12 months in photos

I went through my blog archives tonight to pick out my favorite photos of the year, and it was hard to decide. I don't really think of myself as a "photographer." Photographers generally take photos for the purpose of taking photos, as works of art and expression. I'm more of a "photo documentarian." I take photos for the purpose of illustrating a particular time or place or event (most often a bike ride.) As such, it's nearly impossible for me to separate the actual aesthetic quality of photos from my emotions about the events and places surrounding them. But I tried. One for each month - 12 months in photos.

The top photo is my favorite of the year, taken on Sept. 25 along the Klondike Highway, south of Carcross, Yukon, during a late fall bike tour of the Golden Circle. Maybe it's because we spend so much of the year washed in the blues and grays of winter, but all of that color still leaves me in awe.

"Long ride," Jan. 10: I guess it's pretty clear that I like this photo since I used it on the top of my blog and on the cover of my book. It's a nice example of camera serendipity - all I did was set the 10-second self-timer on the camera, wedge it in the snow on top of the Mendenhall Lake ice, and ride away from it. But it managed to capture this perfect moment between the mist and the glare of the winter sun as Thunder Mountain loomed in the background.

"Long race," Feb. 25: February was a pretty weak month for photos. I was preoccupied with other things. This photo was taken along the Skwentna River on day two of the Iditarod Trail Invitational. I just like how crisp and clean the trail and the horizon looks - the day before everything in that race went dark and blurry. :-)

"First day of spring," March 20: This is a photo of Auke Lake taken during a century ride on the Spring Equinox. I love how the perfect reflection of the Mendenhall Towers shines in a small break in the ice.

"Spring snow," April 17: This photo was taken the day after an avalanche took down the city's connection to the Snettisham hydroelectric power plant. Eight inches of snow fell on the city, and more than a foot of new powder settled up high. I took advantage of the day to go snowboarding along the Douglas Island Ridge. The powder was as smooth as butter and as light as a cloud - so perfect.

"Commuting home," May 18: Yeah, it's another random-timed self portrait. It's true that my camera sometimes takes better pictures than I do. This was taken back when I diligently commuted everywhere on my bike, and I was heading home from work at about 10 p.m. when I stopped at the Salmon Creek delta to watch the sun set. I like the reflection of soft light in the water scattered among the seaweed.

"Broken chain," June 28: I broke my chain during my 10th or 11th lap in the 24 Hours of Light and had to hoof it about three miles back to the race start. I snapped a quick 11:30 p.m. sunset photo above a small tributary of the Yukon River. I like both the intense pink light (I honestly did nothing to color correct this photo, although the pink sky may be a camera glitch), as well as the oddities of a bike chain wrapped around a seatpost and a rear fender in the dry climes of Whitehorse.

"Wildflowers," July 17: I took this photo during a midsummer hike in the Granite Creek Basin. The lighting is a little flat, but I think that's why I like the bright yellow flowers amid the melting snowpack that much more.

"Eagle Beach," Aug. 29: I took this photo the day John McCain announced Gov. Sarah Palin was his running mate. I was called into work on a day off, and ended up riding much later into the afternoon than I had planned. Because of that, I caught the most amazing rainbow on Eagle Beach. But I decided this photo, taken with my back to the rainbow, turned out better for its stark lighting and ominous storm clouds.

"Autumn Rain," Sept. 13: September, strangely, was actually the hardest month for me to chose a favorite photo. I had the bike tour and also a handful of amazing hikes that produced good images. But I chose this one for its subtle ways it captures the season: the color and the rain. It was taken along the new gravel road at Eaglecrest Ski Area.

"Grand Canyon," Oct. 14: I took this photo of my dad hiking down the South Kaibab Trail just after sunrise. High winds the previous day kicked up a lot of dust, which created a soft glow along the canyon walls.

"First tracks," Nov. 25: Taken near where the April snowboarding photo was taken, above the Dan Moller Ski Bowl. I like the shadows and the perfect sparkly snow, just waiting to by stamped out by snowshoes.

