Spring Update

This spring has brought many new adventures that have taken me to new levels of accomplishment in both skiing and living off the land.  I'll focus this post on skiing.  Back in late February, I joined a group of skiers as for the Sugar Ridge Back Country Tour which was put on by NSAA (Nordic Ski Association of Anchorage).  I don't own any Tele skis or back country equipment except for an emergency shovel, so I rented some gear from AMH (Alaska Mountaineering and Hiking) and made some other purchases from REI, including an avalanche probe and avalanche beacon.  The group I was with included about 6 members of the NSAA back country ski patrol and avalanche safety instructors.  Needless to say, I felt that I was in good hands and no one would leave me in the back country.  We had a great day of skiing and were completely exhausted by the time we returned to the cars.

I returned to Anchorage again in early April only this time, Katja was along for the adventure and I was my own back country guide.  Again, I rented gear from AMH and talked to some locals at REI to figure out where I could go.  I was led to the Ram Valley, near Eagle River, which turned out to be a day of steep climbing and bushwhacking.  That's what I get for trying to find my own way up a mountain.  Katja and I met an unexpected ski buddy, Lyra, that followed us all the up and back down to the car.

The next day, I decided to follow someone else's tracks so I drove down the Seward Highway to a popular ski area called "Tin Can."  The lower part of the mountain was very crusty, but the upper sections were nice and powdery and the weather was very sunny, so things started to really soften up by noon.  I made it near the top of the front face and decided I was high enough. 

Great adventure!  I think I discovered my new winter passion, Back country tele skiing.  That means two things.  One, I get to buy more gear and Two, I get to visit the Anchorage area more often.  Both are pluses.

And finally, I apologize for keeping my followers in suspense for so long.

Productive Christmas Break!

Christmas break has been truly wonderful this year. I decided that I wasn't going to drive up and down the east coast (all right, MD and PA) trying to visit everyone I knew like I did last year. I just spent some quality time with my folks and some friends that were actually visiting the area as well including some that just live here.
Here are some of the things that I got accomplished during my Christmas break.
1. - Got my parents wireless router to work so that I may update FB and the blog from anywhere in the house on my computer or i-pod touch.

2. - Convinced my Dad that he needed a new computer and then further convinced him that the computer he should purchase is a new i-mac.

3. - Purchased wooden dowel (1 inch) and molded, widdled, sanded, and treated 4 identical Indian Stick Pull sticks for Eek school that will be used in our home NYO meet in early March.


4. - Went to church ... one time!


5. - Helped my parents select a new 10 month old puppy, Miss Molly McWiggles. (as mentioned in previous blog postings).

6. - Six 3 - 5 mile runs along the C & O canal/Potomac River with Katja.

6.5 - Went on a couple of bike rides (once on rollers)


7. - Received a free professional full body massage from my good friend, Aimee Grahe.

8. - Visited a woman who is possibly looking for a new home for her 7 year old male Husky named Maverick. Alaska...Katja's house??? An update will follow.


9. - Participated in my AK Math Consortium class.

10. - Brought in 2011 with good friends, good beers, and good times.

10.5 - Got to catch up with some high school friends from 20 years ago. Thanks Jimmy, Carrie, Billy, and Gaver.

11. - Visited my Grandparents and some other relatives in PA.

12. - Managed to catch a couple of beautiful trout.

All in all, a very productive Christmas break.
Hope you all had a nice Christmas holiday as well.
Thanks for reading.

Little Miss Molly McWiggles

This Christmas was extra special for the Martin family this year. As Dad and I were doing some Christmas shopping, Dad suggested that we swing by the Human Society and take a look at what kinds of lab mixes they had. I rarely pass up a chance to check out unwanted or abused pets that need a good home. As we walked around looking at the various mutts that were kenneled up some looking excited and friendly, and some looking wary and very skeptical, we saw about three dogs that may fit the picture at the Martin household. Then I came across this scrawny but friendly African wild dog looking wiggling pup standing in the middle of her kennel trying to determine if she could trust me or not. About ten seconds later, she was pressing up against the chain link so I could pet her more. Then she sat back against the wall and waited to see who would come around and say "Hi" to her next. She had been in the kennel for about 5 - 8 days and had 2 - 3 people interested in her. My Dad agreed with my selection of a possible dog and we filled out the paper work for possible adoption.
Two days later, we brought both Mom and Katja back to visit her and see how everyone would get along. Holly, recently changed to Molly, had just gotten out of surgery, so she was pretty mellow. Katja had greeted her long enough to get annoyed with "in your face" puppy behavior. Mom really took a liking to her as well. By the end of our visit, including extensive paper work, she had officially become ours.
Molly has been at the house for almost a full week now and she is getting along pretty well. Katja maintained her distance during this time and whenever annoyed would retreat to my bedroom upstairs to escape. Recently, they have been playing more inside and out. Poor Molly gets rolled over and over again as they tear around the yard. They have developed a mutual respect for each other. Molly has learned how to interact with Katja without getting snapped at and Katja has been much more receptive to Molly's puppiness during the last couple of days.
Dad loves the dog because of her loyal nature and her level of intelligence. She now responds to "Molly" and will seat, stay, and heal pretty consistently. She also has a mellow nature and spends a lot of time either curled up in front of the fire place or stretched out in the sunniest part of the house napping or just observing the mindless interactions and goings on of us humans. She is learning that her kennel is where she sleeps at night and freely goes in on her own accord now. During the night, she still wakes up and starts whining and asking to get some attention. A quick reprimand, a little tough love, and she usually quiets down again. She still does have the occasional accident in the house, which is also troubling to my Dad. It's been 12 years since he has had to train a puppy. I won't say that "you can't", but it is "hard to teach old dogs new tricks." They do like to take a little nappy nap time each afternoon. Dad's best friend.

