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Gratuitous Alaska post
Still dealing with family stuff, I drove south today (Fairbanks to Wasilla) to spend a few weeks with my mom - I'm here until Feb. 19, so may be kind of intermittently online. The trip was supposed to be earlier this week, and before that, last week, but it's been in a holding pattern of weather delays that finally cleared up.
I've done this drive a million times, but it's always long, and scenic, and a slightly different experience every time. It's minimum about 5 1/2 hours and was more like 6 1/2 hours today because the roads were not great. We've had a couple of big storm systems passing through in the last week or two, and I knew they got a lot of snow in the Denali area, but hoo boy, entire hours of the drive were like driving down a white tunnel with 6-foot-high snow walls on either side. I tried to take some pictures through my windshield to capture the general effect.
There's scenery behind them snow walls, I swear! Normally this is one of the most scenic parts of the drive - Denali Park's Broad Pass. Today you couldn't see a damn thing, and not for the usual reasons (fog and clouds) but rather because 6-8' of snow was in the way.
Hours of this - just a white tunnel and the low winter sun glaring off the icy road. Oh, and lots and lots of snow removal equipment. They definitely had all the plows and scrapers out in force, which was great to see - and actually considering that there was a full on blizzard in this area on Wednesday, the roads were pretty good.
I saw the ice grooving machines at work, I think for the first time (you can see the grooves in the ice in the picture, the parallel lines catching the sun - they provide extra traction in places where the ice is unlikely to melt for a while). Basically, they use the big plows with the scraper blades underneath, and there's an attachment like a giant iron comb that drags behind the plow. Passing them was a bit nerve-wracking because both the blade and the scraper are wide enough to extend into the other lane and it jumps all over the place as it bounces over the ice, so you'll be passing and it'll jink sideways at you.
I took this picture a bit earlier on the drive, before the snow got really deep and closed in around the road. The mountains are blocking the sun, but as you look down the frozen Nenana River towards the opening to the pass, you can see the sunshine up ahead.
There was also a part of the highway which had been closed by an avalanche over the weekend. I've never driven through a bonafide avalanche before, and I wondered if I would recognize it as different from the rest of the highway, but it did look different! It was the same head-high walls of snow on either side, but these were much more chaotic and dirty and full of rocks and bits of trees. I didn't take any photos because I didn't have my camera ready, and I was definitely not going to stop. (Parking to take pictures in an avalanche slide zone is not a good way to live to a healthy old age.)
Moose count: 2
(Crossing the road together south of Broad Pass)
I honestly love that drive. I haven't driven it in the winter nearly as often as summer, because the weather is more likely to be terrible and I just don't have reason to get out in it as often. And I don't know if I've ever driven it in the aftermath of a big storm like this one. (During a big storm has happened once or twice ...)
I've done this drive a million times, but it's always long, and scenic, and a slightly different experience every time. It's minimum about 5 1/2 hours and was more like 6 1/2 hours today because the roads were not great. We've had a couple of big storm systems passing through in the last week or two, and I knew they got a lot of snow in the Denali area, but hoo boy, entire hours of the drive were like driving down a white tunnel with 6-foot-high snow walls on either side. I tried to take some pictures through my windshield to capture the general effect.
There's scenery behind them snow walls, I swear! Normally this is one of the most scenic parts of the drive - Denali Park's Broad Pass. Today you couldn't see a damn thing, and not for the usual reasons (fog and clouds) but rather because 6-8' of snow was in the way.
Hours of this - just a white tunnel and the low winter sun glaring off the icy road. Oh, and lots and lots of snow removal equipment. They definitely had all the plows and scrapers out in force, which was great to see - and actually considering that there was a full on blizzard in this area on Wednesday, the roads were pretty good.
I saw the ice grooving machines at work, I think for the first time (you can see the grooves in the ice in the picture, the parallel lines catching the sun - they provide extra traction in places where the ice is unlikely to melt for a while). Basically, they use the big plows with the scraper blades underneath, and there's an attachment like a giant iron comb that drags behind the plow. Passing them was a bit nerve-wracking because both the blade and the scraper are wide enough to extend into the other lane and it jumps all over the place as it bounces over the ice, so you'll be passing and it'll jink sideways at you.
I took this picture a bit earlier on the drive, before the snow got really deep and closed in around the road. The mountains are blocking the sun, but as you look down the frozen Nenana River towards the opening to the pass, you can see the sunshine up ahead.
There was also a part of the highway which had been closed by an avalanche over the weekend. I've never driven through a bonafide avalanche before, and I wondered if I would recognize it as different from the rest of the highway, but it did look different! It was the same head-high walls of snow on either side, but these were much more chaotic and dirty and full of rocks and bits of trees. I didn't take any photos because I didn't have my camera ready, and I was definitely not going to stop. (Parking to take pictures in an avalanche slide zone is not a good way to live to a healthy old age.)
Moose count: 2
(Crossing the road together south of Broad Pass)
I honestly love that drive. I haven't driven it in the winter nearly as often as summer, because the weather is more likely to be terrible and I just don't have reason to get out in it as often. And I don't know if I've ever driven it in the aftermath of a big storm like this one. (During a big storm has happened once or twice ...)