We're enjoying a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning at home today. A recurrence of winter storms hit us this week, and there is about 11 inches of fresh fluffy snow on top of the already above-the-knee snow depths. Yesterday, before the winds came in, all the trees were covered in a thick blanket of snow and the visuals alone were blowing our socks off; but there was too much to do and so much going on to just sit around looking at our winter wonderland surroundings.
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| Team NWT has awesome hats made out of arctic fox |
In case we have not left enough hints along the way, we are in love with our community centre and the people who make it a happening place. One of the aspects that we maybe haven't talked much about is its 18 hole golf course. For all the golfers out there, it is a par 66, 4 098 yard golf course that is like no other golf course out there. It has links-style fairways and sand greens, although some greens are planned to be converted into crushed glass to help the recycling people to use up all the crushed glass Whitehorse has stored up.
But all this last week, the Annie Lake Golf Course has been converted into the Arctic Winter Games Dog Mushing venue. There were 14 athletes (mushers) and their team of dogs racing for gold, silver and bronze medals. The races were sprints- the longest was 13 kms and it was no surprise that the kids and their dogs were competitively fast. Home snow advantage was prevalent as Team Yukon and Team Alaska won may medals but the other two regions participating in this event (Northwest Territories and Nunavut) kept a tight race. It was hilarious to hear the kids from Nunavut stating that their dogs are too furry for this warm weather (the average daily temperatures this week was around -7 or so). Being a staff person with the community centre, Colin had responsibilities to help with the rental of the facilities to the Arctic Winter Games people, but he also volunteered in preparing and running the medal presentations. The medals for this games were fashioned after the ulu which is a traditional scraping tool used by the Inuit people.
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| Rachel Kinvig Team Yukon won three Gold Ulus |
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| Medal presentations with the NWT and Nunuvt Commissioners. |
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| Mt. Lorne in the background |
Most of the events in the Arctic Winter Games are finished now, and the gold-medal hockey games (Yukon vs Alaska and Yukon vs NWT!) and closing ceremonies are today. It was really a huge event, and while one of us lived it all day, all week at the community centre for the dog mushing events, it was still big news at the hospital. The Games participants are for people 14-18 years old, and lots of hospital staff have kids that were involved. Apparently there were also a few athletes that had to visit the hospital- a soccer player with a broken collarbone, and a bunch of people with a gastrointestinal bug.
We were planning on doing the Firefighter Basic testing today, but the dates were changed at the last minute, and now we've got two days of no plans and fresh fluffy snow outside. Yep, you guessed it- we're going skijoring! We are packing up a lunch of salad rolls and peanut sauce, and headed out on the 10-mile dogsled course a the community centre, out to McConnell Lake for a picnic! We will have to pack up some chicken heads or fish guts for Cookie and Smiley to partake in the picnic too.
Next weekend, Lauren has signed up to take a massage course being offered at an Ayurvedic Wellness Clinic in town, to learn Indian Head Massage. It's a two day course, and Lauren is really excited to learn something new. Colin has generously offered to offer his head up for practice.
Along with cheap WestJet flights starting in May, we're hoping the opportunity to have a good head rub convinces a few more people to come visit :)
We are also looking forward to some more concerts, one in town at the Yukon Arts Centre, and the other at a Home Routes show at a neighbour's home in Robinson.
Happy Saturday,
Love Lauren and Colin
PS- this is a photo from the skijor we went on this afternoon,. more about it later. (click on it. the stick is kinda good)
