Heading out again!

Sorry everyone, but today got to be totally nuts and I didn't have a chance to upload pictures from Glacier Bay! We had an all staff meeting this morning and then I got sucked into the wild world of WEA paperwork for a good part of the middle of the day and then had to start doing trip prep stuff for the trip that is going out tomorrow.

Usually things are that crunched around here, but the fixed wing planes that we usually use to fly into the glaciers are have maitnance done on them at the moment. Therefore we are having to take helicopters into the glaciers. This means that instead of having a day with the students to prep (Sunday) and then flying in on day 2 (Monday) we have to be ready to load the helicopters at 1 pm tomorrow (the only time the whirlybirds can fly into the mountains). So the 5 guides that are on trips going out tomorrow have been working at full tilt to be ready for the new departure time.

Sean gave us a quick run down on new protocols for flying in on helicopters instead of on the planes. It makes everything we do about 100 times more intense and more dangerous since the helicopters can be more unpredictable and will be landing in places that the pilots have never flown before. So tonight we are weighing all the gear and prepping the flight plans to be able to get into the mountains efficently.

soooo awesome.

So I'm headed up into the mountains and glaciers that I just spent the last 12 days looking at from a Sea Kayak with other stellar guides and 9 very excited students. If all goes according to plan I should be hiking out of the mountains on the 7th and back in Haines that evening. Then its another 2 days off and I jump on a plane back to Gustavus, AK for a 12 day Sea Kayaking Trip that goes out on June 10th.

Alaska is amazing. IWLS is full of cool people and I'm stoked about being here more and more every day.

Back in Haines

I'm back in Haines.... but only for a short bit!


The last course down in Glacier Bay was fabulous! Lots of good stories that hopefully I'll be able to get posted before I head out into the mountains again on Sunday morning!

Things are going really well here, and life is slightly chaotic with all the trips coming in and out right now but all in all fabulous.

Alaska is beautiful and amazing and the people here are so fun to work for!

Stories and pictures soon!

Leaving for Gustavus

Well, I've been in Haines for all of 3 days now and tomorrow I shove off! Tomorrow morning, my co-instructor Ted and I, are flying over to Gustavus, Alaska to start a 12 day Sea Kayaking trip. AMG recently established a basecamp down in Gustavus, so Ted and I will be packing our trip out from there. The trip doesn't offically start until Sunday, but we will take tomorrow and Saturday to pack and get oriented to the area and do all the final trip plans.

And then we head to Glacier Bay National Park!

Currently AMG has a group permit to be able to run commerical trips in Glacier Bay, so this is an amazing opportunity to get to go in with them and get to use this area as a classroom.

Also in news: My cell phone works in Haines! woot!

The calendar for the coming weeks is slightly chaotic. I leave tomorrow, for a trip that starts on the 13th, and I'll fly back to Haines on the 25th. Then on the 27th, I leave for a 24 day Mountaineering/Sea Kayaking Course. Should be interesting.

People keep popping in and out of the office and I still need to get home and get some packing done! I'll check in again when I'm back from Glacier Bay!!

Haines!

I pulled into Haines late yesterday afternoon and met up with the folks at AMG. It was so nice to have people expecting you and excited for you to finally get into town.

The drive yesterday was absolutely beautiful. I stopped in Whitehorse, YT for a little bit to look around and decided that it was a stellar little town, just nestled into the mountains. Then I headed on down to Haines, AK! Haines is a cute little town right on the water of Lynn Canal, where the glaciated mountains come right up out of the water. Haines is small, only about 2,500 people and two main streets. One bookstore, one grocery store, a few bars and restaurants and thats about it.

The south side of town is dominated by Fort Seward, which is no longer active. All the buildings have been converted into homes or businesses. The biggest house is now a fancy hotel, and the old stables are where our office and warehouses are.

I found out when I got here that I am leaving on Friday morning for Gustavus where we have a kayaking base. Ted and I are leading a trip down in Glacier Bay National Park. The trip officially starts on Sunday, but we will have to do our trip prep on Saturday down in Gustavus.

After that trip its back to Haines for a Mountaineering trip and then straight back to the water for more Sea Kayaking. I'm anxious to get to explore Haines, but it looks like it's going to have to wait until the middle of June until I'm really able to get to spend some time in town.

