Some Winteresque Pictures from Alaska

[Plucky 0]

This past holiday weekend (memorial day in the states), I drove down to Homer, Alaska. First, I had to drive 400 miles to Anchorage, meet friends, and then drive another 200 miles to Homer. It took a total of 18 hours. It was so worth it though! What a beautiful place on this planet. Just great people down there too.

 

This is Homer Spit. All the tourist shops, Restaurants, etc... were down there. Tons of camping and RV's too. We camped above town, however - no wind, lotsa bears, but a lot quieter!

 

The landscape here in Alaska amazes me. This was taken from the Glenn Highway on my drive down. The mountains aren't huge, but they get so much snow that they can produce glaciers like this.

 

This is the Explorer Glacier near the world-famous Portage Glacier. There were so many Japanese people there! I had fun talking with them! Saw a lot more Japanese at Denali too, but I didn't take any pics - too cloudy.

 

Just thought I'd share some permanent snow with ya. I have big plans for exploring the Harding Icefield in late August on skis - wish me the best after my knee surgery next Wednesday!

[LiquidX 0]

Love that 2nd pic. Looks like a great place.

[Plucky 0]

Liquid - that's my favorite out of the 366pictures I took. It looks killer in Black and White.

 

I've decorated my cabin in B&W photos that I've taken in my travels. Great conversation pieces. I have a pic from the Yukon showing Sheep Mt with a post and the Canadian flag in the foreground hanging over my toilet. I love that shot. When I told my friend from Nova Scotia I did that, he laughed - knows I did it out of respect. I love Canada - Tim Horton's sucks though I mean, how can a place be worse than Denny's????

[Fattwins 0]

Tims rules mate come on. tims coffee is on a different level than mister dounuts. Starbucks should be banned north of washinton state.

 

the second pic is great.

here is prayer and a wish that this is the last knee operation you ever talk about.

[Plucky 0]

Thanks for the kind words Fatttwins. I'm having a completely different procedure done - a lateral release and then also having some pseudo cartlidge regnerated from my knee cap bone marrow. It's going to be interesting, but this doctor used to be an Olympice Team doctor and he's confident this will do the trick for me!

 

PS - I think Starbucks should be banned from the face of the Earth! I actually don't mind Tim's at all. Ate there a few times on my drive up to Alaska

[Fattwins 0]

I prefer the great canadian bagel house for breakfast but I got to tims for the coffee.

[Curt 1]

Great pics Plucky - post some more if you can.

[mattlucas 0]

nice nice nice

[woywoy 0]

Would love to visit ALaska some day.

[Plucky 0]

Ask and you shall receive

 

This is the famous Portage Glacier. There's a huge visitors center and lodge - just for tourists. Give it a decade and you won't be able to even see the terminus of this glacier!

 

This is the Matanuska Glacier from the Glenn Hwy. Those are the Chugach Mts it's coming out of. All of that dark material is morraine material This glacier is receding fast!

 

Just for the heck of it - small Halibut caught by charters out of Homer. These are only 35-45 pounders.

 

That's all I have loaded up on the web right now. I may put some others up later. Glad you guys enjoyed them! I can't wait to explore this huge state more and share some more pictures.

[Curt 1]

Keep them coming!

[kintaro 0]

Excellent pics Plucky. My wife and I have been discussing when to visit you. I'll pm you one of these days.

[smelly feet 0]

Thanks for them. I never really thought about what Alaska looked like. Looks incredible.

[Yuki's Passion 1]

I keep trying to imagine an Oil Rig in there somewhere

[amandanism 0]

sick pictures. Alaska and the yukon rule.

[2pints-mate 0]

Top pics mate. So where are all these from then? Alaska looks like a real big place. What are the temps like?

[sunrise 0]

nice pics.

[damian 0]

Ha, nice pants mate!

 

And nice pictures as well. Look at he width and length of the glacier in the Glenn Highway pic.

[Plucky 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by 34 guests:
Ha, nice pants mate!

And nice pictures as well. Look at he width and length of the glacier in the Glenn Highway pic.

Hey now, that's not me in that pic! I told the guy to get in it to make it look more 'O'fish al' He worked on the charter boat that got those Halibut.

