Without Heat: Day 307

Casey and I heating our cold powerless cabin with candles, rum, and cribbage. Luckily, it's only been in the mid 20's at night, otherwise with no alternative source of heat besides our fuel fired stove (which requires electricity to run), we might be a little more than just uncomfortably cold.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-800 f/4 @ 1/2 sec.

Snow, Snow, and More Snow: Day 306

The second winter storm of the season was a whopper. Close to 14 inches of snow at our cabin, downed trees covering the roads, loss of power to over 21,000 homes according to the local utility, and many cars in the ditch. We've been in the dark with no power since yesterday, as crews work all hours to restore the grid.

Canon EOS 60D, Bower 8mm Fisheye CS, ISO-400 f/8 @ 1/160 sec.

Fluff: Day 305

Well, it's come to this. A photo-a-day, for a year, is a lot. Grad school is making it very difficult to find new material for this blog, but I'm almost there. For those loyal readers out there, I hope for your sake the next sixty days will be better than this.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon Ef 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-800 f/11 @ 20 seconds.

Bloodless Moon: Day 304

No blood moon for Alaska.  We are longitudinally deprived of the viewing opportunity.  Instead, we get freezing rain.  Here is a picture of the full moon over the Indian Ocean off Western Australia.

Melt: Day 303

The roughly seven inches of fresh snowfall we received yesterday has already begun to melt back as temperatures peak above freezing. We probably won't have a permanent snow pack until mid to late October. These initial flurries are just practice for the real thing.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-500 f/4 @ 1/400 sec.

Snow Returns: Day 302

First snowfall of the 2016 winter season. Should warm up over the next few days, so I doubt much of it will stick around.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-500 f/4 @ 1/1600 sec.

Deep In Thought: Day 301

Reef contemplating the meaning of life.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM, ISO-100 f/1.8 @ 1/400 sec.

Paper Birch: Day 300

Not the most exciting subject matter for day 300, but hey, they told me I'd be busy going to grad school, and they were right.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-400 f/6.3 @ 1/50 sec.

Spruce Grouse: Day 299

For hunters, the spruce grouse quite possibly is one of the easiest game birds to kill. Myself, along with an accompaniment of seventeen undergraduate students, basically walked up on this bird during a forest ecology lab this afternoon. I was showing them a white spruce forest, when we came upon this plump bird, which perched motionless on a fallen branch while we looked on mere meters away.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-1600 f/5.6 @ 1/50 sec.

The Last of Liquid Water: Day 298

In just a few weeks, this will all be frozen. Temperatures are staying the high 30's low 40's all day now, with snow in the forecast for much of next week.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon Ef 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-640 f/6.3 @ 1/160 sec.

Salmon: Day 297

Another sign of the changing seasons.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon Ef 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-400 f/6.3 @ 1/100 sec.

Parents Invade Fairbanks: Day 296

The folks are in town for a few nights. Their first time visiting Alaska. Today we took a stroll through the black spruce bogs and paper birch stands of the boreal forest. No moose sightings, but the tracks were fresh.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-640 f/6.3 @ 1/160 sec.

Life's Ruff: Day 295

This represents the majority of Reef's day when Casey and I are away at school. He leads a rough life.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-800 f/14 @ 1/3 sec.

Little Green Men: Day 294

The truth is out there...

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-1250 f/4 @ 10 seconds.

Calves: Day 293

A herd of female reindeer yearlings we visited at the reindeer research farm at UAF. Reindeer become sexually mature within their first year, so in order to prevent unwanted pregnancy's they have to keep the males and females separate from a very young age. The one on the far right is named Kaia, tag number 1513.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-400 f/5 @ 1/320 sec.

Fall Dogs: Day 292

Another look at the fall colors of interior Alaska.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-400 f/7.1 @ 1/640 sec.

Reindeer Farm: Day 291

Casey, Zeus, and I were granted behind-the-scenes access to a reindeer farm at UAF. The perks of befriending your neighbors.

Canon EOS60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-400 f/5 @ 1/500 sec.

Cosmic Flow: Day 290

Everyone has been talking about how good the northern lights were a few nights back. It could possibly have been the best show of this entire aurora season. Looking at the data, the storm peaked at a planetary index of 7, a class 3 geomagnetic storm. A massive river of charged particles with intense greens and bright pinks poured over the entire night sky.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-400 f/4 @ 5 seconds.