"2 p.m.," Dec. 12: I was going to post that Christmas Eve picture of the blowing snow at sunset, but decided to post the blowing surf near Eagle Beach instead.

It's been a good year for photos. Here's hoping 2009 is even better!

Snow days

Date: Dec. 26 and 27
Mileage: 30.1 and 34.2
December mileage: 722.7
Temperature upon departure: 27

Well, I'm back home now after starting the drive north, running into a wall of whiteout conditions, and thinking better of crawling my front-wheel-drive-with-summer-tires sedan out to the Eagle Glacier trailhead for a 5.5-mile night hike and campout in the snow. I was going to meet my friends, who are staying at the Eagle Glacier cabin. My plan was to resist the lure of the toasty cabin, and instead test my trench-digging and sleeping-in-a-suffocating-bivy-sack skills by camping outside. I realize now that even though I couldn't make it out to the cabin, I could in theory still go camping. But I've been avoiding that crucial aspect of my training. Eight hours of winter bivying is in many ways more exhausting than eight hours of biking, so I've been waiting (stalling) for the perfect opportunity to come along. It's too warm tonight (25 degrees.) Maybe I'll wait for another cold snap ... next week ... maybe ...

It's been a snowy couple of days. We received about 18 inches of snow yesterday and today. While I enjoy the addition of new white stuff, it seems to bring out the worst in Juneau biking as long as it's falling. Yesterday, with all the trails snowed in, I set out to do some serious resistance training on the North Douglas Highway. I stuck to the far right of the shoulder, plowing through 8 to 10 inches of warm (i.e. heavy) powder, breaking a serious sweat even though I rarely broke 8 mph, and was often churning closer to 5 mph. It took me four and a half hours to ride 30 miles, in conditions as difficult and slow as soft sand, while icy flakes continued to blast my face in the headwind. Even though the road lanes were swept fairly clean by traffic, I avoided them almost entirely except for a few swings to veer around snow berms. The sheer physical effort I expended to stay on the shoulder is the main reason why I was supremely offended and annoyed when a guy in a truck stopped, in the lane, and rolled his window to yell at me. "You're a traffic hazard!" he said. "What's wrong with you?" All I said was "Whatever, dude," and kept on riding. But what I wanted to say is "I'm a traffic hazard? I'm a traffic hazard? I'm working my butt off to keep my bike a full two feet off the road. You're the one stopped in the traffic lane! Jerk off." But I'm too timid. I wondered if that guy would have even given me a second thought if I was jogging or walking a dog, or if he was just bombarding me with typical bicycle prejudice. I stewed about it for quite a while. Little encounters like that are enough to ruin entire rides, but luckily, I was soon north of the ski resort traffic, engulfed in beautiful white silence and lost in my maximum-heart-rate cloud.

I headed out to the Valley this morning to see if any of the trails had been packed down, and encountered another resistance workout just getting there. Anytime there's heavy snowfall, the city can take days (and, if the snow continues, sometimes weeks) to plow the bike paths. The problem with this lies in the fact that bicycles are illegal on Egan Drive, Juneau's freeway-like artery that is the only road through these narrow sections of town. This law is heavily enforced, making the bike paths mandatory. There's a mile of unplowed path near my office building and another mile near the airport, and the only way through is to push your bike through knee-deep powder. This adds a full 45 minutes of slow walking onto a ride that usually takes less than an hour. It's great if you're training for a race like the Ultrasport, but infinitely frustrating if you're trying to bike commute from one side of town to the other. The city and its overfull bus system are forever conducting surveys to see how they can convince more people to bike commute, and I want to don my Captain Obvious suit and show up at those public comment meetings singing "PLOW THE BIKE PATHS!" (and make it legal for cyclists to citizen-arrest idiots who stop in the traffic lane to lecture them.)

Yes, I like the snow, but I will be relieved when it settles down.

