Icewind's Ramblings

Anyone can achieve their fullest potential, who we are might be pre-determined, but the path we follow is always of our own choosing. We should never allow our fears, or the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny. Your destiny can't be changed but, it can be challenged.   Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. How is your own endgame of Life? Live fully and be prepared for the unexpected! Ice

I made my trip up north to Selawik on Tuesday morning leaving the house at 4 am making my way to the airport for my Alaska Air flight to Kotzebue.   We took off into the clear cold night sky leaving the sparkling lights of Anchorage below as we turned northwest for the one hour forty five minute flight.   I thought about grabbing a nap since this would be a long day returning to Anchorage around midnight but chose to instead listen to my music on the iPod and enjoy the coffee and Danish the flight attendant had given me.   I sat next to the window but many of these early morning trips I do not spend time looking out the windows since in the darkness it is like looking into a black hole in space.   Tonight was different as there was almost a full moon to the west a couple hours away from setting casting its silvery bluish glow on the landscape below. As we made our way at flight level 340 (34,000’) and had just crossed over the Yukon River below with its ribbon li...

This is Aliy Zirkle’s video Odyssey of Iditarod 38 with insight of the trail, the scenery, and the varying conditions in the extreme isolation of the Alaskan Frontier. The Journey continues past Rainy Pass and the decent down the “The Happy River Steps” to the valley below.  Enjoy the ride as it is like a sled dog roller coaster.  Listen and you can hear Aliy hitting the brakes to slow the sled to not overrun the dogs.  Watch it full screen for the best view.  You can also see a few television camera crews who have been dropped off to film the mushers making their way through this difficult part of the trail.  Enjoy. The Happy River Steps Dalzell Gorge has been a place where technique is the difference between continuing on the Iditarod Trail or possibly crashing into a tree or limb.  Falling off the sled or broken bones has ended many people’s dreams.  Over the years it has taken out many a musher, experienced and rookie alike.  Just be...

I’ve been fascinated with the Iditarod for many years now and spent some time around current and former mushers who over the years given me different insights into this crazy and wonderful sport. In the first days out from the Willow restart as you leave the relative flat terrain around the Parks Highway and start the climb into the Alaska Range and the white knuckle experience heading down the steps into Dalzell Gorge. The miles covered these days are very exciting.  Martin Buser has said, "It takes 2 days to climb to the top of the range and less than two hours to get down the other side."  I’ve wondered why these people endure the conditions found on the trail and what it takes for one to run in the Iditarod.  Courage would have to be toward the to of the list, the love of the outdoors and spending endless hours alone with the forces of mother nature . . . both good and bad.  Those traits with a love for dogs, and you have the makings for a musher. If yo...

It has been a mixed week here in the far north as work has accelerated getting ready for the upcoming construction season.  Many meetings trying to sort through which projects will have funding and for those that do quickly moving through the winter time preconstruction activities. Part of this process is making material lists of every part and piece to be built.  Literally it is figuring out exactly how many nuts and bolts will be needed.  All of the equipment that will be installed is ordered and shipped to make the limited barge season schedule.  For many of these villages there may only be two barges that dock bringing with it 98% of things the village will need for the next year.  This could be food, clothing, heating fuel, construction materials, snow machines (most villages have no real roads so not many ‘vehicle’s’ are there other than construction ones), and anything else that you could think of.  It is a different world and if something misses...

As we approach the holiday season and prepare for the small gathering tomorrow of family and maybe a few friends it is nice to think back on summers end.  It started snowing this afternoon giving us a fresh blanket of the white stuff.  Anchorage is known as the “City of Lights ” during the winter months so I, like many people put up lights for the winter which remain on until the last musher of the Iditarod arrives in Nome completing the race in mid March. With a little extra time on my hands I can think back on summers past where I close my eyes as the memories come back like a wild river, colorful like Northern Lights in the clear cold night, which I saw for the first time this season a few nights ago.  THE reason I came to Alaska , THE thing I wanted to see since I was a little boy in Atlanta .  There they were, dancing above the hillside, misty green, slick and wavy.  Nothing could screw this day anymore as I watched in amazement at the night sky. ...

Friday afternoon we head out to sea leaving the boat harbor in Homer heading 265˚ while running about 16 knots.  The fishin’ area we wanted was 26 nautical miles from Homer in the direction of Augustine Volcano which we could see in the distance with a plume of steam rising out of the top.   The "Ring of Fire" (map) is an arc stretching from New Zealand , along the eastern edge of Asia, north across the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, and south along the coast of North and South America . The Ring of Fire is composed over 75% of the world's active and dormant volcanoes. This huge ring of volcanic and seismic (earthquake) activity was noticed and described before the invention of the theory of plate tectonics theory. We now know that the Ring of Fire is located at the borders of the Pacific Plate and other major tectonic plates.  Alaska has many active volcanoes ranging across the Cook Inlet from Anchorage winding its way down along the Aleutian chain. ...

Many of us look for the end of the rainbow and sometimes a few of us may actually luck up and find it . . . Was it what we expected or really wished for? Sometimes . . . and we may find a few unexpected things along the way. Land of the midnight Sun . . . Alaska Scenes . . . Alaska , Bringing our Natural Resources to America A Quiet Place And a song . . . Ice

For no reason at all. That line was from one of my favorite movies, “Remember the Titans!” We do construction work all over Alaska and see some pretty incredible things especially when you get off the limited road system within the state. Our mode of travel at times is sometimes a little unconventional taking a ‘bush plane’ into the interior to some remote village where we may be working to build a school or medical clinic. I have had to be taken once by dog sled from one location after being stranded there in bad weather where the plane could not land for several days so one of the Native locals trekked me over 40 miles to a larger village with an airport so I could return home. At those times Life is an Adventure and you just kind of go with the flow. At others things do not work out so great. A friend whose company does a lot of work on the North Slope recently sent me a couple of photos taken by DEC personnel during a site inspection. Th...

Anytime anyone leaves Alaska and heads Outside to any other state for any reason, there is a certain protocol that must be followed. With all of the media attention recently surrounding Sarah Palin there were scores of media personnel scouring the state looking for any story they could dig up . . . or make up to put out there for the world to see. If you are a member of the media and are from another state, it is imperative that you take the following lists seriously, lest your written or broadcast piece read as "untrue" or "unrealistic." When writing about Alaska it is acceptable to pull a Jayson Blair and use a movie and a few stereotypes as reference material. You must use the following adjectives somewhere in your piece for it to read true: Wind-swept Tundra Glacial Icy Lonely Aurora Sparse Native ANWR Solitary Mountainous You must make reference to the movie "Mystery Alaska ". Mention “Deadlie...

Today is a bit of odds and ends that I wanted to post but had not gotten around to it. We had a moose that wandered around downtown Anchorage the last couple of years that seemed to be a fixture in Town Park and other locations who was named Buzzwinkle. He became ‘Almost Famous’ due to one adventure of ambling down the street and squeezed into the courtyard at Bernie's Bungalow Tavern where he settled in for a feast of crab apples and eventually assumed a disoriented stance, staring into space and snorting steam. I first wrote about him here: 11-28-07 and later upon his death here: 4-06-07 . His personality and the care free lifestyle are sorely missed this year and I meant to post his picture once again wishing everyone a Merry Christmoose so without further ado . . . *Pictures by Eric Hill, Anchorage Daily News We received about eight inches of snow on Christmas Day and w...