Alright I guess I'll begin with hiking Mount Juneau in my underwear and nothing else. Its been incredibly hot up here in Alaska. Last weekend we broke record when it reached 85 in Juneau. So anyways a bunch of us hiked Mount Juneau and I started out with pants and a poly pro shirt. I had a pretty bad head cold so I was already having issues. When we left tree line I took off the pants and shirt and went straight up!

The next week I headed out to Admiralty Island, The Fortress of Bears. It has the highest concentration of brown bears in the world. We went out there to rebuild the tracks for the kayak tram. It looks like an old railway car on a small track. You load up your kayak or canoe and hike it in a mile and unload at the next part of your journey. We stayed out in a cabin in Oliver Inlet while we were there. We only saw one bear, a few deer, and we nursed a baby bird back to health. It was a really cool back country experience.

When I got back, Carrie and I hiked Mount Jumbo together. We were about 40 minutes from the top when we decided to turn around. There was this really cool meadow between all the snow that we shared a beer together in. It was pretty sketchy getting to the top and pretty windy so we turned around. On the way down, I slid on my butt through the snow. It was so much fun!

That night I walked back from the bar at sunrise, 3:30 am. It was a gorgeous sunrise. In the morning a bunch of us hiked Mount Juneau again. This time I summitted it and then we hiked along the ridge line for a few peaks and could see the Taku Valley and some of the Juneau Ice fields. The view was incredible. We slid down on our butts down to Granite Creek Trail in Yankee Basin and hiked out. The slid down was so awesome! I want to do it all day everyday. I said eat your heart out Wet N Wild! I'm sliding down a mountain!

The end of a trilogy

So its the perfect end to my trilogy. When I first came up to Alaska in 2011, I stayed in Mendenhall Campground for the night. The next morning Kevin and a few other crew leaders picked me up. After I filled out my exit paperwork, Kevin drove me away from the shop. That night I stayed in Mendenhall Campground. That's the way a trilogy should end, making that perfect circle back to the begining. My time with SAGA is over and since I've made that circle, I shouldn't try to make a fourth.

That weekend I went to Brewfest in Haines. The first night I stayed at Portage Cove again. In the morning I packed things down and went over to Carrie's spot and set up next to her. We went for an uneventful hike instead of running the five k. Then we tackled brewfest. On the way back, I got separated from my group and met some interesting characters before being scooped up by the youth core leaders. I went back to their camp for a while. This year I got a hand massage from a chick. If you didn't hear last year I had gotten a hand massage from a gay guy. I went back to my tent and slept until 3 am and saw an amazing sunset? sunrise?

Monday I started at Trailmix. Our current project is making Outerpoint trail wheel chair accessible. That week was gorgeous. A couple times we got to ride the tram up Mt. Roberts to do some work up there. That weekend I helped Carrie clean fiddle head ferns for pickling and hitch hiked for 4 hours. This past week I was a little under the weather so not a whole lot happening.

I'm way behind

Again its been awhile. The youth corps leaders got up here back in April. The weekend they came in, a few of us went and hiked Salmon Creek. At first it was just a steep hike up a road, then it went into the woods and went straight up. I think we gained 500 ft in elevation in a half mile or something like that. There was a cable to help pull ourselves along. Once we got up to the top, the lake was frozen over and the dam was massive. We felt so tiny. One of the new crew leaders came up with us and so we did a little ice breaker game, stuff your mouth with fiber bar and try to say your name, where you're from, and your favorite movie quote.

The next weekend we went to Juneau Jumpers (competitive jump rope team) and Contra dancing. What a night! So there's this song that a friend of mine kept playing and now its stuck in my head. "Let the fire's burn tonight, let the jugs of wine get drunk, let the truth be known tonight, don't let yourself go hide, go and sing to the mountains, go and sing to the moon, go and sing to just about everything because everything is you." I love Juneau, I don't ever want to leave. That day was pouring rain and one of the worst days since I've been here, but that song rang in my head and that friend explained how amazing it was to be here and I totally agree. Its this little locked in town that the only way in or out is by plane or boat. Its surrounded by mountains and all these islands. Once you've summited the mountains, there's thousands more and a giant ice field. It may rain a lot but everything is so green and big. The sun today has been out for just a few hours and the flowers are  coming out just because of it. Every turn there's a beautiful waterfall making it's way back to the ocean. And the community! Its that small Midwest community combined with hippies. Is there a competitive jump rope team back home that the whole town shows up for because its the middle schoolers? They even did an act in the dark with glow in the dark jump ropes! Do you go to the bar or contra dancing and make up 25% of the people there or know 50% of these people? When we went to the drag show during the intermission, I knew 3 out of the 5 guys they pulled up the stage to dance! I still can't get over that. I love this place.

Last week we hiked Peterson Lake and went to the Arboretum both we amazing. This week was chainsaw training for the new batch of crew leaders. Pictures will have to be uploaded soon. So I just saw I had a few questions so let me answer those. I've learned a lot about the first and second growth forests up here and formation of the land. I forgot to say I saw a porcupine this weekend and a river otter. The river otter was walking on land!