2 pints - These are all from southern Alaska around Anchorage and Homer on the Kenai Pennisula. Here is a small map for reference:


I live 40 miles south of Fairbanks. Although the map doesn't show it, there are some huge mountains just to the south of me (10k-14k feet). Temps right now are great - around 70-80 F (sorry, I'm back in the American archaic mode of measurements). In the winter, however, I'd say -20F is the norm with temps dipping to -40F and -50F frequently. It gets COLD!. The summers make up for it though. Sunny, dry, clear, 24 hours of light and warm! Don't get me wrong - I love the winter and all the snow as well, but the darkness does limit what you can do in Dec and Jan.

There is so much to explore in this state and so much more to see. I'll be camping in Denali in late August and then next summer I'm doing a trek through the Brooks Range way up north (tentatively scheduled). The Wrangells, Glacier Bay, Southeast Alaska, The Arctic Plains, Katmai, the Aleutians, and yes, venturing in to the Yukon (I love it there myself)and northern British Columbia are all in my future plans.

My surgery is tomorrow, so for the next 5 weeks I'll be at home. I'll see what I can find as far as pics I have and share. I've taken a couple thousand in the last 9 months. It will give me something to do and keep a little snow spirit alive for the summer also

[yamayamayama 2]

Good luck with the surgery.

Love the pictures man.

[slow 0]

Very nice pictures Plucky!

I looked up Alaska in the ATLAS last night. I just felt Alaska was far away from here but looks like not too far from Japan by airplane (is there any direct flight?) How many hours flight from Tokyo to Anchorage?

[Plucky 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by slow:

I looked up Alaska in the ATLAS last night. I just felt Alaska was far away from here but looks like not too far from Japan by airplane (is there any direct flight?) How many hours flight from Tokyo to Anchorage?

I'm not sure about Anchorage, but they do now have one or two direct flights from Japan to Fairbanks daily. A lot of Japanese come to Fairbanks in the winter just to see the Northern Lights. The Aurora Lodge caters to the Japanese for this purpose. I'm not sure about the flight time though. I'd say 5 to 6 hours????

I'm sure there are direct flights to Anchorage too. Just check a travel website to see what is offered. Alaska seems to be a fairly popular destination for the Japanese.

On a side note, there are a lot of JASDF personnel on the base I work on right now for a military exercise. I had a good time talking with some of them yesterday. They were all out of the Tokyo region.

[HighlyTrainedNovaTeacher 2]

Hey Plucky looking forward to maybe seeing some more soon Great pictures.

[Plucky 0]

Here you are HTNT. I can't remember if I've shared some of these before or not. Thought I'd stick them up anyway.

 

This is the terminus of the Black Rapids Glacier (all the rocky morainal material in the middle of the pic) in the Alaska Range south of me. This was taken about 2 months ago I believe

 

This is probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen. This is the Salcha River directly in front of my place. Most of the ice had broken out of the river on the lower portions (such as here). I had no idea what was coming next.

 

The above was taken around 6pm. At 9pm I took my dog out for a short walk. I noticed a really weird and loud grinding sound coming from the river. I walked over and up on to the dike to see this. All of the ice upriver had broken free and was coming downstream. The river level really came up and there was a lot of flooding downstream. Thanks to the dike, my cabin and property stayed dry. So awesome just to sit and watch this go by. The only annoyance was that my dog would not stop barking at the ice! This IS breakup in Alaska!

 

Another looking downstream from the same spot

[Plucky 0]

This is a pic I took from the highway just north of my house. The biggest peaks are around 14,000 feet. This is one of the bigger portions of the AK range. If you were to follow the mountains going right, you'd hit Denali in about 250 miles. This is a HUGE mountain range. (I feel I've posted this before, but oh well)

 

These were taken a couple of hours ago. I very carefully road my ATV up river a 1/4 mile to a big gravel bar I like to frequent. An absolutely gorgeous day. 85 degrees, light breeze and sunny. It felt so good to sit in a chair and dangle my feet in the river. My dog absolutely loves the water as you can see here. Yeah, it's not snow related, but I took them so here they are

 

Another of my dog Osu in the water.

 

Took this last night from the same spot where I took the pics of the ice flowing down. Just a cool looking rainshower coming out of a thunderstorm. The T-storms are building once again right now. We've had some doozies here this last week! Tons of thunder and lightning and dumps of rain in the evenings. Pretty cool to watch.

 

That's all I have for now. I still have a bunch I need to edit and upload to the net. I've been too busy this week though. Watching movies all day is a full-time job!