Made by Dan

Dan made Ben and I some awesome ski pogies last night for our upcoming cold ski trip this weekend to Tolovana. He started by using the solder iron to cut the rip stop fabric and we used Ed's as a model pogie.
Dan sewing the ski pogies.
The finished product! Go Dan!

Enjoying more new snow

I went for a walk today with Kristen and Anna. The new snow has been great for skiing.
Poops(Molly) and Pella. Pella's paws were cold and it is only -12F. It is bootie time for Pella

Cob's bday dinner party

Brown had a nice dinner party for Cob's birthday tonight. Anna is helping hold Galen in this picture. Cob received some great new music I am going burn soon. Tim Easton and Swell Season (the Frames couple from Once) as well as some other great gifts.
Brown made a Boston Cream pie and Cob blew out a lighter instead of candles, really 62 is too many for a cake :-)

Skate skiing

It is that time of year for endless skate skiing and winter cabin trip pictures. The trails at UAF are pretty good and the girls and Jackson were out for a ski both days this weekend. I am still in field at night, but trying to get some skiing in. I ski my butt off trying to keep up with these ladies and it sure is fun. I have also started a new work blog for my field work www.n2o5.blogspot.com

Jackson and Magan gearing up for the Backcountry Winter Classic this year.

First skate skiing / skijoring weekend

The snow came late this year, but at least we are still skiing on Halloween. Dan gave Patrick two seconds of instruction with fast Sky and they were off. He did great his first time skijoring and only a few times skate skiing. I am working nights in the field finally, but still get out to ski when I wake up.
Starting off again for a last leg back to the cars. I switched Pella for Lucy after a mile and Lucy played great. Pella played in the culvert...what else is new?

Ben and I skate skiing UAF skarland loop today. It was a bit slow at -9 F, but still super fun. Ben is skiing fast already.

Ben feeding baby Galen. Aw, they are both so cute. Ben is wearing his halloween costume, he dressed up as an environmental chemistry graduate student and helped all night in the field :-)

more pond hockey.... 12F but when will it snow?

Birthday girl Kat and Mike on the ice. Mike gave me some great pointers today, Trevor will be so proud :-)

Group shot. Maybe a Kat b-day tradition, but I sure hope not. We really need to be skiing!

Magan and Dan going at it. Though (and this is my first Hockey term I'll through out there), I think they are high sticking??

Ice Hockey on Smith Lake

Ed corralled us all into a hockey game on frozen Smith Lake. The light was awesome, the temp warm 18F, and ice frozen. We usually have snow by now and we are skiing the groomed Smith Lake, but not this year so we are playing hockey instead. There were some impressive players, Lars jumping, young Tanner and graceful Ed.

These would be the some of the other players :-)

Ed going after the puck.

Ed, Adrian, Sharon and Lars...practicing for our next game.


Silhouette of Ben playing "old school Iowa pond hockey".

Sausage making, Glasses and Babies

I was fortunate to start learning how to make sausage a weekend or two ago. Luke and I cutting up Sheep and Caribou. Hopefully the final outcome will be caribou polish sausage this spring. Magan and I had to leave early to knit, so I am still waiting to learn part 2,3,4....

Sophisticated measuring method of beef fat to meat.

I always take random pictures out on the trail, this was a great sunset with Ann, Kristen and Anna. This is the moment I lost my eye glasses on the trail. After a dinner and some wine we attempted to find them with no luck. I ran the same trail a few times this weekend and the last time with Ben we found them!

Baby Galen is so cute!

Kristen's Birthday Dinner

K-Bar turned 35 last night and we had a great dinner at Lavelle's. Anthony also made an incredible cheesecake for desert.

6 year Anniversary at Hutlinana Hot Springs

Ben and I went to Hutlinana Hot Springs for our Anniversary. Hutlinana hot springs is an unmarked trail on off the Elliot 128 miles north of Fairbanks. The trail is 14 miles round trip slightly up hill with 1 stream crossing. We did it as a long day trip, the drive is about 3 hours depending on the snowy roads.
The trail was nice and snowy, we can ski it soon! We were aided in the begining by anniversary style sock markers left by friends.

