Beautiful Snow Covering

Feb. 15 With a high of 19, low of -1 and 4.3 inches of new snow everything was covered with fresh light snow. We had a few visitors that enjoyed the warmer temperatures for a day's outing.

Woodpecker

Feb. 13. With the ground covered in snow and temperatures in the low teens, many birds come to our feeders. The hairy and the downy (smaller of the 2) are frequent visitors. This is a female downy.

New Snow (11+ inches)

At approx. 3 am on Feb. 11 snow began to fall and it continued all day. By noon Feb. 12 we have approx 11.5 inches of new snow and everything is white and beautiful. Of course that means get out the snow blower and groomer to get trails ready. With the warmer, more normal temperature (in the high teens and 20's) we will see more folkes on the trails. Since Jan. 30 our maximum temperature has been single digit with three days on the minus side. Our lowest temperature during this time was minus 18 degrees. Of course the temperature in the interior has been much lower . . . Tok, Alaska recorded a minus 70 last week.

Alaska's Entry in the US Snow Carving Competition

Last year Paul (our winter trail volunteer), Sarah and Patrick won the Alaska competition in snow carving held at the Fur Rondy. This year they traveled to Wisconsin representing Alaska and their entry "You have to Meditate to Levitate" took second place (missing first by only 3 points) with fifteen teams entering. We are very proud of our local artist. We will travel to Fairbanks the first week in March to see his efforts when carving in ice.

Snow Elephant

Another view of the second place carving in the US Competition at Lake Geneva, WI .

Note the mouse sitting on the elephant trunk.

Winter Camping

Camper headed out to Rapids Camp to spend a couple days in a tent.

The lows at night were between minus 10 and 20 so lots of the proper

gear is needed. He had a large pack and is pulling a sled.

Hind quarter of a Moose

Last week Francis helped Craig work on putting his airplane back together after a rebuild. On Tuesday the owner of the hanger at Willow, AK got a call from his daughter that a moose was in the yard and she was afraid the moose was going to stomp the dogs. He told her to scare if off. The next call was to say they could not get the moose to leave so he called the state trooper. Shortly there after the trooper called to say that the moose had charged him and he shot it. Eddy said he had a freezer full of meat but Craig said he would take it. So to make a long story short Craig and Francis left the hanger to dress a 1200 lb. moose and bring the meat home. The weather was hovering at 0 so they hung it in the garage until there was time to be cut it up. Here is Craig bringing one quarter into his basement so they could work at 60 degrees instead of 35.