So for now I'm settled into the camp ground near the office and trying to remember as many names as I can and get ready to head into the field.

Miss you all and wish you could see this place! Pictures soon!

Hot Springs

680 miles

13 hours on the road

I’m writing this sitting in a wooden Adirondack chair in a little lodge nestled in the Canadian Rockies. I have no idea when I’m going to be able to get internet, maybe tomorrow.

Yesterday with Scott was really great. It was so nice to be off the road for a day and stretch out my legs on some hiking trails. It was fun to be able to see him in his element too. After hearing about fire fighting it was really fun to get to see the base, and the rappel towers and the helicopters.

I started driving this morning around 6 this morning. And honestly, the drive from Hinton up north was rather boring (sorry Scott). It was miles after miles of thin trees. But then every once in a while I’d come around the corner and then out of no where would appear the Canadian Rockies, only for a minute, and then the road would dive back into the woods. The road itself was pretty quiet and isolated today. Not many cars on the road just yet. Today did mark the begining of the driving on the Alaska Highway. Sooo cool!

More interesting it was what happened after I got done driving for the day. I decided to stay at the Lodge at the Liard Hot Springs for the day, which is about half way from Hinton to Haines. So tonight I’m in British Columbia.

After I checked in I hopped across the road and jumped into the Hot Springs in the park. They are close to 125 degrees and after so many days of driving it was very nice to just be able to sit and soak and relax for a bit. While I was at the hot springs I met a couple of people who were driving 80 dogs north to Juneau do to dog sled tours. Also, I met two guys from Utah that were driving north to be tour guides at McKinley.

Back at the Lodge two people I had met at the hot springs (Jenny and Joe) invited me to have dinner with them. Jenny is from Southern California and Joe is from British Columbia, they are up here on their anniversary. They are the sweetest couple, in their mid 50s and also Christians. We talked a lot about ministry and traveling and relationships.

I think the best part of the day was that in all the trees I got to do some heavy thinking. I was walking out to the hot springs tonight and feeling really anxious about the summer and the driving still to come and generally about things unknown. When I got into the hot springs something in the water turned the silver ring that I wear on my finger into a gold and then blueish color. It reminded me of something I had been listening to on the drive earlier that day. I was listening to the Alchemist on CD and it talked about how all things evolve. The wise man in the book said that one of the worst things we can do is ignore the fact that all things need to evolve and change over time. That to become stagnant is to ignore the reality that life is ever changing. I have been wearing that silver ring on my finger for almost 10 years, and while it is bent and scratched, it has always looked the same. But today it changed, and now it’s this beautiful color of blue.

Jasper

Today was absolutely fabulous! I told Scott that I was up for doing anything that didn't include driving as the primary activity for the day. So... We got up early and went into Jasper and went to this awesome gorge (picture coming).

After that we drove up to the Valley of Five lakes and did some hiking. Along one of the trails we found a row boat that wasn't locked up and took it out on the lake and got some sun out on the beautiful teal water. There were a few issues with the boat though. One there was a bunch of water in it. Two, only one of the oars was actually in the oar lock and the other oar lock was totally busted. Needless it say it was the most bizarre paddling either of us had ever done.

We finished out the hike, ate our picnic lunches and then headed into Jasper to walk around and got some smoothies and sat out on the deck looking at the mountains and enjoying the warm day.

All in all a fabulous rest day, and tomorrow its back to the road! I have 1100 km tomorrow until Liard Hot Springs !

I'll update when I can, but I should be in Haines by Tuesday evening, or Wednesday morning.

Canada!

750 miles
12 hours on the road

Day two of the drive was probably the most beautiful drive I’ve ever done. I was on the road at 5 and heading north on I-15 towards the Canadian boarder and got across with out even having to get out of the car. Gotta love drive through customs.

What I didn’t love some much is that the speed limit on all highways in Canada is 100km (60 mph), which felt ridiculously slow after a day of Montana and North Dakota speed limits of 75 mph. Oh well. So I headed up to Calgary through the ever so flat southern Alberta and from there turned West toward Canmore to head into the Parks.