Struggling

Its finally here...the struggle to keep doing this. I don't know what to say or talk about. I haven't been keeping a journal this year and I miss talking to my leather bound friend every night. Put my troubles down on paper in front of me and see the memories I've had throughout the week. I'm not even writing letters this year either. I couldn't give a real reason I'm not. It's not like what I'm doing is overly exhausting. I'm going to bed early. I don't know what's wrong with me.
It's been so long I don't know where to begin...I don't want to talk about what's been going on in the office and the only memorable work we've done was doing stream stablization for Fish and Wildlife. It was a new idea for them, but something I had already done before with the Park Service. To keep the bank from getting eroded, one section we added dirt and planted willow, the second side was the part that was a repeat for me. What we did was dug out our bank then filled it with 3 foot tree rounds. After that we put in Willow and covered them with dirt and then repeated the process until it was at the level of rest of the bank. The hope is for the rounds to break down or suuport the Willow to grow along the bank. The rounds were either Alder (Nitrogen fixing) or Cottonwood.
So it started snowing again on Fridaty. Out at the EVC we had about a foot of snow. I really enjoy sleeping in my new dry tent and hearing the snow or rain on the rain fly. I also got a new sleeping bag so I've been nice and toasty!

Low Ropes

No questions this week! So another week has come and gone. There's still a foot of snow out by our tents, and our tents only. Everywhere else in Juneau the snow has melted. I guess that isn't true anymore since its actually snowing right now. I can't think of anything exciting at the beginning of the week, it was just training the jerks. Carrie's little brother is the best jerk I've ever seen. Yesterday was the low ropes course for the staff, field supports, and the crew leaders. We played a lot of awesome games. My favorite was the tank game. One person was blind folded (the tank), another person had their back to the "tank" and shouted out commands, the last person points to the commander to tell them what to shout. Carrie's little brother made me laugh so hard he couldn't hear the instructions that were being shouted to him. Then when I was the tank I went down to pick up the ball and Mark stole it from me and so I grabbed his leg to keep him from going away. We ended up having a wrestling match in the snow blindfolded until he pegged me in the head. That was my favorite memory from the day. The last bit was pretty memorable, too. We did one of those human pretzel things and I spent 30 minutes staring at Rob's butt. That was pretty great, it apparently touched my mustache (Carrie's little brother is narrating). Last night was first Friday and I got to hang out with Megs and John, which really made my night. That's pretty much it, until next week!

Happy Easter

"If you don't follow through with your dreams you might as well be a vegetable."
So to answer the question from last week, I had my day pack plus my expedition pack. I had to take 5 pounds from my expedition pack and put them in my day pack because my day pack was my carry on. I moved my Red Wings over and a can of chili and that brought me under the 50 pound limit. I couldn't close my day pack though!
I just realized there was a spellcheck button at the top of the screen so that should help out. Alright so I've wrapped up another week in Juneau. The snow has started melting out at the EVC (the Eagle Valley Center). This week we were camped out in the snow which is a little bit cold, but not to bad. Getting out of the tent every morning is the hardest. We had our chainsaw training this week. We got to spend the day with the god and legend, Peter Cross. Chuck Norris makes Chuck Norris jokes about Peter Cross. Peter Cross uses the trees he chops down for tooth picks. Peter Cross could drop a tree with his bare hands, but he'd rather waste gas. It was great working with him and learning from the best. It took him 5 minutes to buck a 60 foot tree, limb it, and drag the limbs into the woods.
The tree I took down was a 12 in cottonwood that was maybe 70 feet long. It was good to use the saw again and drop trees, but I was pretty nervous with Peter watching over me.
Hmmm...other exciting things from this week? Oh so Thursday I stayed in town with some friends and had a really good birthday. I slept on a memory foam mattress and it felt amazing. Saturday the Field Supports and the Crew Leaders all did the Herbert Glacier hike. This was my third time so I was too excited. That changed when we started exploring some of the ice caves and hiking around on the ice caves. I'll have pictures up soon, I'm a few weeks behind and still trying to get Florida pictures up. I like the question comments so I can put the answers in the next week blog.

Arrival!

Okay so after struggling to get in this morning, "time for an upgrade!" So last time I wrote I had just arrived in Seattle. The next morning I got up really early and walked the two blocks to the Amtrak station. I wouldn't recommend that Hostel to anyone. I had to repack things when I got to the train station because for some reason your checked bags can't weigh more than 50 pounds. This to me is really silly because a train can pull a lot so 54 pounds is not going to affect it to much. This year I made sure to sit on the "coast" side of the train and I got to watch the sun rise against Mt. Rainer. What a great way to start the morning!
I arrived in Bellingham and walked next door to the ferry terminal. I just had to wait a few hours. As soon as I got on I ran up to the Solarium. I met some really cool people. A couple of them were old guys that had either just retired or were thinking they were going to die in the next couple years. They wanted to see Alaska before it was too late. I helped this chick set up her tent on the deck, but she took it down because of the rain. While I was eating dinner, one of the old guys sat at one of the tables staring out the window watching the sun kiss the ocean as it set. All I could think of Worlds Fastest Indian.
Kevin came and got me early in the morning as the snow dumped us. He took me back to his place where a big comfy couch was waiting for me. I met a sleeping Nimrod. With an hour before we had to leave, Nimrod woke up and we had an hour to get to know each other. He drove me into work and two of us were welcomed by the familar staff faces and the other Field Support Specailists. It was good to be back. The first day going out to the EVC I was in heaven. I really missed this place. So all week was spent getting back in the groove of things.
This weekend we came into town. We stayed at the Alaskan and I was really disappointed in that hotel. Nimrod and I went down to start the bar crawl and we met a really interesting character. He started rubbing Nimrod's arm and kept trying to get us to play pool with him. It was pretty great.
This morning there was a fight out the street and that brings us to the present. Sitting in the Silverbow blogging...