Granite Tors

One of my favourite hikes in Alaska. Had to think about it when looking at coverage of the wildfire in Yosemite because parts of the trail had been destroyed by fire when we were hiking there (we almost lost our way and had to make a big detour to get back on track). A "tor" is a free-standing rock formation which has been preserved due to the resistance of weathering of the rocks relative to their surrounding.

It's also nice to see how the vegetation conquers back the areas of previous fires. 

 

Matanuska Glacier

Yeah, I know, it's been a while since I was in Alaska but I cannot get it out of my mind. I've spent much more time in Norway and don't really think that much about it anymore (which is not really because of the country but mostly due to the bad memories I had there). 

So today I felt like Matanuska - one of my favourite spots in Alaska. It is near the Glenn Highway so you can actually drive to the terminus of the glacier which makes it easily accessible but not overcrowded (not many places in Alaska actually are too busy). The glacier is about 43 km long and the best part is that the terminus is quite flat so you can actually walk on it without too much danger (there are warnings of course but if you don't risk it you miss a lot). There is also a campsite closeby so you can go to the glacier any time of the day/night and then go to sleep (that far north it hardly gets dark in summer anyway so you have lots of time for activities). The coolest thing by far though was the lake on the glacier!

Mission travel bug completed!

This time I was successful reaching the destination AND finding the cache. It was a hiking trip in the snow - according to the GPS ~5.2 km in a nice round trip. Since a few people have used the path, hiking was fairly easy except for a few rare areas where I sank in. And the big advantage: no people on the trails at all - they are all skiing on the illuminated track. Since it was getting dark I even saw two moose which is the very first time I've ever seen them close to Oslo. Due to the lack of light and them moving away from me very fast and a missing zoom lens I couldn't take a picture to proove I've seen them :(
Yet I can show some other moose pictures from Alaska:

Running ...

... looking...

... picking up junior...

... and into the woods.

All taken from the car in the middle of the day (on a road with no cars though). We didn't understand why she was running parallel to the road but after the small one turned up to our surprise it was clear where she was running to.

Snowballfight ...

... even in summer
Just thought I'd post a picture of myself once in a while since usually I am behind the camera.
This one is stolen from Artyom but I'm sure he'll forgive me.

White Mountains

I had this sudden urge to blog something about Alaska. So here some pictures of a ski trip in the White Mountains. The plan was to ski 20 miles a day but we expected some tracks - there weren't any so from time to time I sank into the snow up to my hips - ok I'm short but still. The night we stayed ouside with a fantastic aurora. The trip was quite tough but really nice.

 

P.S. The camera at that time was not really good so please excuse the picture quality

Why snow?

Therefore:









And before you get the wrong idea - no there is still no snow here in Oslo. The pictures were taken in November 2004 in Alaska. As long as I cannot take any new pictures here I just have to look at "old" ones which I think are still nice.