Preparing and doing

Hi all,

It has been a good week here, and this Saturday morning is no exception. It was cold to start out with (-32 without the windchill), but is now warming up and comfortable and crisp for playing outside. The forest around our place is pretty deep with snow in some parts, and it's a light and fluffy snow all the way to the ground, so that it feels like you are wading in water when walking off the packed-down trails.

In preparation for enjoying the cold weather a bit more, I've just invested in what I think will end my deliberations on how to keep my feet warm:

A company out of Minnesota makes these mukluks with moosehide and canvas, with wool liners and insoles and a rubber sole. The design makes sense- the flexible sole allows the foot muscles to work more, keeping the warm blood flowing, compared to a rigid-soled boot that keeps a thick piece of frozen rubber against the bottom of the foot and doesn't bend at all.

I'm still working on the ideal jacket situation. Here are some ideas:

Yukon parka, available in
second hand shops, or 

Long down-filled parka, or

Anorak made by Midnight Mushing

in Fairbanks AK

We have been up to mostly indoor pursuits this week including,

- a yoga class at the local Golden Horn elementary school, taught by a physio colleague,

- an Arctic Winter Games meetings to prepare for the dog mushing events taking place at our community centre, and

- a meeting for new members of the Mt Lorne Volunteer Fire Department (with some outdoor time to check out one of the trucks that is parked outside) and trouble shoot a huge gas powered fan that is not working the way it should.

Time to  head outside to play Explorers! with Cookie and Smiley (you'll see!)

Bye for now,

Lauren 

Sweet Sunday

Hello all,
We got a nice amount of snow on Saturday morning, and then some nice warm weather on Sunday. Here are some photos from the weekend- the indoor one was taken on Saturday, when we spent some quality time on the sofa, and the rest were taken today. Colin was working at the community centre all day, and I took Cookie and Smiley over there to skijor on the golf course. I caught him just in time to take some zamboni glamour shots, which are posted below for your enjoyment :) Then I headed over to Deb's for a long overdue puppy hang-out. They have gotten so much bigger since Christmas, and I could hardly pet and cuddle them for 3 seconds until the brothers and sisters who weren't getting petted would push themselves over top of their siblings and demand some attention. It was wonderful :)

Early signs of the Saturday snow

The zamboni man in action

Waiting patiently for me to stop taking photos

Smiley and Cookie are sporting their new harnesses, bought in December

Hi everybody!

They almost move too fast for photos

 Solution- puppy videos!

Mt Lorne from Annie Lake Rd

Mt Lorne from the end of our driveway 

Hope you are staying warm and cosy,

Love Lauren and Colin

Good morning,

It's a snowy white day outside, and we are slowly and happily contemplating a day with only plans for dinner, and wide open hours. One of the pleasant parts about relaxing inside over the last few weeks is getting to see new plant growth. We are far away from swelling tree buds and flowers in our sub arctic environment but inside the cabin we are still enjoying expanding spruce buds, flowering basil plants and now our spider plant is flowering too. We are not sure if all this growth is connected to the lengthening amounts of day light or something else but it is exciting to see on cold days. 

We haven't installed a permanent solution to the dog pen jailbreaks- Cookie has proven herself as an A+ chewer, and gnawed through a woven leash that we had wrapped around the bar and locking block earlier this week. Colin sewed up a new strap to use temporarily, and today we will work on something to Cookie-proof it. It's kind of strange, but I feel a bit proud of Cookie when she figures how to get out again, and she's so happy to run around at the speed of light :) Our next attempt will involve aircraft cable and very thick eyelets for clipping into.

Wow, I just noticed in this photo (that Colin took) that Smiley is still in the pen. I didn't see her at first! This was from earlier in the week:

The cold weather stayed all week, and along with it came the ice fog and hoar frost. Ice fog forms when the air temperature is so cold that it freezes all the humidity in the air into ice, and the ice particles are suspended until the air warms up. 

The lunch room at the hospital looks out onto the Yukon River, and on the other side of the river there is usually a clear view of downtown (this photo I found by Murray Lundberg shows the river's width just by the hospital):

During our lunch breaks this week, I was amazed every time I looked out the huge windows out to the river. The ice fog was so thick we could not see town across the river, and didn't lift from first thing in the morning until after lunch! Another photo I found by Murray Lundberg of the SS Klondike sternwheeler ship (one of our National History Sites) kind of gives you an idea of the thickness of the fog as it is dissipating.

