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Well, the warm weather at the start of last week was just a teaser. It cooled down again the middle of the week and froze over, and then the last couple of days there’s been some gentle blowing snow most of the time covering the ice. The tundra is still very bare + exposed so it’s kinda a mixed look outside, and still staying down around 15F (-10C) with windchill. Haven’t been out on the snowmobile anyway as the tundra is all exposed around the houses, and don’t really have anywhere to go on it with the weather swinging around!

A few more locals have been getting boats ready though - one of them by the river had a big pile of broken ice next to it which looked like someone had lost control of their sled after being ice chipping, but then the inside of the boat was thick with ice and it’s owner had been breaking it out! I’ve seen a couple getting towed along the river too, again, probably to get out seal hunting along the coast:

Isn’t quite as gruesome as some of the photos recently published out of Canada though, honest.

On the plus side (segue from clubbing seals…?!), GTA IV arrived through the mail this afternoon - about time, as I pre-ordered it last summer, even though it’s final release date wasn’t until this past Tuesday Pretty cool though, so can’t wait to get to stuck into it later on this evening

I’m also heading into Anchorage on May 12th for a few days, partly just to get out the village for a bit! I’m meeting up with a friend who lives there, and hoping to get an introductory flying lesson (TSA approval required for anything more) and pilot medical done whilst I’m there. Slowly moving forward I guess. Should be good, and Damond used to work in Denali National Park and has lived around the Anchorage area all his life, so I can pick his brains for when we head out at the end of July when my parents fly over Can get some shopping done and mail stuff back to keep us going over the summer as well - think I’ll have one box just of mosquito repellant!

On Monday evening I uploaded the first of some files I’ve been working on with flight sim to a couple of the major flight sim sites that provide file libraries to collect resources like that together. The first was a complete package for Grant Aviation including repaints of the Cessna 207 and 208’s that fly in + out of the village, along with AI flight plans I’d worked out so that you get the planes flying around in flight simulator as you would do in real life. This area of Alaska is pretty much devoid of anything in flight sim (not unlike in real life I guess!), but the addition of some traffic makes such a difference and is pretty cool seeing them moving around Bethel and out to the villages. I wasn’t expecting many people to pay much attention to them, but there’s been over 1000 downloads within the first 72 hours Probably taper off after they move out the latest uploads pages, but nice to see. I’ve already got planes and flight plans pretty much worked out for Hageland Aviation and good ol’ Yute Air (just wish I could figure out a ‘randomness’ factor so sometimes the planes simply don’t turn up…) which I’ll be uploading in the new few days too. The files are available from my flight sim section, and here’s an idea of what some of the Grant planes look like:

Yesterday afternoon I went out for a while jigging (short retirement, I know…) on the Galic River. Got three hooks ripped off whilst trying to haul fish in as the hole wasn’t cut properly at the bottom and was catching the line so headed home, but did have a bit of fun riding out there - this is Pam bundled up in the sled behind Nick + Dana, Mott leading us, then a couple of guys obviously nervous the river was liable to break up

I’d guess they were just moving downriver to be able to get out seal hunting shortly, but was still funny seeing a boat being towed along the frozen river by a snowmobile!

This afternoon, moose foot and me wandered along to the airport and saw a Hageland 207 struggling to come in to land with the wind. Even the pilots have been joking on the radio about how windy it is when coming in to land. Barely seems like they’ve moving sometimes as they’re on final to land.

Least this guy took a little more time on his takeoff run-up - look at how much movement he got out the airplane whilst checking the elevator:

Kat’s feeling a lot better now, I’m blaming it on the broccoli she had on the Sunday evening with dinner The snow does seem to be slowly melting away, and there’s a lot of standing water and cracks forming on the rivers. Riding out to the Galic river yesterday the area looked so different to just a couple of weeks ago with patches of exposed tundra, so the ice may well start to break up in the next couple of weeks. Seems unlikely given how much snow and ice there’s still down (well over 5 foot thick ice yesterday), but the temperature has been slowly rising and due to carry on over the next week up to 40F. Maybe spring is here!

