SNOW! SNOW! SNOW! YUCKY SLUSH! SNOW RECORD!

(Warning: This one is LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG post, like the Anchorage winter nights)

If you were looking for snow this past winter, well I have it, all of it, muah-ha-ha.  Last Saturday, Anchorage set a seasonal snowfall record of 134.5 inches or 11.2 feet.  The winter average in Anchorage is 74.5 inches, approximately 60 inches in Fort Collins, CO and for those of you in Florida, well those gorgeous beautiful white flakes that fall from the sky every 20 years or so, that's snow!

The National Weather Service in Anchorage has a great variety of reports that everyone should should take a quick look at.  Here is the daily climate report for today: http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/products.php?fcst=CDAK48PAFC, which shows that after a month of melting (with one last snow storm) we still have an 17 inch snow pack on the ground.  Here are some fun reports: http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/papers/papers.php (don't worry they are only 4 pages with graphics). Finally, I think everyone should take 10 minutes and read this report: http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/papers/2011-2012%20snowfall.pdf.  You will learn that Alaska actually has been stealing snow from the western U.S.  (No clue, why the east coast folks haven't had any snow).

Our snow began falling  on October 30 and continued through last Saturday April 7.  I biked through most of it including the final snow storm thanks to one of the guys from senior high youth who held a birthday party at the church that day and invited me (yes, I am cool enough to get invited to birthday parties of people half my age without being related to them -- Thanks Joe J!)

 This is the only picture that I have of myself on bike during the winter and oddly enough it comes from the day of the last storm.  This is my light winter biking outfit.   When it is really cold I wear long johns, then sweat pants and finally the wind pants (only the last two layers for this day).  My nice thick park service wool socks and hiking boots keep me warm.  However there were a few Dec/Jan days that I experimented with double socking.  On the upper half I wear a long-sleeve wicking shirt and the heavy jacket that my sister gave me as a gift (thanks Dana!)  When its cold, I would add my winter shell coat over that.  I have light gloves in the picture, but I would wear heavy winter gloves usually.  When it got below 10F, I would attach the big lobster-claw gloves to each handle bar.  I wear a balaclava to protect from cold, wind, flying snow, and now flying dust.  I have a bandanna on underneath the helmet as well, both to create heat and also to protect my head from the wind as I knife through the air.  My bike has studded tires, which I don't think are all that obvious, splash guards and a rack that holds up to 50 pounds.  It has been a good setup.  When its really cold, I have gotten a ride from a friend (Thanks Kory and family!) or I take a bus ride to get groceries.  I have biked through wet snow, dry snow, powdered snow, light slush, deep slush, crackling ice and on top of ice and I have loved it! 

 Ice skating is my other winter sport.  Just a few blocks from work, there are a couple of rinks.  Colleagues and I often made this an extended lunch.  When you only have 4.5 hours of daylight (December in Anchorage), you have to get outdoors over lunch and enjoy it. 

 "Stating the Obvious" by the Anchorage Museum.  I suppose this sidewalk was closed before the snowfall, but after the first few feet of snow, I think mother nature took care of the crowd control.

 We got about 30 inches of snow in each month of Nov-Feb, so what happens to all that snow?  Well it gets plowed and re-plowed.  The city has a bunch of these little machines with large rotating brushes that they use to keep the side walks clear.  Full-scale plows push the snow to the side of the road and onto the bike trail.  Then a small machine (similar to this one) clears the bike trails.  On Sunday evenings, the tractors come out and scoop the snow from the edges of the road and load it into trucks, after which it is trucked somewhere north to create large snow mountains.  I have witnessed the first part of the removal while biking home from church, but unlike someone else I know, I didn't follow the trucks to see where they were taking the material (ahem... Dad!)

 The environmental effects reached home as well.  When I arrived, we had 18 hours of sunlight and then someone installed some bright night lights in the alley next to my window.  So I added paper curtains on the outside of my blackout curtains so that I could sleep.  Well the 70F+ temperate differential across 1 inch of space through a glass window that was probably installed in the 1950s didn't work so well, especially given my need for a humidifier. 

 The ice began to build up and on the weekends, I would have to use a heater and wait several hours before I could even open the window.  When the heating in the building first came on, I was getting so much heat on the ground floor that I was very thankful for my artic AC which let some 0F air into the room!  As you can see from the picture, I had to cut off the blind in order to separate it from the ice and condensation.  Afterwards, a cloth curtain on the outside of the blackout shades replaced the paper curtains seen here.