Christmas Day

Over our years in Alaska, Geoff and I have become more and more minimalist in our holiday celebrations. We moved past the pretense of giving each other gifts years ago. We do give serious thought to going "home" for the holidays, but each "home" is on the opposite side of the country, and neither is anywhere near Alaska. Geoff went home in 2005 and 2006. I have yet to make the leap. And we have the admit, the sadness we feel in missing our families and their holiday traditions is tempered by relief in missing the extra expense and stress that always accompanies travel this time of year. I work at a business that operates 365 days a year. I wouldn't even have Dec. 25 off work if it wasn't my natural weekend. But since it was, Geoff and I decided to go for a Christmas Day snowshoe hike.


The winter sun was out.

We went for a casual stroll up to Spaulding Meadow. It was a holiday outing, and we treated it as such, walking easy and talking about life. I think it was a little strange for both of us, in the midst of our mostly focused winter training, to do something outside that didn't feel like exercise.

Well, maybe it felt like exercise to Geoff, who forgot to bring his snowshoes on our snowshoe outing.

After he became tired of swimming, we went on the hunt for a packed snowmobile trail. We explored new places and did some impromptu "sledding" into some creek beds.

Christmas Dinner: Turkey and mustard on wheat, homemade chocolate chip cranberry cookies, and slushy Pepsi.

Perfect.

Christmas Eve

Date: Dec. 24
Mileage: 12.1
December mileage: 658.4
Temperature upon departure: 23

My boss gave me an unexpected day off today. Geoff had to work. I finally put Pugsley back together after getting a new free wheel installed, and managed to mangle the chain during a particularly bad case of chain suck. Now I'm going to have to order a new one. Lately, Pugsley's been sick more often than he's been healthy. But there wasn't much I could do about it on Christmas Eve, so I went for a hike.

I worked hard to reach the Douglas Island Ridge, and decided to walk along the spine for a while and see if I could make it to sunset. Low clouds on Admiralty Island promised the possibility of some spectacular colors, and it seemed like the ideal Christmas Eve situation: Watch the sunset at 3,000 feet, sprint down the mountain in the twilight, and ride home beneath an emerging pattern of stars, all while scanning the sky with that same kind of childlike anticipation that my sister and I used to feel when I snuck into her room and we stayed up late on Santa Watch.

That would have been ideal it if wasn't for the awful wind. It was hard to tell from lower on the mountain how bad it really was up high, because the slopes had been scoured clean by earlier winds and there wasn't much powder blowing around. But when I reached the top, I discovered the surface snow was as hard as concrete, and even still, 50-60 mph gusts would find loose grains of frigid, dry powder to blast right in my face. I wasn't dressed warmly enough for that kind of windchill - with an air temperature of 13, it was probably close to 10 below - but thought I could hang for 45 minutes if I kept moving, knowing I could always retreat back down to the wind-protected basin.

I couldn't hang. I started to feel uncomfortable, and then concerningly cold. I turned my back on sunset and blasted down the steep slope in long, loping strides (a lot like beginner powder skiing without the death wish.) I had to enjoy the subtler reflections of sunset on the eastern peaks, but was happier for getting myself out of the wind.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good ride.

New York Times coverage

I don't have much of my own content to add today, but I wanted to post a link to this great New York Times article about the Iditarod Trail Invitational. There's an embedded video on the Web site that is probably my favorite piece of reporting I have ever found about this race. The video follows race organizers Bill and Kathi Merchant as they conduct a winter training camp for those who plan to attempt the race this March. It captures so well the transition - well, it's more of a startling realization - between the expectations about the Iditarod Trail and the realities of it. The two men at the winter camp, George Azarias and Aidan Harding, start out with the usual "easy explanation" Iditarod banter: "Oh yeah, we're crazy, we don't know why we're here. The guys go out on the trail, eat some nasty yellow glop, push their bikes for a while, and, suddenly, you can see that moment of truth in the face of George - the moment that I think every rookie experiences - the "holy cow, this is real" moment: "People think, OK, this race takes seven days. 350 divided by seven, that's 50 miles a day. On a road bike, easy, you do that in three, four hours, max," George says. His eyes widen. Cut to pushing a bike up a steep snow berm. "It's (voice becomes quieter) ... it's so hard. You need to struggle to survive."