When the ice fog lifts, it settles along the already frosty trees, especially near running rivers and creeks, and deepens the groves of the hoar frost: 

These photos are taken in Shipyards Park looking south at the sunrise (about 10am) 

This is Colin's view out from the Yukon Made Store

After a few days of this, along with stunning sunrises and sunsets, skies filled with more stars than I imagined were up there, plus vibrant blue skies that put a smile on your face, I felt like the winter here is just possibly as beautiful as the summer. Colin and I find ourselves thinking of family and friends lots, like 'Bill would like to see this and photograph it' or'Mom like to see how cute the dogs are when they bury their heads in the snow'. We miss the presence of a lot of people, and think about you often :)

In other news:

That's right, we ate Jack Pig last night, in a Thai Pork with Peanut Sauce meal with Kim. He was delicious, and we really had a powerful experience in knowing where your food comes from.Our evening also included Kim and Lauren's favorite childhood movies - Labyrinth and Neverending Story. It was a great night in.

Happy weekend,
Love Lauren and Colin

Carbon Hill photos

Check out this story on the Carbon Hill dog sled race in the Yukon News:
http://www.yukon-news.com/sports/26705/

And a photo album by a local freelance photographer, Nicholas Dory:
http://www.nicolasdory.com/portfolio/mushing/carbon-hill-2012/

Love Lauren and Colin

Life at 30 below (and below)

The cold weather has finally shown up!

We've never see it as low as we did this morning! Picture take through the window.

Our Christmas black spruce is growing buds in our (comparatively) warm house!

The Carbon Hill sled dog race was yesterday, and we got to watch some amazing feats in very cold weather. The events were a 6-mile skijor race, a 10-mile sled dog race, a 30-mile skijor race, and a 30-mile sled dog race. We find ourselves knowing more and more of our neighbours at community events, and yesterday we got to cheer them and their dogs on. I volunteered and did registration and timed the 10-mile sled dog race, while Colin was keeping things running around the community centre, including in the kitchen and in the chute (where the teams line up before the starting line) as well as helping to keep the bonfire burning for everyone's toes and fingers.

Of course, all the sled dogs were cute- mostly huskies but a couple that looked closer to retriever and grayhound than to a husky there were also a few pointers and labs. I really enjoyed taking in all the cold-weather gear and increasingly frozen facial hair of the mushers and volunteers. It's a matter of (a) experience, (b) using warm materials, (c) knowing yourself, and (d) a bit of experimenting, that combine to provide a cold-weather outfit that will keep you warm and happy during a day spent outside running dogs, or standing around outside doing something less active. Possibly even more complicated is finding gear that will keep you warm and happy while skijoring for 30 miles, where sometimes you are skiing extremely hard and creating lots of heat, and sometimes you are moving slowly or even stopped. We both talked to the owners of some very different jackets and boots we admired, and heard their views on good gear. Hopefully there will be some photos in the newspaper or on the community centre website soon, that we can post a link for, because the photos of the outfits would definitely be worth a thousand words.

Incredibly, it doesn't take a very long time to race a sled or skijor- the 10-mile race winner came it at 30 min, while the 30-mile sled dog team was about 2.5 hours the winner was in by the 2:17 mark which was a new record, and the 30-mile skijor was even faster, by  minutes.We had a great time at the race, and might race in the skijor with Cookie and Smiley.

Speaking of Cookie and Smiley, I should go over to the window to check that they are still in the pen. Oh good, there are two dogs back there. This week, something stirred inside them, inspiring someone (or both of them) to learn how to knock the stopper out of the way and then raise the bar on the door of the pen, allowing them to zoom out into freedom. Thankfully, as soon as we notice that they are out, they are always in front of the house on the driveway or still in the back of the house, sniffing around but still in sight. They also come right back when we call them. It's amusingly frustrating to try to figure out how they can open the door from the inside, and we are trying to come up with something to deter them better. Time to go check if they are still there, again.

Earlier in the week, I tried something new- indoor rock-climbing at the elementary school in Carcross! There is a 2-storey wall set up in the school gym, and every Thursday night, an outdoor expedition company from Whitehorse goes down to Carcross with sacks of climbing gear. They hold a climbing program for Carcross kids from 6-8pm, and then there's public climbing afterwards. I went with a friend from work and really enjoyed it. There's another idea for something fun to do while visiting us :)

Love Lauren and Colin

Not this Carcross elementary school! 

The newer one :)

A climbing wall just outside of Whitehorse

Wonderful winter weekend

Hello all,

We were outside in the warm sunny weather all weekend, and although we don't have many photos to show for it, we had lots of great times. Even before the weekend officially started, I was celebrating with my coworkers at a Friday night potluck and road hockey party. There's a nice neighbourhood called Riverdale on the opposite side of the Yukon river from downtown, with lots of crescent roads and big old trees, and we had a really fun game of road hockey under the streetlights. It was a Yukonic potluck, with moose steaks and sausages on the BBQ. Colin spent a wonderful evening Skyping with Cailey and Steve.