First Snow: Day 289

Big lofty white flakes fell from the sky today. Fall is short lived in the frozen north. It snowed for several hours, but none of it stuck around. This soon will change.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-400 f/4 @ 1/80 sec.

Kp 5: Day 288

The perks of late night airport runs in Fairbanks.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-400 f/4 @ 5 seconds.

Yellow Wood: Day 287

Lately, Casey has been reciting this poem every time we finish our daily Reef walks.

"The Road Not Taken"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair;
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Through as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaved no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-100 f/20 @ 1.3 seconds.

Yellow: Day 286

Fall colors continue to amaze. 

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-320 f/5 @ 1/500 sec. 

Aurora Returns: Day 285

Earth was struck by a geomagnetic storm last night, but clouds overtook the skies around Fairbanks. With the return of darkness to the far north comes increasing opportunities to see the northern lights once again. Here's a photo of the lights over Tolovana Hot Springs a few nights back.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-2500 f/4 @ 15 seconds.

Hot Water: Day 284

Soak'n up the colors.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-400 f/5 @ 1/640 sec.

Tolovana: Day 283

The fall colors were in full effect on our long but scenic hike to Tolovana Hotsprings. Good times were had by all.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-400 f/7.1 @ 1/400 sec.

Adventuring: Day 282

Getting ready for a 10 mile hike to hotsprings. Zeus looks very happy about it.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-800 f/4 @ 1/8 sec.

Autumn: Day 281

It's been a hectic week of graduate school orientations and TA training, but things are finally starting to settle into a groove. Since I've been so busy, my last few posts have been random archived photos from the past. Here's the current state of the boreal forest in interior Alaska. The fall colors have really accelerated over the past few days.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-200 f/11 @ 1/200 sec.

Still Not Relevant: Day 280

This is an owl.

Not Relevant: Day 279

This photo has nothing to do with current events, but I'm feeling drained after a week of orientations and meetings...so here's a New Zealand White-capped Albatross.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-400 f/7.1 @ 1/1250 sec.

Shadows: Day 278

Our routine afternoon walk around the block with Reef.

Casey actually took this one: iPhone 5, ISO-50 f/2.4 @ 1/125 sec.

Seasons Change Fast: Day 277

In the not so distant future, this is what Fairbanks will look like. Frozen. In fact it snowed briefly at our house last night and became cold enough to form a layer of frost on the car windshields. And it's still August, well barely. Crazy to think not very long ago temperatures were in the 90's, although I wasn't around to experience it. One upside to the recent cold-snap, dead mosquitoes.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-800 f/5.6 @ 1/500 sec.

Paper Wasps: Day 276

This is a paper wasp nest Casey discovered in a tree next to our house. In early spring, queen wasps emerge from dormancy and search for an appropriate location to construct a nest using wood shavings and saliva, eating nectar for energy while in the process pollinating spring wildflowers. Once the rudimentary nest is ready, she lays eggs that hatch into larvae. The developing larvae are provisioned by the queen with insects until they mature into adult"worker" wasps. The workers take over the labor of expanding the nest while the queen continues to lay around one hundred eggs per day. As the population of the nest increases, developing larvae actually feed the colony by converting insect exoskeletons into sugars they regurgitate to the adults. Towards the end of summer, the original queen lays a special clutch of virgin queen and drone eggs. Once matured, drones and virgin queens disperse form the nest for special mating areas. Drones can discern from queens of their home nests, ensuring interbreeding does not occur. At this point the queen stops laying eggs, shutting off the supply of sugar produced by the larvae, and forcing the workers to scavenge for food until they eventually die. Workers kind of get the short end of the stick. Newly mated queens retreat to a safe location and wait out the long winter until spring, where the whole cycle starts again. Fascinating.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-400 f/5.6 @ 1/250 sec.

Rain: Day 275

I seem to have brought St. Paul's weather back with me to Fairbanks. It's been continuously raining here since I arrived a few days ago. Swollen rivers are breaching their banks, leading to flood warnings for locations upstream of control dams. There's even an inch of snow accumulation foretasted tonight for elevations down to 1,000 ft. Summer appears to be over.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon 17-40mm f/4L USM + Canon 25mm Extension Tube II, ISO-800 f/4 @1/320 sec. 