Driving through Banff and Jasper National Parks was amazing. There simply aren’t words. The whole approach to the mountains you are just sitting there with your mouth open and being so excited that land can rise this high after driving through the Midwest. I stopped in Lake Louise for gas (which is 1.10 a liter) and drove up to the Lake. Unfortunately it was starting to snow so the view of the mountains wasn’t that great and the lake was still very frozen. (I had heard that the lake is this amazing color of blue that I had to see). I thought to myself that I might have to stop again in August on my way home and try to see it, but then remembered that in August this place would be swarmed with tourists (such as myself)/ So I just enjoyed the view I had from bench, ate an apple and got back in the car.

The drive to Jasper from Lake Louise is along the Ice Fields parkway. Again, it was snowing so the first half of the drive there wasn’t much to see, but the snow broke up and if you looked around there was snow covered mountains with blue ice peaking out everywhere. It’s still full on winter here, so you can still see all the avalanche slides on the sides of the mountains.

I was making pretty good time, so I stopped just before Jasper at Athabasca Falls. The Athabasca River flows off of the Columbia Ice Field (one of the biggest in the world) and I read a sign somewhere that it feeds into three oceans. (I have my doubts though… Artic, Pacific, and……? If anyone knows what the third ocean is please let me know) Anyway, the falls were swamped with people but still worth getting out of the car to hike around and look at. While I was at the falls I met a man from Edmonton who was painting pictures of the river and mountains and said I had a strange accent and asked where I was from (eh). I told him I was driving from Minnesota to Alaska and he said that sounded like a lot of fun (eh) and asked which highway I was driving on (eh). I said I was going to take the Alaska Highway up. He told me that the best drive was to take the Alaska highway north and then to take the other highway down the coast of British Columbia on the way back (eh). But that I should know that once I got north of Hinton all I would see for a while was a lot of trees (eh). His paintings were beautiful and I wished I could have gotten one, but sadly I had only American Dollars. So I thanked him and headed back to the car to get to Jasper.

Scott met me in downtown Jasper when I got there and we tooled around the city for a little while. There was this great trail across the river from town that we hiked up and from there you could see the whole town and the surrounding area. It was absolutely beautiful. Scott pointed out to me all the different trails around the town and peaks that you could ski and climb. Also, we hiked past some huge big horn sheep that didn’t even care one lick that we were there. Literally we walked past a group of them with only about 5 feet between us and them and just kept munching on the grass. Scott made some comment about the bizarre “city sheep” and we kept hiking.

Today is my day off, so Scott and I are going to head into Jasper and do some hiking and check out the town a bit more before I have to head off again in the morning to keep going north.

Big Sky Country

1115 miles
15 hours on the road

Day one of the drive and it was absolutely beautiful! I left Mankato around 4:30 this morning and headed out on 94. For some reason or another North Dakota has gotten a seriously bad rap for being flat and really boring. Here’s the thing though, North Dakota is not nearly as flat as western Minnesota, and it’s so much prettier. It was actually a nice drive. There’s something that is beautiful about middle America. It’s not flashy or exotic, but the bluffs were beautiful.

In eastern Montana I decided to get off of 94 in Forsyth and take 12/87 to Great Falls instead. It looked like it might be a more direct route and also would mean I could see some of Montana that was not just right on the highway. It’s amazing how much open space is here. A lot of it is farms and grazing land for cattle, but it was really cool to be able to drive for miles and only see one or two ranches scattered around. Then every once in a while you bump into a small town with one Main Street. It was endearing. As you drove you drive through you can’t help but wonder if this is one of those towns where every one knows everyone else and what it would be life to live there.

Tonight I am in Great Falls, MT and getting ready to head north tomorrow up to Hinton, AB. It’s nice been nice to be on the road again, and stretching out my travelers legs. More later!

Last Day in Mankato

Wow, I've spent all morning packing and cleaning the apartment, and to even my suprise, I didn't even fill the car. Hmmmm maybe I should take more stuff.... ;)

Upated to the Travel Itinary:

May 4th: Mankato (A) to Great Falls, MT (B)

May 5th: Great Falls, MT to Hinton, AB (E)

Then I'm going to spend 6th in Hinton hanging out with a good friend from Grad School.

May 7th: Hinton, AB to Muncho Lake, BC
May 8th: Muncho Lake, AB (F) to Haines Junction, YT (G)
May 9th: Haines, AK! (H)