The snowy backyard, from our patio

The snowy Mt Lorne, from our living room

On Saturday morning, we cajoled Cookie and Smiley inside and alternately petted them and left them alone, and they lasted a whole hour. Then we took them over to the community centre, and went out on the 10-mile dog sled trail that has been set up for the Carbon Hill race. I'm recording it here so I don't forget in the future... 10 miles equals 16 kilometres! Even with Smiley's help, I was bushed at the end of that long ski. More training is definitely required (yay!). Colin and Cookie were managing fine, and Colin found that Cookie was really in tune with listening to his commands. The person who skis with Cookie has to rein her in to run behind Smiley, since Smiley has fits of extreme frustration (barking and flinging herself forwards maniacally) if she's not in the lead. Cookie was slowing down every time Colin said 'easy', and we had a great run with very few falls and no collisions. It was a gorgeous trail and hopefully we can go out on it again this week. 

The mania that is sled dogs surrounded by four walls

Colin has an eye for interesting photos!

We went to town on Saturday night for the folk Society's open-mic night, and there was a ton of great performances. Our pal Kim played the banjo, there was a Celtic ensemble, a woman playing the ukelele, lots of acoustic guitar, and even a mother-daughter duo. Good wholesome fun, plus delicious cake and tea. On Sunday, we went our separate ways after a nice leisurely morning, and I skiied down to a neighbour's place to go over some anatomy questions from a course she's taking. There's a ski trail that runs along the side of the South Klondike Highway in between our place and theirs, and as I made my way south, I had full-on sun in my face. With the short winter days lately, it was a real treat to wear sunglasses :) Colin did some work around the house, including sewing up a linen bag for mung bean spouting, and trained a volunteer Zamboni driver for the community centre rink. We had a nice visit with Evelyn via Skype, and a tasty dinner of spaghetti squash, one of the ones we stocked up with at the BC organic produce sale that we went to in the fall.

Geared up for a ski (I was too hot by the time I got to the end of the driveway)

Ahhhhh! This amount of sun is a rare commodity these days

The postings on the right side of the blog screen are a new way that we found to share our upcoming plans (I really like the countdowns!). We're both involved in the Carbon Hill sled dog race, which is taking place at the community centre this weekend. Colin will likely be doing a bit of everything, and I'll be doing registration, and timing for the 10-mile sled race. We're not competing with Cookie and Smiley, but maybe next year! Coming up soon after that is the annual Yukon Quest, the 1000-mile sled dog race between Fairbanks, Alaska and Whitehorse. This year the teams start from Fairbanks and end in Whitehorse, and we will be following the race on the radio and going over to the finish line in town to cheer on the arrivals when we hear they are coming close. The first place team came in after 10 days of travelling through the wilderness between Yukon and Alaska!

Bye for now,

Love Lauren and Colin

Our Yukon library

Thanks to some wonderful Christmas and birthday presents, and some tips from friends, we now find ourselves with a great selection of reading material. Come up for a visit and never run out of a good book!

This new book is really captivating,
and has great photos.

This cookbook has lots of interesting stories about the author's experimentation,
and delicious-sounding recipes (we can't wait to try Pine and Macadamia Nut
Baklava with Spruce Tip Syrup, and do the Sourdough boot camp
to develop our own sourdough starter)

A hilarious and intriguing graphic novel

A valuable resource for all Yukon skills, from home-brew making
to building firewood stackwalls   

Even more skills- seasoning cast iron,
making flower dyes, beating cabin fever... 

Stories and line drawings illustrating
the lives of  'interesting' Yukoners

Easy instructions, and our Mt Lorne
neighbours can supply the wool!

An encyclopedia's worth of information and stories

Details about most of the
neat things you can do here

A (relatively) old favourite. Want to create your own tea?
Bake with dandelions? Read this one for sure.

2012 is going to be our introductory
year for mushroom collecting.

A great resource, especially on hikes
with the Yukon Bird Club.

First Nation knowledge of local plants in
the Gwich'in settlement region.
Did you know that fried reindeer lichen
tastes like cornflakes?

The Boreal forest actually has a
manageable amount of plants to learn

Know where you're going and what you might see.
Helpful elevation change diagrams!

In related news, the brand new Whitehorse Public Library has opened! It's got a riverside patio, and lots of great reading chairs. It's probably a bit less drafty than the one in the 40s :)