Turnagain Arm bike adventure

On Saturday, I decided to be daring and ride my bike over 80 miles when I didn't really know where I was going or what the road conditions are. It went better than I excepted.

Turnagain Arm is part of the Cook Inlet near Anchorage, home of the bore tide and beluga whales. The first part was on the side of the highway, with cars traveling to Seward whizzing by at 60 mph. Of course, the most disconcerting part is the tour buses from the cruises coming out of Seward. Because the bay around Anchorage has such a big tide, the cruises dock at Seward (about 100 miles from Seward) and then the people ride buses up to Anchorage for sight-seeing. There must be 1000+ buses in the fleet of Seward bus-dom. Seward doesn't have that many people living there year long, so the big joke is that there are more tour buses in Seward during the winter than there are people.

Nobody seems to come to Alaska during the winter. Locals will tell you that it is the prettiest time of the year, and that the skiing is great. I think people think that they need more than 6 hours of sunlight in one day or they are afraid of losing their tan. But most of the cruise towns completely shut down. Whittier, a town known for its kayak adventures during the summer, has a population of near 0 during the winter.

Okay, I digress. This ride is one of the best I have been on, scenery and training-wise. For the scenery, there are mountains on your left and and a beautiful bay followed by more mountains on your right. I cycled all the way to Girwood just looking around and gawking at the sights, which wasn't neccesarily conducive to riding in a straight line. Girwood is famous for backcountry skiing, but is also very nice during the winter. There was a great hill at the end of the town with aobut a 5% grade for about 10 minutes. Good training.

After the hill climb, I turned around and headed back for Anchorage. I realized I had been having such a good time on the way up because I was being befriended by a good stiff breeze from my back. Now I was battling this wind back to Anchorage. The turnagain arm winds are known to reach hurricane force a couple of times a year, so I suppose I was lucky that it was only blowing at 20-25 mph. I have some friends on the MSU cycling team in Whichita Falls, and they always say that they have no problem facing the hills in Austin because they are used to the relatively high winds in the Texas plains compared to the more stagnant air of Austin. Well, when training in Alaska, you have to deal with both. The wind back completely shelled me.

Needless to say, I took Sunday off and played a game that I found in Adam's house called Rome: Total war. Hopefully I don't get addicted.

Time for another ride! Today I'm going back to Eagle River to see if I can find a better route than last Monday. Wish me luck.

Hike up O'Malley Peak

Yesterday Adam, my roomate, broke me in to hiking in Alaska with a four mile, 3500 ft elevation gain climb up O'Malley Peak. I was surprised at how close the trailhead was to our house. It took us no more than 30 minutes, even while going past the post office. This is very different from hiking in Colorado, where you sometime have to drive for 2 hours down dirt roads before you can start hiking.

We started about 12:30 or so. This morning the clouds were really low, so the whole trailhead was in a cloud bank when we started. Cloud banks kind of look like a really dense fog, and it feels like you are sweating four times more than you really are. The first part of the trail was muddy, then the next part was really steep, and the third part was six feet of snow. I definitely got a taste of what Alaska hiking is like. Anchorage's climate is similar to Seattle's, so during the summer, it is raining more days than it is sunny.

After slogging it through the snow on the northern side, we crossed over to the southern side of the peak, where more sun hits the rock. The whole side of the mountain was coated with mounatian tundra. The tundra is mossy and spongy, and feels like someone laid down a huge, multi-colored carpet on top of the rock. I wanted to lay down and take a nap on the ground, but knew I should go on and bag this peak.

The last part of the mountain was covered in scree. Scree is smallish rocks about 2 ft deep. When you try to take a step in scree, the joke is that you take one step forward and go two steps back. Suddenly, the wind picked up a little and the cloud bank we were in disappeared. As soon as it moved away you could see miles of clouds in all directions, like being in an airplane, and snow-coverd peak sticking up through the clouds. It was one of the most beautiful mountain-scapes I have ever seen. Unfortunantly, camera ran out of batteries, but I got some shots on my phone, which doesn't do the scenery justice. At this point we were about 400 ft from the summit, but we just stood there looking around for a while until the clouds came back again. We reached the summit, but while we were up there all we really saw was white clouds. We sat at the top for 30 minutes, waiting for the clouds to clear again, but they never did. I was not disapointed though because we still got to the top.

On the way back down, the frusteration of scree turn into pure joy. Instead of fighting gravity, now it is your best friend. When you put your foot down, it slides an extra 3 ft, so you can 'skate' down the mountain, going 5-6 mph down the steep slope. It is so much fun, and we were not at a big risk of getting hurt. And the snow was even better. Instead of hiking step by step up the ice, we sat down and butt-slid all the way down. As we raced, Adam was winning so I got and ran the last 100ft. This put us in good spirits, and I didn't mind that the clouds and wind were making me pretty cold. We continued hiking and got back to the trailhead about thirty minutes later.