 Birm crawling.  This is what people and animals are forced to do during the winter when not using a four wheel vehicle.  These birms often follow the contours of the sidewalk.  With the exception of individual residents, corners are rarely plowed.  Now, if you happen to have giant legs like this fellow, walking through a birm is really no big deal.

 Why did the moose cross the round?  Because he had finished his greeting duties at church, of course.  As this guy crossed the road, traffic stopped and I slid into the median and whipped out my camera to get a picture.  If you look closely in the background on the right, you will see wire caging protecting the trees from moose's stomach. 

 Hillside.  If you take a look at a map of Anchorage, the city sits in a bowl along the Cook Inlet with the Chugach mountains to the east--I also have mountains to west, north and south! :)  While most of the city is placed along the (relatively) flat plain, the ritzier/new developments are along the hills leading up to the mountain. 

 In December, Kara and Dave came to Anchorage for a wedding and I got to join their group for some snowshoeing along hillside, following some of the trails I hiked earlier in the year.  Although, snowshoes make a piggyback ride a bit more difficult than usual, we pulled it off!

 This is a picture of Kara and I skating on the Westchester Lagoon.  This same shot is my blog background from a photo I took when I first arrived in Anchorage last July.

 Zamboni, parks and rec style!  Several lakes around Anchorage are managed by the parks and rec department in the winter as skating and hockey rinks.  This truck has a tankard of water in the bed and a hose runs along a metal pipe at the end of the device, closest to the vehicle.  The device itself is simply a metal pipe and a burlap canvas attached.  A bit of water and then the canvas creates a shiny new surface for more skating.

 This is the work of the baker over at the Captain Cook Hotel.  The entire village is made from graham crackers and frosting.  They had security cameras and guards present to deter hungry children, teens and adults!

 Kara, Dave, Katie and I made a visit to the Knowles trail along the Cook Inlet.  After returning a rental car, when I first arrived in Anchorage, I used this trail to bike back home.  Downtown Anchorage is visible in the center with the Chugach mountains in the background and the icy Cook Inlet in the foreground.  I am told by those in the know, that the port of Anchorage is open year round, and we did see some marine traffic.

 Snowstorm!  I took this picture from my office at work early in the morning in February when we had a huge snow storm hit first thing in the day.  Although the picture is taken after sunrise, its hard to tell.

 Ever heard the phrase, if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes?  I learned that one from my mother describing Colorado weather on millions of occasions and then heard it in Pennsylvania and Florida as well.  As you can see, it also applies to Alaska.  This was more that a few minutes later, but after the snow let up, we got a nice bright sunny day .... for six hours.

 Sunrise along the Turnagain Arm.  Over MLK Jr weekend, I rented a car and went skiing at Alyeska.  They participated in the January Learn to Ski and Ride month.  (I understand this is a national promotion, so if you want cheap beginner lessons, check it out).  I was greeted by this beautiful sight of the clouds breaking and the sun rising as I drove along the Seward Highway at 9 a.m. in the morning.  Don't miss the ice chunks in in the Turnagain Arm, so named because Capt Cook had to _______.

 Here is another shot along the Turnagain Arm from about a couple hours (and days) later in near the same location.  The Alaska Railroad is visible in the foreground with the Chugach range on the Kenai Peninsula visible in the background.

 The creation of the railroad and highways eventually left steep cliffs of rock along the highway.   The sun hits the top of the cliffs with bright, intense waves creating melt-off for a couple hours and then it freezes for the remainder of the day creating a  gorgeous wall of icicles.  Further down the road, I saw some folks with their ice-climbing gear scaling these cliffs.

 I took this shot about halfway up the mountain while skiing at Alyeska, which had over 800" of snow this winter at the top, which was not a record.  It was a beautiful, sunny, 20F day for skiing.  I got lessons and then went off on my own.  Naturally, I fell a few times, but my head is still in one piece!

 Its not a big ski resort, like those that can be found in Colorado, but it is a place to ski.  This is the chair lift that was either out-of-order or just not in use.  They only had 5 or 6 lifts along with the moving sidewalk thing on the kiddie slopes. I got to the point that I could ski the green slopes pretty comfortably and I even tried a blue slope a couple times.  My last run of the day on the blue slope, ended in a crash, which is why I wore a helmet--no scrambled brains, please.