I love my Leatherman

Some of you may know that I am the proud owner of a snow machine (snow mobile) now, a four year old Yamaha Venture Lite. Some of you may also know that I don't always stay on the road, stay within the lines, follow the crowd. So last night, I decide to take my machine out and run Katja. It also goes without saying that my students have been excited to follow me on the new ride out over the frozen tundra. Luckily, one of my students decided to follow me last night. As I cruised out the trail, I decided to check out a little short cut that I noticed last year. As I approached the the little short cut, I noticed that it was drifted over and there was not a trail cut through the area as there was the previous year. I stopped to right on the edge of the drop off, which was only about 2 - 3 feet, and decided to back up and go around. Unfortunately, my "tank" of a snow machine didn't want to back up and started digging into the deep snow. So, the only other way was to plunge ahead and make for the best. Upon arriving to the scene, the first words out of my student's mouth was OMG - what have you done?

To make a long story short, I got stuck among the willows in the drop and had to use my student's assistance to run back to my house for a shovel and my leatherman. Returning to the disaster, I quickly cut the willows away from my machine with the saw of my leatherman and then did a little digging to where I could lift the front of the machine around, which enabled me to drive out of the ditch. I love my leatherman! My machine might still be in the ditch if I didn't the WAVE to help quickly clear and free it from the willow branches.

I imagine that most first time snow machine owners have done something stupid like this and had to learn from their experiences. I'm sure that won't be the last time I have to call on someone's assistance to get me out of a jam with my new toy. I'm just glad that I didn't roll it over. My Yamaha is very heavy and I don't think that I would be able to flip it right side up again.
Lessons for the day:
1. Keep the rubber side down.
2. Stay out of the ditch.
3. Always carry a leatherman.

Stay tuned for more adventure from ... Qasaq with a snow machine.

The alevin are coming! The alevin are coming!

In mid-November, the Eek junior high and high school students started incubating salmon in the classroom as part of their science classes. For the first couple of weeks, the students just monitored the eggs as the embryos squirmed around inside. Keep in mind, at this stage, we could see the embryos, particularly their eyes, inside the eggs. Around November 28th, we started noticing some of the eggs hatching and alevin (salmon embryos) emerging. We currently have about 60 - 70 alevin squirming around the bottom of the fish tank. Some have swam out of the basket that holds the eggs in the tank. Many are still mixed in with the remaining eggs that haven't hatched yet. The early hatching of the eggs came as a little bit of a surprise. We were anticipating the eggs hatching around the middle of December. Apparently, the hatchery in Anchorage sends out eggs that have been fertilized a slightly different times and have been developing longer than others. Therefore, we witnessed eggs hatching right around 400 ATUs, which is normal for Coho salmon. I am expecting that we will still have some eggs that haven't hatched by the middle of December, but most of them should be hatched. Keeping my fingers crossed.

The students have been very willing to help maintain the water quality of the tank and to help remove eggs that died before hatching as well as some alevin that didn't fully emerge from the eggs and thus died. When the alevin start hatching, the embryonic fluid inside the eggs starts to build up and create a foamy layer on the top of the water. This is a critical period of time for maintenance and doing water changes to minimize the amount of foam in the water. These embryos require very high water quality and will die if toxins build up and don't get cleared out. In the natural environment, this embryonic fluid flows on downstream and allows the alevin to develop in the fresh water.

