring at -36

Took the two girls on a 6 mile bike-joring run with the fatbike at -36 degrees.
Awesome. We all had a blast. They looked about the same as I did, with frost all over their faces, too.
Riding, and by riding I mean being pulled, was as fast as summer-time singletrack riding. Gotta love it on snow.