On Saturday morning, Carl McIntyre called to let me know he was going jigging way up on the Johnston River if I wanted to join him. Sounded like fun, and although the day was a little overcast, it was around 25F so not too cold to be standing around for hours. The ride up there was pretty good, even for Carl’s sister bundled in the back of the sled, and when we stopped along the trail at the Kuskokwim to stretch our legs Carl said he’d been going slow as he had precious cargo in the back - if the auger fell out and broke then we couldn’t fish He also joked that he was going to leave some bait in the sled with his sister so she could throw it at the bears as we rode up giving him time to unhook the sled and make a speedy getaway! On Friday night some people had gone out around the village after what turned out to be a musk ox - some kids had seen it and thought it was a bear from a distance, but pretty sure no-one shot it as they’re just trying to build up the numbers of musk ox round this area so hunting is off-limits.

Anyway, other than Carl pretending he was a grizzly bear himself by sticking his hand into the water and grabbing a pike out that squirmed off Carie’s hook within minutes of starting fishing, there wasn’t much more excitement! There were stacks of people fishing round there, but no-one was really pulling out any great numbers, and I still came home with nowt At least it kept Carl happy as he joked there was someone worse than him this time as he’s not a big fisherman, highlighted by the two or three naps he took in the back of the sled through the afternoon, after which he’d calmly walk over to check his holes and find fish on the end of the line!

Coming back was a bit dodgy as the weather started closing in around 4.30p.m and by the time we left around 5.15p.m it was a whiteout all the way back to Tunt. Given that everything is so flat and devoid of anything out here, it was pretty hairy, though thankfully Carl knew exactly where he was going. Looking all around you and seeing nothing, or even being able to tell the ground from the sky in front of you, was a little different and made for slow going (around 2 hours) but we all got back okay. Once off the Kuskokwim river at least the trail markers every couple of hundred yards made it a little easier once you could see them, but I wouldn’t want to try it again in a hurry!

But, Kat was up in the middle of the night being sick so is off work today which isn’t too good. I made a run to the store to get some stuff for her and took a (little…) detour by the airport to see a plane come in. Since the weather was so overcast whilst fishing it wasn’t worth taking photos, but by chance that’s Carl winging his way up to Bethel just after taking off with a Grant 207 on the ramp:

The last few days have been a little annoying. TCSA have strung out a bunch of excuses as to why they’ve simply dropped their service of emptying the sewer tanks when they were due to run it until April 18th, most of them being centered around not having staff to work for them as they’re off doing other things or simply not showing up. Frank + Mark have been trying to negotiate with them to borrow their pumping equipment for a day or two but they want none of it, and when I went down on Monday offering to start working for them right away they wouldn’t bite. The Tribal Council currently has an opening for a custodian to work 4 hours a week cleaning the offices and stuff but I’d get the same reaction even though I’m more than willing to put up with $32 a week and just get on with - I’m not Yup’ik, so no chance of being employed, even though most of the people in the village are too lazy to apply for it or hold it down so the position joins the other jobs on the board that date back to 2006. Pretty much all the sewer tanks in the village are full and everyone’s complaining, but as usual no-one’s willing to suck it up and and do what needs doing. Hopefully they’ll get their act together and either the Tribal Council or Quinarmuit Corporation will take over the services soon as it really can’t be healthy to have raw sewage overflowing around all the houses…

But, now that things have frozen over again from last week’s warm weather, I headed out for a ride on the snowmobile yesterday evening for a good hour or so. Was a beautiful evening without a cloud in the sky and very little wind even though it was around 5F (-15C), and I kept stopping just to admire the peace + quiet (once I turned the engine off…) as it really was quite magical. With the fresh snow, the usually bumpy or packed-down tundra was pretty smooth and soft allowing the snowmobile to just glide over it without needing to slow down much Crossing streams was a bit dicey as the edges had softened, lifted, and then frozen again, meaning I had to get off a couple of times and walk the route first to make sure I could ride where I wanted to, especially when coming back onto the main river.

This afternoon Mia and I had wandered round to the airport just after a plane had come in to land, and it was a completely new one - a Cessna 206 rather than the usual 207’s, and belonging to Vanderpool Air. I’d never heard of them so had to look them up online - they’re a small outfit way up river from Bethel based out of Red Devil I think (pretty cool name!), so guess he was flying a charter for workers at the airport to be this far south.