Alyeska turns on the lights at night and by night, I mean about 5 p.m. and then the skiing continued for another four hours.  Although my camera doesn't take good night pics when its not on a tripod, you get a sense of the mountain.

 Here is another one of my lunchtime activities.  We have a small park downtown that is two blocks from my apartment and three from work.  In the winter city park is turned into an ice rink and ice sculpture garden.  The trees are perfectly encased in ice and everything reflects the brilliant sun with its sharp northern latitude angles.

 This is the same park and ice skating rink on an evening that saw 8 inches of snow fall that day in Anchorage.  The blue lights complement the beauty of the snow at night in an amazing way.

 Yup, it happens.  These folks parked early in the day and 8 inches of snow later found their car stuck in the snow.  They had to borrow shovels in order to dig the car out.  At least when you are on foot, your wheels don't spin in fresh powder.  (Don't worry, I asked if I could take this pic and offered my assistance, but they had it under control).

 Ah, February.  As the calendar hit February, the temperatures finally returned to average which meant a high of 25. (We had the 3rd coldest January on record with an average temp of 2.6F).  After weeks of -10 to +10, 25 was tropical!  On the third weekend, we took the senior high youth group up to Big Lake for a retreat and then made a day trip here to Hatcher Pass for skiing, boarding and goofball fun.  I took the third van ride up and then borrowed a 1/2" thick foam body board.  Thus I slid down the mountain face first with my legs dangling off the back of the foam board.  Steering was accomplished by dragging one of my legs in the snow and braking, well braking didn't exactly exist.   I almost slid into a bunch of bushes and narrowly missed some small trees.  I reached the bottom with a beard full of ice and the experience of a lifetime (somewhere there is a picture, that I will have to acquire).  Afterwards, I ate lunch with a couple of my ninth grade guys and then I made a few van runs up to the top of the mountain as a driver.  Stories about that experience will be told in person and not in a written medium!

Immediately after Snow8last (no,that is not a typo), I skipped the state and fled to the south for a week.  The snow kept coming and by March, we passed 120 inches and then hit 129.4 inches just before I left to head east for Kara and Dave's wedding.  However, for three weeks, there our snow total sat at 129.4 inches in 2nd place just 3.2 inches shy of a record.  The snow began melt and Anchorage got ugly!  If you live around snow, you know that pristine white snow is beautiful, but when it gets mixed with salt, sand, and vehicle grim, it turns nasty.  Here is a pick of that nastiness.  If you look closely, you can pick out the side walk and the icicles dripping off the snowpack. 

Breakup, as the spring-meltdown is called, produces lakes all over.  Here is an example from the midtown Walmart parking lot.  You can just image how much fun this is for people on bike such as myself.

Walking, biking, hiking, driving.  All of these forms of transportation rely on having a solid surface against which to direct force so as to propel something in the opposite direction.  Cars have the advantage of a spread wheel base when dealing with slush and snow that a bicycle does not.  This makes turning a challenge, but it also means that a semi-solid block of slush falling to one side as a person bikes through can cause problems.  Well, if you haven't figured out where this is going, the picture on the left is a human/bike snow-print.  About halfway to church on a Wednesday in late March, the slush under my tires gave way and I fell on my left side into a bank of snow.  Keep laughing, I did!  The silver lining here is the cushion that slush and snow provide to large falling objects.  After laughing and brushing the slush off, I pulled out my cell phone and took a picture.  I have seen the imprint a few time since then as well. 

THE RECORD BREAKING SNOWSTORM

April began with teasers from the National Weather Service about snow accumulations of up to an inch that did not come for a week.  Finally, on Friday we got 0.8 inches of snow and then a good storm dropped another 4+ inches on Saturday April 7th giving us the record!  Here are a few pics from my ride through that storm.

 This is the hill along C street from 15th up to Fireweed and it is a pretty good climb.  Once again, you can see how much the snow blots out the daylight during a storm, even though this was just a light continuous snowfall for several hours.  If you look closely, it would appear that I was biking inebriated given my inability to keep a straight line.  However, this wet heavy snow sticks and slides making it very difficult to keep a bike steady.  On top of that the incline results in snow sliding underneath my tires until I can no longer make progress and must begin walking to move forward.

 The snow sticks to my bike as well.  It particularly globs up near the front and rear brakes because the pads are placed so close to the tires.  This results in the inability to brake quickly and sometimes the only way to stop is by hopping off.  I have learned that 2-2.5 inches of fresh snow if wet and about 3-3.5 inches of snow if dry is the maximum that I can bike through during or after a storm.  Once it has been packed onto the trail, no problem.