Perfect. Great video reporting from the New York Times. Go watch it!

Day 11 of sun

Date: Dec. 22
Mileage: 27.5
December mileage: 646.3
Temperature upon departure: 14

Eleven days have passed and I'm still in awe of this clear, colorful, holy-cow-you-can-see-forever weather. Today was likely the last day of sun, with a Tuesday forecast calling for seven inches of snow. But it's been a good run, and I'm not complaining. I'm fairly certain this has been the longest stretch of consecutive dry days since I moved to Juneau two and a half years ago.

"Clear weather is such a waste this time of year," Geoff told me. "For every clear day you get, what, six hours of sunlight? And none of it's direct sunlight. I'd rather have three sunny days in the summer then 11 in December."

I disagree. The winter is such a beautiful time of year, in my opinion, and the clear sky opens up jaw-dropping views that catch me off guard even after two and a half years. Just today, I headed out North Douglas for a mellow "endurance pace" two-hour ride and a quick jaunt on the Mendenhall Wetlands. I was so focused on trying to hold my line and keep the studded-rubber-side down atop papery ice that I almost rolled right into the Channel. As I looked up from where the water met the frozen shoreline, I was met with the searing white cliffs of the Mendenhall Towers and the light blue glacier below it. I looked left to a sharp view of the Chilkats, and right to the rolling outline of Blackerby Ridge. How many times have I seen these geographical features? And from how many angles? And still, the same reaction hits me: "This place is unreal."

Beyond that, the wetland rides have been really fun, although pretty precarious. There is certainly a limit to what studded tires can handle, and I have been skirting the edge of those limits all week. Still, I love the shimmer and sparkle of glare ice. I'm going to miss it when the snow returns.

Yup, that's my happy face.

Look at that line and tell me that doesn't look fun.

No one said winter sun in Juneau doesn't come at a price. This photo didn't turn out so well, but I was trying to show my handy compass/ emergency whistle/ firestarter / thermometer giving a reading of about 10 degrees. Oh, and that black streak on my fingers isn't frostbite - it's chain grease. :-)

Also, I wanted to post a link to a "Ghost Trails" book review by Sandra in Brisbane, Australia. I nearly forgot to post it, as it was written about a week ago, but it's very flattering. Thanks, Sandra.

"When I put the book down I had this sad feeling I get sometimes when I fall in love with a book character and have to say good-bye after sharing such an intense and intimate time. I was wishing that she had taken up the invitation of Kathi to continue on, all the way to Nome, adding another hundreds of miles to the race and consequently more pages to this amazing story. "

You can read the review here.

I have received a number of insightful e-mails from readers, and wanted to thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. I wanted to post some quotes, but decided against it because e-mails are generally intended as private communications. I also got in a little trouble earlier this month for posting part of an e-mail on this blog, because the woman who wrote to me had intended to give the book to her sister as a Christmas gift. Whoops. Sorry. :-)

If anyone is interested in some holiday reading, the offer is still out for free PDF copies of the eBook for any blogger who doesn't mind taking the time to write a review. Just e-mail me at jillhomer66@hotmail.com or leave a comment here.

Shoutout from the South Pole

Claire "Down in Antarctica" sent me this photo, and I had to share it because it's so cool. That's the South Pole (the South Pole!) and that's a sign for me (for me!) right next to it. So cool. What a great Christmas present. Thanks, Claire.

Claire told me they are currently enjoying balmy (read: Frigid) summer weather on the South Pole, where she works for a physics project called "Icecube." She offered to traverse the continent on a bicycle with me if I ever decide to do so. Careful, Claire, I might just take you up on that offer.