Monday, June 25, 2007

Summer Fun

No shortage of excitement around here in the last few weeks.

I rode my bike out the park road a few Saturdays ago. Went about 50 miles and through some good mountain passes to get to Toklat road camp and spent the night with some friends, then caught a bus back the next day.

Last weekend I was part of a search party looking for 2 missing hikers. We set out at 9pm and one of the other search parties found them at 3am. It was a long night of tromping through the forest in a rain storm, but was pretty exciting to be part of an organized search and rescue.

Last week the weather was good enough to finally get some sound equipment up to Kahiltna Pass. It is right next to Mt. McKinley, at about 10,300 ft elevation, and right smack in the middle of the Alaska Range. We got to use the special high altitude rescue helicopter called the "Lama" because the normal one I use can't go that high.

The Solstice was on Thursday so we're back to losing daylight, but we have plenty to spare at the moment.

I'll be at the Grand Canyon on a "business trip" August 4-11th.

Here are the photos taken along the way...

Ian fishtailing the dogsled.
George found a wormhole in the Eldridge Glacier.
The Ravens got bigger (compare to last post).
Bike trip over Polychrome Pass.
Crevasses in the Kahiltna Glacier.
Captain Yellowshirt and the sound station on Kahiltna Pass.
The Lama high altitude helicopter coming to pick us up.
Cheers!