 This picture will give you and idea of the miniature mountains piled up along the side of the road here.  Keep in mind that those piles had melted for three weeks before the snow storm in the picture.  These mini snow mountains often exceeded 8-10 feet in height.  While it made for great protection from wind or traffic, navigation of cross streets was difficult.  I had to exercise a great deal of caution to make sure that I was not hit by someone turning right who had no clue that there was a bike trail parallel to the main road.

 Ah, the lane lake along International!  This spot has the worst depression along the trail and frequently had a puddle in the autumn months from rain.  The winter only exacerbated the problem.  Since it was filled with a few inches of fresh snow and the temp was below freezing, I decided that the semi-solid state of the water/snow/ice mix would be passable.

 No problems with passing on this occasion, and my tires created waves and disruptions that help make for an interesting picture.  In this and the next picture, the swerving was purposeful with this posting in mind.  However their is a great story about this section of the trail that occurred only a few days earlier.  Prior to the snow, I was biking home from church when I came upon this lake.  I was proceeding north (same direction as the picture)  Expecting to hit water alone, on the basis of my experience with other parts of the trail, I proceeded forward.  That was a mistake!

 I very quickly learned that what appeared to be water actually included several thick chunks of ice floating in about 3-4 inches of water.  This caused my bike to jolt and jerk allover and I simply could not proceed.  As I set my feet down, I realized that I did not wish to walk through either, so I made my way to the right side of the trail.  I attempted to walk in the snow pushing my bike at the edge of the trail, but I postholed.  Every time I set my foot down, it sank 20 inches into the birm.  I could hardly attempt to walk through the snow for 100 yds falling in 20 inches at every step while pushing a bike.  Remember my physicas lessons about minimizing impact by distributing force across a large area, I hit my knees and crawled across the top of the birm while wheeling my bike along on the edge of the trail.  If you look closely or copy this picture (go-ahead) and enlarge it, I think you will be able to see the indentations along the berm made from my ode to toddlerhood.

 The snow on my helmet is a result of biking during the light storm.  As I said earlier, wet snow sticks to everything.  I use red lights during falling snow for increased visibility and white lights at night.  I see well and want to make sure that I am easily seen by vehicles even as I spend much of my time on the trails.

 Anchorage has this little valley that runs east to west through the city, which has several parks along this creek. Along A street, the trail takes a curving detour away from vehicular traffic.  The road features a gradual continuous incline (think about the earlier picture along C Street), but this trails ends with a steep curve.  Of course, the return trip offers a nice downhill ride complete with the steep warning sign so that bikers won't lose control.  The slush on the ground is quite clear.  I figured that if I could clench my abs and keep my bike upright, gravity would get me through the slush and on down the hill.

 Instead, this turned out to be a great example of being too smart for one's own good.  After snapping pictures of this curve and thinking about writing about the steepness for my blog, I fell victim to callous nature of gravity. Once again the slush gave way and I took a fall onto my left side for another laugh, picture and post.

 Here is a picture of sunset along the Chester Creek.  In foreground is A Street and the vehicular bridge bypassed by the side-trail.  In a few months, this will be a great location for moose and fishing.

The city of Anchorage has done a good job keeping the trails passable until recently.  Since breakup started, they plow only the roads and have stopped sending the small machine down the bike trails.  To clear the gutters, the plows have blocked the trails as seen on the left.   The recent snow also gave us a one day respite from Ugly Anchorage which has returned.  However, the snow is steadily melting and I think most of it will be gone by the end of the month, with the exception of the massive piles.

In conclusion, a picture of the Chugach mountains along the Kenai Peninsula side of the Turnagain Arm.  I took this last Thursday while hiking the Potter trailhead.  Take a look at my earlier mountain pictures on this post and in my hiking post for a comparison.  Even here, we can see that breakup is making progress in the high country.  I will miss the beauty of the snow when it leaves.  These mountains (3000-4000 ft) will not be snow-capped throughout the year.  However when the snow melts, the medium altitude hiking begins!  I am looking forward to summiting several mountains, a few mountain runs and hiking the Crow Creek Trail.

I hope you have enjoyed the beauty of the wintry Great Land.  If you are interested in visiting, please do!  My job in Alaska will now last for the remainder of 2012, so you can visit during the summer, fall or even the start of the winter!