Final Sunset: Day 274

My final sunset on St. Paul Island, one of the few I was able to witness during my three months in the field.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-250 f/5.6 @ 1/800 sec.

Shrooms and Shooms: Day 273

Not sure which committee determines holidays like National Dog Day, but never-the-less it's another excuse to post a photo of Shooms (one or Reef's many nicknames). Here he is looking up from eating grass near a cluster of giant Super Mario mushrooms growing along our back road.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-1000 f/4 @ 1/200 sec.

Beluga: Day 272

I regretfully didn't photograph any of the spectacular scenery during the ten hour the drive back from Homer to Fairbanks. The Alaska Range is just beginning to pop with fall colors. Once I'm on the road, I just want to keep driving. I was forced, however, to pull over and watch a group of maybe 200 Belugas swimming along the banks of Turnagain Arm on the Seward Highway. I've read that late summer is the best time to see Belugas around Cook Inlet, as they come in to feed on the salmon runs. Honestly they're not much to look at when they surface, but the idea of Beluags is pretty cool. Beats seeing them in a tank.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-640 f/5.6 @ 1/2500 sec.

Home Again: Day 271

It was a long drive back from Homer where I left my truck, navigating the hoards of summer tourists bound for Denali, but I finally made it home to Fairbanks. Happy to report Reef still likes me. I got here just in time for the beginning of fall colors. The birch leaves are just starting to fade to yellow and fall from the canopy.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-1000 f/4 @ 1/40 sec.

Dock Dog: Day 270

If you're seeing a photo of Reef on a dock in Seward, this means I made yesterday's flight and I'm currently in transit, soon to be reunited with him.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-640 f/5.6 @ 1/1000 sec.

Sunny 16: Day 269

Today's the day, the moment of truth. Will I make the flight or not? Check-in doors open at noon, and I plan to be there at 11, hopefully putting me at the top of the standby list. If I make the 4 o-clock flight, it's four hours to Anchorage, with a stopover on St. George, and another hour or so to Homer, getting in sometime around 10 pm. I'll spend a brief night in Homer then drive ten hours back up to Fairbanks the following day. If I don't make the flight, it's another three days on St. Paul. We'll see what happens.

By-the-way, this photo is an example of the "Sunny 16 Rule", a method for attaining a perfect exposure without using a light meter. The rule is this - on a sunny day, set the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the ISO setting. (equivalent to film speed). For example, I wanted to photograph this scene using an ISO of 200, so I set my aperture to f/16 and my shutter speed to the reciprocal of 200, which is 1/200 of a second, and voila, a perfect exposure. Works every time.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-200 f/16 @ 1/200 sec.

Soaking Up The Scenery: Day 268

There's a slight chance today will be my final full day on St. Paul Island. Tomorrow's flight back to Anchorage on paper is all booked up, but I plan to show up early before the airport doors open and put myself on standby in case a seat opens up. It has worked for people in the past. My scheduled flight is on the 26th, so either way, I should be getting back to Fairbanks before then end of next week.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM, ISO-100 f/10 @ 0.8 seconds.

Ribbon Seal: Day 267

While working on data yesterday morning, we received a call at Staff Quarters from a local who reported seeing a ribbon seal near West Landing. A ribbon seal!? We of course immediately stopped what we were doing and jumped in the truck to investigate. Although they range throughout the Bering Sea, ribbon seals almost never haul out on land. They are strongly associated with the pack ice during the breeding and molting seasons from March to July, and spend the rest of the year far out to sea. Ribbon seals have the capacity to reach depths of over 2,000 ft, possibly aided by two unique air sacks under the flanking ribbons, that might serve as a mechanism for buoyancy control and oxygen storage. With this in mind, seeing a ribbon seal on St. Paul is a rare once in a lifetime occurrence. We combed the harbor with no sign of a ribbon. On a whim, Greg decided to give Salt Lagoon a look, and sure enough there it was, hauled out on an exposed mud flat. This animal remained in the same spot all day, and I managed to army crawl to the edge of the grass line to snap a few photos at sunset.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-800 f/5.6 @ 1/640 sec.