Last Day of the trip to Alaska

Today I made it to Anchorage around 1 pm. Adam had not called me yet, so I tried all day today to find a computer store with no real luck. Finally I found a hole-in-the-wall place that could open up my email and I got Adam's number and quickly called him. I could hardly believe that I was at the end of my 7 day journey to Alaska. I was blessed with great weather coming into Anchorage, but all I really wanted to do was sleep. And I certainly did not want to drive anywhere for a long time. It is now Saturday and I start work on Monday. At 21 stories tall, the Conoco-Phillips building is the tallest building in Alaska. I was told I was working on the 13th floor (lucky!) with great views of the town and surrounding mountains and bay.

As I drove around Anchorage, one of the things that really surprised me were the huge tides that go in and out of the bay just west of the city. When I saw it , the tide was going out. Fast. I was watching from a bluff about 50 ft up from the water, but as the water passed me I could seea wall of water about 3 ft high rush past at about 10 mph. During a full moon the tide can form a wall of water 6 ft high! When the tide is out, it leaves behind a giant mudflat that can be very dangerous. Someone told me that last year, a small girl ventured out into the mudflats and was never found. Needless to say, I think I will just watch the tide from the bluffs.

Tomorrow, I hope to go bike riding. It will be simliar to riding in Austin during the winter, with temperatures around 50 degrees. One cool thing is tha the sun will not set until about 3 in the morning, so there is plenty of time to go as far and as long as I like!

Trip to Anchorage Day 6

After last night in a cozy warm bed, I set off in hopes that I would make it back to God's country, the USA. One of the cool things I saw along the way is the signpost forest, which has signs from town all across the globe, placed there by travelers of the ALCAN. I also got some great pictures of the St. Elias Mountains as I traveled north about 50 miles from the Pacific coast.


It was today that I started to feel the wrath of the notorious Alaska mosquitoes. These mosquitoes are actually much slower, bigger and dumber than their southern counterparts, but there are literally hundreds per sq ft! Every time I would get out of the car to take a break or get gas, I was bombarded by thousands of these guys. I soon put on my hoodie and socks so that I didn't have to deal with them on my feet or neck.

At about 8 pm Alaska time, I got to Tok (rhymes with smoke), Alaska, without any trouble through the border patrol. I was glad to be back to the much lower gas prices (still 3 bucks). I will make camp soon and make it to Anchorage tomorrow.

One thing I discovered in Tok is that my computer decided to completely die on me. This is even worse than it seems because it had the number of the guy that I'm supposed to live with this summer. Unless I fix my computer, I will have no chance of getting in touch with him. If I can't get it fixed, then I will have to wait until Adam gets worried and calls me. We'll see what happens!

Trip to Anchorage Day 5

Day 5 is the day that I got into the Canadian Rockies. They are spectacularly beautiful. Another amazing thing is the expansive forest that I traveled through right before I hit the mountains. It was the southern end of the Boreal forest, which holds 1/3rd of the world's trees and circumnavigates the globe.

Picture of me in front of a glacially-fed lake (green colored)

I also saw an incredible amount of wildlife today. In about 3 hrs, I saw four black bears! Also, I saw a moose and lots of bison. I managed to catch a few pictures as I drove by. I also got a movie of what I thought at the time was a moose, but upon further investigation, I see that it is a caribou. So ignore when I yell out "MOOSE" at the end of the movie. (See below.)

The best picture I could get of the bear. (He was fast!) The bison couldn't care less that I was taking pictures of them.

Most of the day's driving was very winding and steep with lots of glacier lakes and beautiful mountain that still had most of their snow. It rained a lot today, but in between rainstorms, I was rewarded with expansive and brilliant views. The temperature barely got out of the 40's and for a while it actually snowed on me! Needless to say, I decided to stay in a hotel tonight because I didn't feel like camping in the snow. Tomorrow, I will make it back to the USA!

Trip to Anchorage Day 4

Well I finally got a new computer and can now update my blog. YAY!

Day 4 I got up bright and early and immigrated to Canada. I don't know much about Canadians except that they love saying "eh?" Anyways, when I got to the border, the agent thought that it was very strange that I was traveling to Alaska by myself, so he told me to come inside while they ran my passport through Interpol to see if I was running away from my family. After about 45 min, he gave me my passport back, saying, "Well nobody's looking for ya yet. Have a good trip and drive safe, eh?" I felt like a secret agent, except there were no gun fights. Next time maybe....

There was not much to see as I drove north through Alberta, just plains, plains, plains. I quickly found out that in America, we have nothing to complain about when it comes to gas prices. It's close to $5 USD a gallon. It's very deceiving though, b/c they put their prices in $/litre, so it's about $0.99/litre.

In actuality, there is not much to say about today. Just cows and farmlands. I can't wait until I get farther northwest and cross over the Canadian Rockies!

It's been a while...

Okay, my original plan was to update this blog every day. Unfortunantly, my computer had other plans, as the hard-drive decided to peace-out on me. I am now in Anchorage and start work on Monday. Between now and then, I will endeavor to update the blog for the rest of my trip. Anchorage is beautiful although it has a propensity for rain and sunlight at odd times of the night.