Arctic Adventures

These are some pictures of a house in town.  When school was cancelled on Wednesday, one of the local teachers called me and said she would have to wait to get dug out before coming up to the school.  Here's why: Their front door. A picture from outside their house The livingroom window! *photos taken from Velma's Facebook account :)  Thanks Velma!

Snow Inside our Bedroom Window I finally purchased up a sealskin and beaver hat that are common to the locals around here. I have wanted one for a while and then just the other day one of the ladies in the village was leaving our neighbors house and she asked me if I was interested in buying a hat. I asked what kind and then when I saw it I jumped at the chance. Sealskin and Beaver Hat I caught another fox in my traps yesterday. There were a lot of tracks around one of my sets that looked like they could be wolverine. Most of the tracks were hardly distinguishable because of the blowing snow but I could see some clearer tracks in the trees. They just circled around the trap that the fox was caught in. It must have investigated after the fox had been caught. I was supposed to go pick our snowmachine up from Kotzebue this weekend. One of the other teachers was traveling down so I was going to fly down and then follow him back by snowmachine. But after the storms and the warm up there is ...

We had our first official Snow Day of the year (and of my teaching career). The wind was whistling all night. Our window was shaking and when we woke up, there was a large pile of SNOW piled on the window sill, INSIDE our BEDROOM. Teachers could take the day off if we wanted to use a personal day, but some of us chose to brave the elements. Alision, Kyle, Brett and I set out at about 9:00, once there seemed to be some light in the sky. I wore my coat with the tunnel hood and goggles. The wind was crazy. At one point on our walk it was just white everywhere--we couldn't see anything around us. I was almost clausterphobic. The wind helped to edge us along, as it was at our back for most of the way. Every once in a while it would gust from our left and I had to focus to stay on my feet. I had a thought at one point that if I fell over, I wasn't quite sure how I would get up. Once we neared the school, we could make out the forms of the building and the school lights along with the...

Old Town Our Building Excavator by Pit Fresh Pow Town from Across the River Cliffs from Across the River On the River Brooks Range Untracked Guess Where

Looking Across the River Through the Snow We got the first big storm of the year Wednesday night. Late start to school for students was nice even though teachers and aides had to work a full day. I was really rooting for a snow day until I found out that we would have made up the snow day on a Saturday, then...not so much. It was blowing like crazy when we woke up Wednesday morning. It felt really windy but I guess it wasn't like the wind was blowing really hard. I looked it up and it was something like 4o mph sustained with gusts up to 50. When there nothing but the open tundra to slow down the wind it really blows. There were some huge drifts blown up overnight. There is a drift by our house that is probably 8 feet high. On the way to school in the morning I was a little bit worried that it might be tough to find the school with all of the blowing snow. Visibility was about 30 feet. Once we got across the first lake we could see the big outside lights of the school so we just hea...

I am acting as coach for the weekend--I have the girls in Buckland for a tournament. We were supposed to leave yesterday, but our plane was on hold all day due to stormy weather. It cleared up by 9 am this morning, so we FINALLY made it--but our bags didn't. We only had enough money for a Navajo plane, one of the small ones, and we were over the weight limit. They had to send our bags on the next scheduled flight. By the time the bags got here, they were frozen. I let it sit in the room for an hour, and then unrolled my air mattress. It was so cold that the mattress had cracked--there were HUGE holes. I tried the trusty duct tape, but there were just too many holes. I would patch one, only to find another. Good thing us teachers stick together! I talked to one of the teachers from here, played the pregnant card, and got an air mattress from his house :) We won our first game, 50-39. Two more tomorrow! It's 1 am and the games for tonight JUST got over. We start up ...

This past weekend was a beautiful weekend in Noatak. After our really cold snap the days have been really nice. It has also been really clear which is somewhat surprising given how warm it has been. Saturday I went out to check traps and get wood with Stan who is one of the other teachers. Getting wood here is quite the operation. First we traveled about 5 miles downriver by snowmachine to get to where there are some big trees. We dropped about 6 trees and limbed them. Then we had to pack down a trail to turn the sled around to haul the logs out. We cut them into eight foot lengths and then loaded them onto the sled. We could only load about 4 logs at a time to haul out to the river where the trail was good. Stan made about four trips while his son Zach and I waited at the fire and roasted mukarra and cheese. We saw a group of about 5 ptarmigan on the way. Stan shot one of them to use the wings to bait for their traps. Ptarmigan are really cool looking birds. They look very similar to ...

This weekend there was a mini basketball tournament in which Kayla and I both played in. I found out that I was very much out of shape and well on my way to developing a solid coat of rust as far as my basketball playing skills are concerned. It was fun to play some competitive basketball after quite a while. Both of our teams took third place. This week Kyle and I are taking apart his snow machine because it just died on him on his way to school one day. He could start it but it sounded pretty bad. Well we took it apart and found that the piston was cracked. So at the very least he is going to need some new pistons and new seals, possibly a whole new engine. I finally dug some cross country skiis out of one of the conex's and I have been out a few times. It has warmed up quite a bit here now. The temps have been in the low to mid 20's and it has been snowing pretty consistently.