Mini-Murre: Day 266

It's only a matter of days now before murre chicks begin raining down from the cliffs above, as they leap forth into the unknown from the ledges where they hatched; much to the delight of the arctic fox pups waiting below. Provisioned by their fathers, the ones that don't end up as dinner will finish developing at sea. This thick-billed murre chick is from my favorite site T4 on plot 87 at Zapadni. At 23 days old it's reached true mini-murre status. Click HERE to see how much this little guy has changed in 13 days. I don't expect him to be around on the next check.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-800 f/5.6 @ 1/500 sec.

Cobble Fire: Day 265

In a last minute decision yesterday evening, I hopped on an atv and drove out to Lincoln Bight on the northwest side of the island, in hopes of catching a good sunset and photographing bioluminescence in the waves after dark. There have been reports of a massive algal bloom in the North Pacific and Bering Sea, of the type that typically emit a blue fluorescent glow when agitated, so I figured the time is now. Clouds stifled the sunset colors minutes before the finale, and darkness still takes a while at this latitude, so I canned the idea and went back to bed. I did, however, build a very nice fire on the cobble beach and listened to the surf surge in and out, so it wasn't a total bust.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-400 f/22 @ 2.5 seconds.

Revisiting the Past: Day 264

I have developed quite the catalog of photos during my time on St. Paul, so with just over a week left to go before heading home, I plan to re-live a few of them. Here's another shot from our close encounter with a pod of transient (Bigg's) killer whales during a boat based survey earlier this month. The leading animal has a small line of kelp draped over her dorsal fin.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-500 f/5.6 @ 1/4000 sec.

Reflecting In The Waves: Day 263

I have come to the conclusion after re-reading past entries from this blog, that if I ever decide to pursue a career in writing, however slim a chance that might be, I'm going to need to find myself a good...editor. Yes, I realize that has nothing to do with this beach scene. Then again maybe it does. The seashore is always a great place for self reflection.

Canon EOS 60D, Bower 8mm f/3.5 Fisheye CS, ISO-200 f/? @ 1/60 sec.

Cat-dog Nap: Day 262

On this day, possibly my final day off on St. Paul, I plan to do as this young Arctic fox does. Nap. Except instead of bedding down in the remnants of a failed red-faced cormorant nest I likely helped destroy, I will be using my bed. Screw it, maybe I'll go for a hike.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-400 f/5.6 @ 1/800 sec.

Barely A Sliver: Day 261

Here is the exact moment the sun rolled off the edge of the earth. The only time this entire field season I witnessed an unobstructed view of a sunset on St. Paul, and what a sunset it was.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM + 1.4x, ISO-400 f/5.6 @ 1/1600 sec. 

Lava Tubes: Day 260

Near the summit of Bogoslof Hill, one of St. Paul's extinct volcanic peaks, is an extensive lava tube reaching a few hundred yards into the heart of the island. During an eruption, lava tends to spill out of the source point in discrete channels. Like an artery of super-heated rock, the lava begins to solidify and forms an exterior crust, creating tubular walls of rock that insulate the hot lava flowing within. Eventually the pressures forcing magma up from chambers deep inside the volcano subside, closing the valve on the eruption. Deprived of lava, the volcanic arteries drain and cool, leaving behind vast empty tubes of black volcanic rock. The round dome-like chamber in this photo was accessed through a narrow slit off the main lava tube, which I believe is actually a type of "inflationary cave", where a bubble of pressurized lava pushed back against the surrounding rock and later drained into the main channel.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, ISO-200 f/4 @ 30 seconds.

From On High: Day 259

Is this still considered a "selfie" if you used a tripod? I prefer the term "self portrait".

Canon EOS 60D, Bower 8mm f/3.5 Fish Eye CS, ISO-200 f/? (manual aperture) @ 1/60 sec.

Gentian: Day 258

While exploring the island's interior, I came upon an atv trail that led to the summit of North Hill, offering an expansive view of the entire northern coast. It was a stunning scene, but the micro views from the summit were equally as interesting, such as this miniature forest of Whitish Gentian (Gentiana algida), bizarre tubular white and blue flowers that speckled the rim of the extinct cinder cone. Gentiana are late bloomers, one of the last wildflowers of the season, and are relatively common in alpine meadows across western North America.

Canon EOS 60D, Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM + Canon EF Extension Tube II, ISO-320 f/14 @ 1/320 sec.