The Lights

I finally got around to buying a tripod head so I could try to photo the northern lights. It's difficult to get the focus right because it is too dark to see anything through the viewfinder, and also too dark for the autofocus to do its thing. Exposure time is 20 seconds, so the colors turn out more vivid and saturated than what they actually look like when you're standing there. That's ice fog down in the valley.

Rams are from a hike on Saturday afternoon.

I bought my plane ticket home this week. I'll be flying to Seattle on Dec. 10th and will visit my old roommate Jeremy (Toad) for a week, then back to Columbus on the 18th. At this point it looks like I'll try to head back here sometime mid to late February. No word yet on whether it will be for another seasonal appointment or for the long haul. I'm looking forward to seeing all of you while I'm on break.

It's been pretty warm here for the last few weeks. Highs in the mid 40s, lows in the high 20s. No real snow to speak of except at high elevations, but my skis came in the mail today, so I'm hoping for some powder...

A Nice Day

Just wanted to share some photos from my last helicopter flight for the season. Definitely the most beautiful flying day I've had. It has been snowing off and on here this week. It's stacking up at higher elevations, but melts off between dustings down at my cabin.

This weekend I'm moving to a new cabin (just a few hundred feet away from my old one). It's nicer and bigger, but a little more expensive. Mine was an older one with less insulation so they wanted to shut it down for the winter. I will have a new roommate, Ian, who is one of the few people working in the winter visitors center. There aren't too many winter visitors around here, so he might be bored a lot.

Looks like I might need to buy some skis...

Later,

Jared