We made it! The trail stops right here and it was so quiet and beautiful, the hot springs were nice and hot.
View from in the hot springs.

Ben and I enjoying our soak before the hike back to the car.

Galen James McCaa

Galen James McCaa was born on 12:44pm Sept. 26th, 2009. He was 7.7lbs. Brown and Galen a few hours after the birth of their beautiful baby boy! It was very exciting Saturday.Cob a few hours later. He was up shortly though and took the picture of Brown and Galen above.


Brown's newly knit socks.

Equinox Ultra/Marathon/Relay

The start of the 47th Annual Equinox Marathon in Fairbanks, AK. It is a huge community event and in addition to the marathon and the relay..this year we had an Ultra Marathon as well. This race is almost all on trails and goes up Ester Dome and back down to UAF and ends at the patty center. The Ultra did an extra 6 miles around the trails at UAF. So many of us did one form of the race and we all had a great day. I ran with Kristen Barton and Patrick as the "5 kidney's" relay team. I ran the third leg and only Ben had his iphone for a few pics. He was busy timing at the top of Ester Dome with Brown and the rest of the timing crew. Jackon's team was best dressed in Zubaz's zebra print pants and mesh tops, I don't have a picture, but the News-Miner does.
Matias in the lead off the trail and heading back on the trail and to the top of Ester Dome. He won the marathon again this year in time 2hrs 51min.

Finishing the third leg, only 9.5 miles and mostly down hill from the top of Ester Dome.

We had a breakfast party this morning to send off Robin, Chris and Mara back down to Anchorage. Robin is the new legend, winning the ultra marathon for the women's and 3rd overall. She ran a very impressive fast run that caught everyone's eye. She has an impressive resume that we embellished and it turned into she did the Wilderness Classic solo when she was twelve by the end of the day :-)

Chris and John relaxing after the marathon. What a great day it was! I am sure everyone else has more pics, I just thought I would post a few.

AK Range Traverse and East Fork Susitna

We headed down to the Denali Highway and into the Alaska Range this weekend for a packraft trip. We started out driving up Valdez Creek Trail and left the car. We hiked over numerous passes with many rivers, caribou, blueberries and alpine lakes to swim. It was a 30 mile hike, 30 mile paddle and 10 mile run back to the car. Ed, Heather, Ben, Dea and Patrick hiked this awesome Alaska tundra and did a first decent in packrafts on the East Fork of the Susitna river. It was a great trip! This picture is the first of a million stream crossings on our hike.

The the first pass and the rest of the trip we had incredible weather and aweome views of the Alaska Range. Heather, Patrick, Ben, Ed and me falling over as I ran from the self timer.

Saddle of the first pass.

Ben and Heather hiking along side Mt. Deborah and caribou.

Just two of many curious caribou on the hike (Ed Plumb photo).

Some small scree fields over the passes, but for the most part great tundra hiking.

Ed filtering water at an alpine lake before we all took a dive in.

Finally day2 decending down to the East Fork Glacier River.

About to start our descent down the river in the packrafts.

A few sprinkles during the paddle and one big thunderstorm with hail 1/4 mile from our take out bridge.

2nd portage around some large rapids, part of the excitement of an unknown river in a remote area.
Another unknown was downstream from the headwaters of the glacier, the river fanned out into many shallow channels over a mile wide. This is Heather pushing off with her paddle to break loose(Ed Plumb photo), but mostly we had to walk in the middle of this shallow glacier river until we could jump in again. I don't think it is technically a portage or line when you're walking with your boat down the middle of a river. We will call it as ed says, a good experience :-) We all had a great time!

Mt Healy Challenge

Mt Healy Challenge was a running race 1.5 mile and 1600 feet of vertical. It was pouring rain and around 37 degrees, fun running weather. It was a little tough for me, but I took my waterproof camera to get some pics. Here is the top, with Ben and Matias the race director.

The flags mark the course up from the road, this picture is on our way down.