As it’s getting light pretty early in the morning and staying light until 10.30p.m or so, Kat + Marie have decided to get up on a morning and take the dogs for a walk again like they were before the weather became too cold before Christmas. More concerned about Mia getting up at 7.30a.m than Kat, but sure they’ll have fun! Marie’s really excited at the moment as she was accepted by the Wycliffe Foundation a few days ago to spend two years in Africa doing missionary/teaching work and will find out exactly where she’ll be going in the next week or so. Has to raise quite a bit of funding as the training starts at the of June before flying out to Africa over the summer, but it’s something she’s been planning + preparing for a while, and although Kat + I will be sad to see here leave Tunt, we’re glad it’s to do something like that

Yesterday afternoon Nick, Dana and I went fishing up to the Gallic River where the locals ‘apparently’ go fishing. I say ‘apparently’, as we saw no fishing holes and could barely keep on the trail up there as it’s not widely used! We had the auger so cut a few holes within 5-10 minutes (damn sight easier than using an ice pick to break through existing holes!) and started fishing, but had about as much luck as fishing downriver from Tunt. It was a nice afternoon though, around 5F without much wind, and the ride was pretty cool through the soft snow and across bare tundra without following a trail. I’ll see if Dana had any good photos I can post. Some of Dana’s family are coming up here tomorrow so Nick wanted to check he could get out to the fishing holes and see if there were some holes already cut, but I don’t think I could find my way back there without getting lost as the wind covers the trail pretty quick

I got my PC up and running over the weekend too - genius that I am brought over a bunch of game CD’s and applications for photo + video editing, but not the driver CD for the system board, so that took a while to download them off the internet. My graphics card (256Mb ATI Radeon 9550) seems to have gone belly up though, probably with bouncing around on airplanes when I moved over here. Works fine just on the desktop, but get all sorts of tearing, streaking and artifacts on screen at low-level (such as BIOS or OS splash screen is loaded) and anytime it kicks into a game. Tried different drivers, flashing BIOS, etc. but simply putting in a basic 32Mb don’t-ask-me-to-do-3D card works without problems so it’s not the system board. Annoying as it would still run at 50-60fps, just can’t make out what the hell it’s trying to display on screen! But, Amazon have a $30 mail-in rebate on a GeForce 8600GT with 256Mb DDR3 bringing it down to $65 delivered which is daft considering they were $150 a few months ago, and will kick the pants off the 9550 I paid the same for a couple of years back. That’s PC technology though, especially graphics cards.

This afternoon I took Marie + Pam to the airport as they’re heading into Anchorage for the 3-day Spring break at school. I told them if they forgot my Subways I wouldn’t pick them up on Sunday But, I hadn’t seen this Cessna 208B Grand Caravan that Grant Aviation have before - looks pretty good for a bush plane, though it is ‘only’ 10 years old!

After school, Nick wanted to go out ptarmigan hunting and asked me to join him. An hour and a half or trawling round the tundra and we only saw one flock of four birds which scattered on the first shot. But, ever heard the myth that if you drop your gun in the snow and get it down the barrel it will explode when you fire it? Mythbusters didn’t do a very good job claiming it’s can’t happen as it did!

Nick dropped his shotgun off his snowmobile and packed snow down the barrel, then after cleaning the snow out he held it at arm’s reach and fired it, and sure enough the end of barrel just splinted like in cartoons when a cork is pushed in the barrel of a gun! Thankfully he was okay as the pieces didn’t break off much and he held it far enough way, but I’d guess the metal barrel must have frozen with the snow packed in it for a few minutes, so when the gun was fired and the heat travelled down it caused the metal to expand quickly and just plain broke. Easy enough to replace, but still a bit extreme!

We’re both convinced we saw a wolf a few miles out the village too. Was far too big to be a fox and was grey coloured compared to the red/brown of a fox, and as we tried to chase it down and came across it’s tracks, they definately weren’t fox tracks. Wouldn’t imagine a dog would be that far out the village, and heading out, or would dart off so quickly when it heard our engines, but the locals do talk about wolves in the area, just none real confirmed sightings. Would have looked cool riding back into the village dragging a wolf behind us!

Anyway, I’m painting tables for the next two days at school…

With the temperature up to a sweltering -10F (-23C) but very little wind, I headed out to try ice fishing this afternoon. I kinda figured I may as well just bash my hands against a dry wall as they would end up the same way, and sure enough all the holes were frozen solid from the constant cold the last few days I got a couple of feet down in a few different holes, but after an hour blistering my hands in my mittens from the ice pick figured I’d just leave it and head back with the gas-powered auger from school next time to cut straight down.