Thankfully, the alevin do not need much maintenance after they have hatched. The carry a giant yolk sac, like some grotesque, over-extended stomach. This is their food supply for the next 4 weeks. So when I return from Christmas break in early January, I will most likely find that some of the alevin have "buttoned up", meaning they have used up their yolk sac and will be looking to start feeding in the water column. During this time, the salmon fry will shoot to the surface and take in gulps of air to help inflate their swim bladder, which will enable them to maintain their buoyancy level in the water column. The tank will take on a whole new look. Then again, since this is my first experience in raising salmon in the classroom, I'm not really sure what to expect when I get back to my classroom. We'll have to wait and see.
Stayed tuned!

Temperature Fluctuations - Only outside

I don't know if it's global warming that causes this region to always have a warm spell hit this time of year, or if it's just a natural cycle that I need to get used to. I do know that one weekend, I'm waxing skis and getting ready to hit the trails and the next weekend, I'm wiping mud off my boots and sweating in the classroom. It has warmed up, above freezing, for the past week, ever since the NYO team went to Chefornak one and a half weeks ago. And it's been raining almost non stop since then. Now, today it is finally cooling off below freezing again. There is still some light precipitation, but oh oh oh... only if all that precip we had earlier had been snow. We would wading through snow drifts up to our waists. Oh well, I guess we will have to wait a couple of weeks again.

One place that the temperature has been very stable is in our school's new Salmon Incubation Tank. Yes, we set up the tank on the 13th and 14th in preparation for the arrival of 500 Coho salmon eggs. I had four students, two high schoolers and two middle schoolers help set up the filtration system, cooling system, add the water, and insulate the outside of the tank. Then on Tuesday evening, we received our shipment of salmon eggs. Again, students helped to safely transfer the eggs from their chilled shipping environment to the tank water, which had been chilled to approximately 8 degrees C. (46.4 degrees F.) When I checked the eggs the next morning, there was only one casualty. I safely removed the dead egg with a turkey baster, and since then, all the eggs look viable.

My students then had to calculate the estimated time the "eyed" eggs would hatch. I wanted them to hatch close to our departure for Christmas break, so that we wouldn't have to worry about maintenance of the tank while we were gone. The egg development depends mostly on the temperature that we keep the water. Students have been measuring the water temperature everyday and calculating the ATUs (Accumulated Thermal Units). Coho salmon eggs hatch usually around 450 - 500 ATUs. Today, we calculated that the eggs have 371.5 ATUs at this time. We lowered the temperature of our tank to 7 degrees C. (44.6 degrees F.) so that the eggs would hatch around Dec. 11 - 13 and we would have enough time to do the 3 - 4 water changes necessary to maintain good water quality. During this time, we will lower the temperature of the tank down to 4 - 5 degrees C. in order to lower the biological activity.

While we are on Christmas break, the Alevin will be hiding deep in the rocks of the tank, slowly absorbing their gigantic yolk sacs. When they finally "button up", they will emerge from the rocks again and be free swimming salmon fry.

Overall, the students are pretty excited about the project. I usually don't have to ask for volunteers to help with maintenance and data recording for the tank. It actually presents another factor of classroom management that I have to deal with. Students love to just sit there and watch the "Salmon TV."

So stayed tuned for updates on Eek School's Salmon Incubation Project.
Thanks for reading!

Dirk

Getting Ready for Winter Fun

Well the temperature has dipped below the freezing mark. We actually got snow back in the end of September. It didn't last long. I believe the current snow will be here until April.

So in preparation, I set up the ski waxing station and prepped my skate skis for my second season of ski fitness. I am very much an intermediate skier and even less experienced at waxing, but I was very happy with the outcome of my wax job this time. Waxing skis is a very detailed and scientific process. There are numerous different waxes for specific temperature ranges. There is wax for new snow and old snow. There is high temperature (iron temp) flourocarbon wax and lower grade wax that you have to apply more often. And its pretty darn expensive. Yeah, leave it to me to find an expensive hobby.

All this will hopefully lead me to be geared up for the Tour of Anchorage again this coming spring. 25 Kilometers of rolling, scenic, perfectly groomed ski trails around Anchorage. Last year, my first year, I was brutally humbled at my lack of fitness and my lack of preparation of enough fluids and energy food. This year, I hope to crush my time from last year.

More importantly, these preparations with the skis is getting Katja very excited for another season of skijoring. We actually went out on Saturday this weekend, although the amount of snow was a little lacking for skis just yet. I know this because I fell a couple of times due to my skis hitting rocks just under the snow. I fell hard. I have a bruise on my hip and a mangled elbow to prove it. But that will heal and leave me stronger and more armored for the rest of the season.

So for now, my fingers are crossed for more snow and suitable temperatures for outdoor fun and adventure. I do have a snow machine (snow mobile) this year as well, so that will be beckoning me to head out for longer adventures. I might even be able to scoot over to Quinhagak (35 miles away) to ski with some friends there.

And with that, I wish you all a wonderful winter with bountiful amounts of snow and sunshine. Happy Trails,
Dirk and Katja