Ned and Anna at the start watching Kristen race. She had to run fast so Ned could get to his book signing in Denali Park, but this was no problem she won.

Mayo ,taco night and running

I am still on my every other week schedule for Mayo. My 6 month transplant biospy/IV infusion went OK yesterday. I had a few complications that were scary for a few hours, but everything turned out. The kidney is working great of course, but still high anti bodies :-( I have not gone on any trips lately, but I thought I would blog a few random pics because my flight is delayed 2 hours today because of some cool big thunderstorms in MN.
I raced a 5k this past weekend that felt pretty good....there was also a 10k race that most did. Heather won and Kristen was second.
Ben ran the 10k too!

Jackson had a taco party at his house. Magan cooked up some great Mexican food.

Lena and I enjoying the food!

Housitting/Hard Luck Creek Fire

Magan and I having a nice dinner and wine out on the deck during the ash fall from yet another new fire, 2.7 million acres so far in Alaska. This fire however is near Murphy Dome, very close to where Magan is house sitting (Jackson's) and then I am house sitting much farther down the road then that.

The yellow orange sky with limited visibility before it became nearly zero for the next day. The airport canceled flights and hard travel on the roads. We are surrounded on all sides with fires this year.
Tonight there was a community meeting for the Hard Luck Creek fire. We were given the map with the red line as the fire perimeter they think (too much smoke to tell yet for sure) and the blue line the point when they start to evacuate certain subdivisions....today though we have had rain all day, nice.


There were so many people they had to move the meeting outside. It was great to see all the communication and hopefully the firefighters can keep the fire at a safe distance. The incident base is at the bottom of Moose Mountain.

Trail Running Moose Mountain

Kristen is training for the Humpy's Marathon in Anchorage. So we all did some of her 20 mile training run with her. I suggested the Moose Mountain mountain bike ride that I have done in the past and the route was great. I only did the out and back, but everyone else did the loop. This is my first outing with my new waterproof camera, finally. I just ruined another one packrafting.

Kristen, Ed, Ted and Ben starting off the trail run.



After our run we went to Ivory Jack's for burgers and it was open mic night so Dan played some Jack Johnson for us.

The crowd goes wild. OK, to be fair they just ran 20 miles :-)

Sailing Puget Sound

Audrey moved from Fairbanks Alaska to Anachordes Island in the San Juan Islands outside of Seattle. She bought this boat and lives on it. We went on a great sail it was fun to be out on the ocean. I have sailed many times on dad's boat on Lake Michigan, but in the last few years only once or twice. Audrey taught us the ropes. Julie lives not far from the boat so we were all able to hang out and sail on a beautiful sunny windy day.

Coming out from the channel and heading into the straight. The funny thing about this picture is we were kidding around, put up sails and almost missed seeing a tug boat with a tanker on the back.

We sailed up wind and then on a broad reach on the way back.

Julie and Audrey trying to catch all the wind, our top boat speed was 7 knots!

Heading back to the harbor. Next time we hope to sail longer and stay over night at another more remote island. It was great to see the ladies and Julie's house with the new remodel and meet her parents.

Cantwell Windy Creek to Jack River

Super fun Windy Creek packraft day trip. We started in Cantwell with a pretty easy 5 mile hike into Windy Creek. Mark, Ben, Ed, Dea, Magan and Tyler(taking pic).
Looking down from the trail to Windy Creek.

Blowing up the packrafts and getting ready to paddle.
Windy Creek was a big rapid the entire way with no flat water. A great river for such a short hike. Here is Ben and Tyler in the rapids. Nothing too scary, just a whole lot of awesome. Then the jack river is a calm float back to the take out and a 5 mile run back to the car.

Magan in the sinking packraft. It had a small leak and needed to be blown up several times, but it was no problem for her!

July 4th weekend

We drove down to the Denali Highway to backpack into 7 mile lake as the rest of the crew headed on a packraft trip. The trail ended in a few miles and we decided not to carry the chariot and Ann another 5 miles or so into the lake. We hiked McLaren summit trail instead. Both Ben and Ned were away for the weekend....Ben went into the Arctic Ocean! So we had a fun girls weekend while they were away.

