Woohoo! Right now, it is winter break, which means school's out!!! It feels great to be done with exams and homework and have time to finally just relax! During the first few days of break, I visited my good friend Carly in her hometown of Anchorage, Alaska. Some of you who intimately follow these Caltech student blogs may know her from her blog about a research internship in South Korea this past summer. Both Carly and I have known each other since freshman year as we both play the clarinet in the Caltech Occidental Concert band, have been on the Caltech swimming team and are on the Caltech waterpolo team together. Beyond our shared passion drinking of exquisite tea, we were also study and homework partners for ACM95, which is an applied mathematics class many engineering majors take at Caltech; I would venture to say that we bonded over the triumphs and tears of many late nights working on problem sets.
So, as soon as finals week ended, we jetted out from LAX to Seattle and then onto a flight for Anchorage. I was not sure what to expect and was a little wary weather-wise on what the Alaska winter was going to be like. The sunny weather of southern California is always around a balmy 75 degrees without any real differentiable seasons (a lot of people wear jeans, a shirt and flip flops all year round!). As soon as we hopped off the plane in Anchorage and ventured outside of the airport, I was super excited to see a layer of white snow covering everything. I felt transplanted from the land of palm trees and sunshine to winter and snow! And then cold winds hit me and I was shivering and shaking (Brrrr!); I was definitely a weather wimp spoiled by the warm Californian climate. According to Carly, this wasn't even considered cold for an Alaskan winter and it was actually pretty warm for the winter! Even though I thought there was a lot of snow everywhere, Carly told me that the few inches on the ground was actually not a lot since the windstorms of the previous week had actually caused a lot of the snow to melt and that we should cross our fingers for colder weather and more snowfall.
On my first full day in Alaska, we decided to go sledding. Before we went out, we had to suit up in snow gear consisting of long underwear, sweaters, snowjacket, snow pants, headband, hat, mittens and boots. I ended up resembling the Michelin man (or a puffy marshmallow)! I quickly learned about sledding concepts such as 'steering', where you sort of lean one way or another (or flail all your limbs in a certain direction) to avoid trees, fences, other people, etc.
However, a more important concept is definitely 'bailing' when you are about to hit some trees or crash into people in order to avoid immediate injury. The aftermath is usually a 'yard sale' where all your things are strewn about on the hill and a face full of snow!
It was a lot of fun zooming downhill but the uphill walk was definitely more of a work out and a lot slower:
Oops, we popped one of the tubes!
Afterwards, we hiked on a trail through a frozen and snowy marsh and it led us to the
ocean!
Walking through the frozen marsh.
I actually didn't know it was the ocean until it was pointed out to me. The frozen and bumpy ridges in the ice were fascinating because it looked like the waves of the ocean had been frozen in time (think of Narnia from "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe")!
We're on the frozen ocean!!!
I also noticed that the number of hours of daylight in Alaska were very few; the sunrise was
around 10:30 am and sunset was around 3:00 pm!
Alaskan sunset-- gorgeous!
That evening, Carly and I hit up the Alaska zoo where they had cool light displays throughout the zoo. We saw many cold climate animals including a polar bear, seals, yaks, wolves, etc.
The next day, we drove up to Wascilla, AK and passed by where I was told Sarah Palin lives. We got to drive snowmobiles on the frozen Rocky Lake. Ironically, the weather was so unusually warm for Alaska that instead of snowing, it was actually raining while we were snowmobiling! Driving the snowmachines to up to 60/70mph was exhilarating!
Snowmobiling! It's hard to tell, but we were soaked from the rain!
The next day, I was woken by excited voices, and to my amazement, there was a whole 45 inches of snowfall overnight!!! The landscape had been transformed into a winter wonderland with untouched, pristine snow.
Carly and I decided to go cross country skiing immediately that morning. However, when we arrived at the trails, we discovered that the trails had not yet been groomed because the roads still had yet to be plowed (priorities, go figure). Undeterred, we decided to go ahead with our plans. The first challenge not getting into the cross country skis but actually skiing through the foot of fresh snow. I felt like a snow plow blazing a trail through the new snow. There were definitely a few falls--like one time I skied straight into a tree pit that was covered in thick snow!
The following day, we went downhill skiing at Alyeska Ski Resorts, which was about a 45 minute drive. The road we drove along had cliffs to the left, where doll sheep inhabit. To the right, the view was gorgeous as we could see the sunrise coming over the mountains and the reflections in the water and we could also see the places where avalanches had occured down the mountainsides.
Alaskan sunrise as we drive to the ski resort.
This drive to the slopes turned out to be an adventure: when we were about 30 minutes into the drive when the heating system of the car broke down. Not thinking much of it, we drove on and 10 minutes later, as we were making a turn, the car decided to break down-- while we were still driving. So we used the momentum of the car to pull into the parking lot of a gas station. When we got out of the car, Carly and I saw smoke/vapor seeping out from the hood of the car-- uh oh! Luckily, we were close to ski resort, so after calling Carly's dad, who got the car towed, we were able to take a shuttle bus and continue on. The recent huge snowfall made the skiing really fun and the views of the slopes was picturesque.
Skiing at Alyeksa.
The next day I flew back to California and my adventure to Alaska came to an end. What an unforgettable and extremely fun-filled trip! Many thanks to Carly and her family for having me. :)