But, without any wind down in the river it was actually a lot warmer than it seemed. I’d bought a new (i.e ‘proper’) pair of goggles from the store a few days ago and they worked wonders - covered everything + more and stayed clear the whole time. Not bad for $44 as I couldn’t have got anything decent shipped in for that price. Weird how sometimes the prices are ridiculous and other times seem like a right bargain!

Today was a cold day for riding. Not sure where the weather stat got 0F from, it was easily -15F (-26C) when we were heading out! After delays in the other guys getting gas and hunting licences, we headed out of Tunt for the hour or so’s ride to Eek where the plan was to then try to find some caribou. I found out that not all schools in the district are painted bright blue like here in Tunt - these were the school buildings in Eek, including the new 2-storey teacher housing unit:

Frank and I were a mile or so past Eek before we realised we’d lost Jason + Arthur. Turning round, we found them a mile or two back down the trail before Eek - Arthur’s snowmobile had problems very reminiscent of mine before Christmas when the fuel lines were freezing. After heading into the village for some Heet, it started running again, but by then it was getting on for 3.30p.m and we decided to call it a day.

Riding back to Tunt, Jason + I started playing in the powder snow and really getting some speed going. We kept hanging back to check on Arthur too who seemed to do okay bringing it back home:

I managed to play cameraman for a while in-between taking photos. It was a lot smoother off-trail even though it seems to bounce around a lot when picking up speed as I move between riders, and check out the cool cloud formations. A very nice landscape to be riding through even if we were half frozen! In the video - first Jason, then Arthur, and Frank leading the way:

Although it was very cold (I’ve got some good frostbite across my eyebrows and sides of my eyes), it was very pretty with the sun starting to get low on the horizon and the clean, untouched snow as we dipped down across streams and rivers:

Dipping down off the tundra into the streams + small rivers was also a good excuse to get out the wind which was biting cold!

We all made it back home safely, and sure we’ll try it again on a slightly warmer day! Nick a couple of the guys from the village had headed out as we were a few miles out of Tunt, hoping to make good time to Eek, but pushed their snowmobiles too hard and one broke - a bolt sheared clean off the track, probably due to the cold. They headed home empty handed too, but I think Kat was a bit relieved we didn’t return with anything as she didn’t fancy going to help out with the processing the caribou meat!

But, on a positive note, I did spy some ice fishing holes a few miles down river from Tunt, and although I thought they might be for nets and black fish traps, when we came home there was an old guy jigging. So, guess who’s going to load up ice fishing gear next week and give it a try ?

Frank called about 10 minutes to see if I wanted to go caribou hunting, so I’m getting stuff sorted to head out. No, I’m not expecting to take down a caribou with a .177 air rifle It’s more to get with them as I’ve never been hunting before, and not sure whether I’d even want to, let alone get a chance, to shoot at one (I’d probably miss by half a mile anyway…). Still, should be fun, though it is right around 0F (-18C) at the moment so probably going to be a cold day. Least it’s not as cold as when we rode to Bethel!

I only had an hour’s work this morning and that was it, the project is all done and working nicely. We got the toilets installed in the houses and hooked up to the water yesterday so they’re flushing nicely, and there’s just the hot water connection at school for Mark to do. Frank is going to figure out how he wants our duplexes connecting next and get parts on order, so no idea when we’ll actually start work again. Still, nice to get all finished up after spending so long working on it, and the people living over there seem pretty happy as they have proper flushing bathroom facilities emptying back into the school system rather than electric toilets and the bath just dumping water on the ground!

After I lunch, the weather was pretty clear and warm so I dug my snowmobile out the snow drift and headed a couple of miles out the village across the river for some target practice with a .177 air pistol. I’d bought an air pistol and rifle last summer but only used them a couple of times when out on the canoe, so after I got a couple of plastic buckles over the weekend for a set of saddlebags I bought on eBay for $10, figured I’d load up and start practicing.

It was worth digging the snowmobile out the snowdrift at home as it was a lot of fun riding through all the soft powder snow. Going along the river where it was a couple of feet deep and un-ridden, it felt more like riding the jetski back on Lake Tahoe than a snowmobile as you couldn’t really feel anything solid beneath you. Good fun though I managed to get home a few minutes before the fog set in again, yet it was so clear and calm when I was out on the tundra. Timed it nicely!