A hike through the snow

Today, Ben and I went for a nice hike up Gavan hill.  I purchased some snow shoes last week and told Ben I wanted to go hiking with him through some snow.  Today, we left about 10 o'clock and made it to our destination around 1 pm.  There's no real defined peak of Gavan hill, it's a much different formation than the surrounding mountains.  However, it was quite a hike to get to the top and there was a lot of snow.  I loved the snow shoes.  They were lots of fun and made it quite easy to stride through the fluffy snow.

Ben and I started talking about how good a burger sounded on the way down.  I picked up some ground beef on the way home.  I grilled some onions, mushrooms and the burger with a little Worcestershire sauce, broiled the buns, added some Tillamook Monterey Jack cheese and voilà!  It was delicious!

The city of Sitka down belowMt. Edgecumb on the leftSelf-portrait

I drew where I work on SketchUp

It should be in Google Earth soon.

Photos from this weekend

It's four o'clock right now and it's pretty dark outside.  This weekend was a pretty busy one.  YABAH had a spot in the Alaska Native Heritage day parade.  When we met up for the parade everyone agreed it would be best to drive the van instead of walk in the snowy/rainy weather.  We tied our banner to the side of the van and I drove it from one end of Lincoln St. to the other.  Lincoln St. is the street that runs right through downtown.  It starts at Totem park, near the Sheldon Jackson College, and ends close to the bridge.
After the parade there were continued festivities in the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall.  There were Tlingit dancers with their extravagant robes, and other dancers from the far corners of Alaska.

A short blog! Maybe...

I had written out this long blog about how this "adventure" blog just turned into my "life" blog and that a life blog is harder for me to share... but then I realized I'm in Alaska and I need to toughen up and blog.  :)  Haha.

Let's see... where did I leave off?  Well, you may know that when I got here, it was arranged that I'd live in the dormitories of a dormant school.  During the summer, I was notified that the dormitories were going to be closed and we were all going to be evicted.  Fun.  Actually, it turned out to be a really good thing.

I've been attending Sitka Lutheran church. In September, I became the organist when the piano player left to attend university in Oregon. I said I'd do it for free since I came up to be a volunteer anyway. A couple members of the church suggested that since I'm a volunteer and I need a place to live, I could just live in the apartment that's dedicated to the church's summer volunteers. Plus, they said I could use the volunteer car! Things worked out nicely.

A couple weeks ago, I ran a 10k. Since then, it has been snowing and I haven't ran. I'm still riding my bike often, however.


I'll now post some pictures.  Have a good day!

Our race went down the road, nearly to the base of Bear Mountain.

We started at Whale Park.

This is right by where I live now.

Working on the house

We had a very rainy week and some of us were working on the roof all week.  We built the hip and valley of the intersecting roofs, then we applied the plywood sheathing, and last we laid the roofing felt paper.  Friday was the day we finished the felt paper and it was a gorgeous day.  The participants get Friday afternoons off so there were just a few of us that finished up the felt paper on that gorgeous afternoon.

These three peaks are known as the sisters

  There are also 3 sisters on the Dingle Peninsula in IrelandThey got snow this weekMe being sillyMary (another SAGA employee) was visiting from JuneauBen making his important phone calls

Bear Mountain hike

You may remember this mountain from some of my early blog posts; its name is Bear Mountain. This weekend I joined a couple of friends for a hike to the very top. We had great weather. When we got above the Alpine tree line it got pretty windy and we had to trek through some snow. The snow was the hardest part for me. We hiked some pretty steep spots with rocks but on the snow I really had trouble staying balanced and thought I was going to slip and rocket down the snow covered side of the mountain.

We reached the very peak and stayed up there for a bit, telling stories and just enjoying the view. On the way down we took a different route and walked quite a ways along the ridge of the mountain. One spot we had to descend one at a time because we were knocking down rocks as we went. We talked about what kind of food we were going to eat that night most of the way down. Actually, I was probably the one that kept bringing that subject back up. When we got back to town we had a nice steak dinner. Thanks, Arlo! :)

Blue Lake

Mt. Edgecumbe in the background and Mt. Verstovia on the right

Some lichen

Water droplets on the lichen

This is a part where it was hard to stay upright walking on the snow

There's a glacier in the background

Patrick, Ben, and I looking at stuff

A crevasse

Getting close to the peak

Self-portrait

Pretty little blue pond

The peak after we started our descent

Walking along the ridge

We were talking about food and this looked like a dish my mother used to make. It was something like cheesy potatoes and I can't quite remember what was sprinkled on top but all I could think of was bacon bits.

A Super-Mario mushroom!