Summer solstice where the sun never sets

We built a cabin, and burned it down.

I love Alaska

I love, love, love mountains. I love the ocean, and the mudflats. I absolutely love lakes, and I love rivers and streams and creeks only slightly less.

I love winter. I love the snow and the cold and the dark. And I love when winter ends, and everything is grey and melting and hopeful. I love the first leaves on the trees. And I love how quickly everything can transition from black and white to color.

And I love mountains. Did I mention that already?

I’m really getting up close and person with my love for Alaska up here this summer. And while I’m discovering a lot of things I don’t love (like clouds of mosquitoes, the inability to fall asleep while 30 sled dogs howl through the night, how hard it is to get out a warm sleeping bag in the morning), mostly I am discovering how many things I do love (like mountains, mountains, and more mountains).

Tent life gets fancy

At this point, I've pretty much accepted that I'm not going to get a roommate this summer.  So a few days ago, one of my friends here helped me get a box spring and bed frame from the Inn, and we put the other mattress on it, and pushed the beds together.  Then I hung up my mosquito net, and basically my tent just got pretty fancy.

I'm sort of loving the fact that I'm living in a tent for three months.  Even though the 30 noisy sled dogs that like to make their presence known in the middle of the night and constant daylight make it sort of hard to get enough sleep.  Not to mention it's freezing in the tents when it's remotely cloudy outside, and it heats up like a greenhouse when it's sunny.  Oh, and did I mention the bugs?

But really, I'm enjoying it.  Every time I go hang out in someone else's tent, I just want to exclaim "I love what you've done with your tent!"  Some of them have carpet, and some of them have wood desks, and some have really exciting shelving.  Not to mention there's a lovely variety of mosquito nets in Coldfoot.

It's definitely not comfort living up here.  But it's completely wonderful in it's own way.

Climbing mountains and hitchhiking with truckers

This morning, Cory, Teresa, Irene, and I got a ride the 29 miles from Coldfoot to Sukakpak Mountain from one of the maintenance guys here at camp.

Then we climbed a mountain.

If I seriously thought about why I decided to take a job at a truck stop in the Arctic cleaning toilets for three months, my answer probably would have been something along the lines of today’s hike.

If you ever make it to mile 203 of the Dalton Highway: stop. Get out of your car. Look at the mountain in front of you.  And climb it.

It’s the kind of hike that makes you want to climb mountains everyday.  It’s also the kind of hike that makes you think seriously about how far away you are from medical help if you fell down the crumbling bits of mountain you’re climbing up.

After a good seven hours of mountain climbing and jumping for pictures, we made it back down to the Dalton Highway, and started heading South.

The thing about hiking far away from camp out here is that you can nearly always find a ride out, but not always a ride back.  So on trips a long distance from Coldfoot, you hitchhike back.

A trucker finally picked us up a good two to three miles down the road, and we were headed happily back to camp and dinner when he got a flat tire.  So Mike (that was our trucker) pulled over, and started to get going on changing the tire.  Within fifteen minutes four trucks had stopped and everybody was hanging around helping Mike change his tire.

The whole day was so very Alaskan, from climbing a mountain to hitchhiking with truckers and helping them change a tire.