After 7 mile lake we had a great dinner at McLaren Lodge.

The dogs ran free inside and out at the lodge. Here is another lab Denali and this cute little baby bird with it's mouth open wanting food from the lab. Denali did not know quite what to do.

Kristen and Anna hiking on McLaren Summit. Anna was a trooper at camping and hiked a ways with us each day.

Birthday Dinner

Brown cooked this amazing Indian feast for my birthday. It was incredible food complete with homemade decorations and garland. Thanks Brown!

We packed my new backpack with a ton of stuff to make sure it could handle it. The packraft is in there too!
The dinner table, Ted Wu took this shot.

Packraft with Pella!

Mark, Mara and Ed on the upper Chena River. Ed wanted to take his nephew Mark and friend Mara out on the packrafts before their big Brooks Range packrafting trip this weekend.
I took the opportunity to take Pella out on the packraft on a mellow river before our next big trip.
She did great and after a mile or so just laid down and took in the beautiful surroundings.

Sea Kayaking from Valdez out to Shoup

This year we had rough seas all the way in and out to Shoup Bay. It was super fun paddling the big swells and a little frustrating on the way in because we were going no where fast up wind. Once in the bay though the waters were calm. Here we are paddling into the cabin.

Kristen and Anthony getting up close and personal with the glacier. Ben even brought his medium format camera and tripod. It is amazing what you can fit in a kayak.

Lena and Mike.Kristen and Anthony.
Ben making some coffee with the jet boil. It was great group and super fun trip as always. I am glad we had rough weather to learn how to paddle in the high seas! I have no pics of that part of course, we had to keep paddling so we did not flip.

Coffee/Pizza Traverse Packraft Trip Part 1

We started out our backpacking/ packraft trip at Carlo Creek pizza place. Check out the map. The hike was supposed to be a 15 miles by the red line Ed drew on the topo map above, and a 16 mile paddle on the Nenana River. You never know what the terrain will be without a trail, or how many times you have to cross creeks and rivers, cliffs and drop-offs. The hike was more like 22 miles, and terrain over the pass was snowy and steep...it was awesome and I was really tired after this one - 3 months, 1 week and 1 day after my kidney transplant.

Ann at the start, overjoyed to be out again.

Ed, John and Ben getting some calories in. Eat and hike - that is the way on these trips. The hike up Carlo Creek was amazing, great skiing back there.
Farther up Carlo Creek there was aufeis , but it was perfect hiking up the valley instead of bush whacking.

Above the brush and starting the ascent to the pass still up in the clouds at this point.

Ben and this sweet waterfall. We only had to cross the creek once or twice, always hiking with wet shoes.

Group shot near an alpine lake. Dea, John, Ann, Ed and Ben and Fernie.

Almost there! A view of our tracks, and the caribou tracks we followed. The caribou knew exactly where to go to avoid the rotten snow.

The ascent was not too bad, but we did not know what lie on the other side. The descent turned out to be steeper than expected and Fernie had be carried down a rock or two. She didn't seem to mind too much.

Ann and John loving the rocky descent and Fernie's cute little head poking around to see what was next.

Ed on the descent way out in front on a ridge.

I skip a few miles of photos, trying hard to keep up with these guys, so no pics and finally the Nenana River!

This steep descent really drops off and the bushwhacking was crazy, but only 1 mile. After this it was really deep and we could not see each other at all, we did lots of doowhooping to keep the bears away. We did see Dall sheep and caribou...bear signs, but no bears. Once we get to the river we pull the packrafts out of our packs and begin to blow them up by capturing the wind in a parachute bag adapter and squeezing it in. It actually does not take that long, I have no pics past this point....so I turn to Ed for part two. Maybe in a few days. All in all it was an amazing trip!

Ben's solo show the Annex

Ben and Dennis observing the pictures just for the opening of Ben's solo show at the Annex. The night was a great success!
Our good friends purchased a group photo of the German's and they are going to pass it from house to house.


A video for family and friends who could not make it! Thanks for everyone that came out to support Ben.