Day Thirteen - a cabin in the woods and northern lights

Another stunning start to the day with breakfast at the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge, and sunrise shots of the Alaskan range.  The sky was blue and cloudless and it was beautiful watching the subtle  colour changes.  

Selfie

It was cold.  Minus 28, feels like minus 35.  Too cold to have ears and hands exposed for more than a minute before they became painfully cold.

After a massive breakfast, we headed out for another expedition on the snow machines.  After yesterdays spills, combined with the cold and very icy conditions, I was very nervous, and I spent about 5 minutes battling the machine before I finally relaxed and things got a whole lot easier.  It was about a 45 minute ride, through lots of deep fresh powdery snow.  Beautiful.  We even managed to navigate a small patch of slushy ice where a creek was trickling down mixed with frozen water, without tipping off. 

snow machine convey

We were heading to a cabin in the woods, where we would be hosted for lunch by Maureen, a very talented craftswoman who has built a log sauna, which she lived in initially, a workshop where she now makes snow shoes, and a larger cabin which she lives in.  

sauna

She is pretty much self sufficient, grows vegetables in summer and preserves them or stores them in a root cellar, hunts for meat, has a composting toilet and generates enough solar power to run lights etc from this time of year onwards.  The cabin is heated with a wood stove which she can also cook on.  Lunch was caribou casserole, served in mason jars and bowls, as this was the most people she had ever had in her cabin and she did not have enough plates for us all.  Adorable.  Dessert was rhubarb, blueberry & cloudberry crumble, which was unbelievably good.  The cabin was gorgeous, and was fitted with hand made table & chairs, all taken from the trees in the area.  Hooks and handles were made from tree branches, and all of the logs she milled and hauled herself.  The flooring was rescued form another building not far away, which had fallen down but the wood was still good.  She hauled this to the site herself, and the construction of the buildings was achieved just by using physics, block & tackle style.  Pretty impressive. 

She took us to her workshop, where she makes snow shoes, using steam to bend the wood to shape. 

Claire trying out the wood shaving device (can't remember the correct name for it at the moment)

 While she sells them, it is more of a hobby, not a main job.  Life at the cabin is not full-time, she comes and goes, working for Parks Department and various other things of that ilk.

The cabin is only accessible by foot for the last few hundred metres, and with the snow as thick and soft as it was, some of us tried snow shoes to stop us sinking thigh deep in the soft snow.  I had short skis rather than proper snow shoes, and I managed to wipe out stepping over a fallen tree trunk.  With the snow so soft, there is just nothing to get leverage on to hoist yourself up.  I had to rely on the crew to help out.  It sure gave my calves a workout, they were screaming by the time we got to the cabin.



When it was time to walk back out, I opted to jus walk without the skis, and it was perhaps trickier, but less chance of slipping over.  Snow is weird, you can step along and not sink at all, and yet another step a few inches to the side and you can just be up to your thighs in a finger snap.

We headed back out on the snow machines, and stopped a few times for photo opportunities.  We encountered a moose on the trail, and it trotted aong in front of us for a way, so we stopped for more photos in the hope it would get ahead of us.  It did, but we caught it up again and this time it was heading back towards us.  The reason soon became clear, there was a guy rarking around on a snow machine, plus another smaller group of people coming the opposite way towards us.  The moose was getting a bit agitated, as it didn’t really have anywhere to go, the track was surrounded by really deep snow drifts.  Eventually the smaller group climbed up on the snow drifts, and we started moving along, Jon banging the shovel on the handle bar to encourage him along.  It doesn’t pay to mess with moose, they can do a lot of damage with their hooves, so when we weren’t actually moving, we stood with the snow machines between us and the moose.  Eventually it found a side road and trotted off, leaving the path clear for us.

By now it was getting pretty cold, and I was glad to arrive back to where we had left the vehicles.  We went back to the cabins for a quick change before heading back to the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge for dinner.  Chris had told us earlier in the day that we were hoping to catch lights, but I had a complete brain fart, and did not take my tripod with us.  Don’t ask why not.  I also did not take my torch, and my phone completely ran out of juice.  The phone and go-pro batteries don’t last very long in the cold, but the camera batteries cope quite well.

About 9.30pm Chris went out to check for lights, and came back in to say that they were out.  Much scrambling for gear, because you never know how long the show will last.  Belinda kindly let me use her tripod and I got a few shots.  But we decided to move, because there was a very large pile of snow, plus flashing lights from the nearby airport that were a distraction.  We all piled into the vehicles, and Jon headed out to a known lookout point, but that was no better, so we headed out to where he lives with his wife Tania.  It was perfect.  But very dark, and I tripped and went sprawling in the snow.  I did manage to keep my camera off the ground.  It was super cold, back down to about minus 27-ish.  My glasses kept fogging up so I abandoned them, and managed to grab a few shots from Belinda’s tripod, using my camera bag, and then Chris set me up on his tripod.  The pictures all came out pretty good, and we all got some nice shots.  And while the lights look green in the pictures, with the naked eye we didn’t see that colour.  Last night at least, it was just a band of white light.

It was really cold out, and despite my super duper warm boots, my feet were really cold.  I didn’t have time to put toe warmers in.  We spent maybe an hour in total photographing them from Jon’s place and then they started to fade out.  We finished up about midnight and headed back to our cabins.

As I decanted stuff from camera bag and pockets, I noticed that the bottom of my camera bag was quite wet.  I remembered that I had put my laptop in the front pocket, in a departure from my usual habits, because we were going to maybe look at some Lightroom techniques while we waited for lights.  I pulled my laptop out to find that the pocket had a couple handfuls of snow in it, some of which had thawed and re-frozen and was stuck to the side of the laptop.  I brushed it all off and wiped it dry with paper towels.  I didn’t dare turn it on, figured I would leave it downstairs in the lounge area to warm up and hopefully dry out.  I spent my awake time thinking about all the implications of losing my laptop at this point of the trip.  What an idiot.

p.s.  All the northern lights photos are on my camera and I haven't had time to download them yet.