The Last Great Race

When I heard that I was going to be able to see the Iditarod in person, I was intriuged. I didn't know much about dogsled racing, and Wes was in a similar position. We just had to go watch the ceremonial start of the race here in Anchorage. The sleds run from downtown and cruise around the city all day before they start the real race outside of town.

There is a big park near the universities in the center of town where Wes and I watched the race without all the crowds.

This is me trying to get a connection to a lady riding with one of the mushers. We tried, but coudn't actually get the high five.

This is a traffic jam on the trail. Even though it was a relaxed race through Anchorage, it definitely showed that some of the teams would not be winning the big race.

Sled dogs are cool. They really aren't as big as I thought they'd be, but they sure cruise right along.

Perhaps a new calling?

I came up to Alaska with the thought that for at least a season I am called into full-time Christian ministry. However, a new possiblity for the call on my life has arisen. . .

Ice bowling, part of the festivities leading up to the Iditarod, has moved its way on to my list of things I may do with my life. I don't think it is a good sign for my character developmet because the best thing about ice bowling is how delightfully easy it is. The pins on the ice will fall over in a stiff breeze, so they stand little chance against a 16 pound ball thrown from half the usual distance.

Judging by Scott's smooth technique, he is also weighing his chances for a future in ice bowling.

Its difficult to know our actual scores because it was not uncommon to knock over more than 10 pins with a single roll.

To the mountains

If you've been to Anchorage, then you know about Flat top. It is a mountain just east of town that is among the most travelled hiking routes in the US. It took us until Febuary to finally get around to climbing it, and it was a really cool experience. These pictures will show that you can really feel like your in the high mountains within sight of downtown. Its pretty incredible.

The mountains just east of town are the front edge of the Chugach range. They get beat with tons of wind. The moutains in this picture look pretty bare because the snow never stays on top once the winds come. Its pretty crazy to see the mountains white one day and brown the next.

I'll answer the question that is in your mind: No, Wes and I aren't really hard core, but this picture may lead you to believe we are. Off to the right in this picture is a glacier that is pouring out of the interior range.

Downtown Anchorage sits snuggly beside the Cook Inlet in the background as I climb up the rocky face of Flat top. The mountain provides a breathtaking view of the city, the inlet and the mountains on the distant Aluetian Islands. I felt pretty spoiled on this hike.

Crazy Ice Sculptures

A few weeks back, Scott, Wes and I went to investigate a park in the middle of downtown Anchorage that was rumored to be the site of a huge ice carving competition. I guess all of that must have been true because we found all these incredible carvings of sea life and various other cool things.

For some reason, when an artist begins to carve into ice there is an incredibly strong call to form this ice into a sea creature like this sea horse. Almost every scultpure was either a shark, dolphin or other funny little ocean dweller.

The blocks for the carving were 3x4x6 ft. pieces of ice from a pond outside Fairbanks. It doesn't take that artists very long to turn a huge hunk into a beautiful form like this swordfish. Notice the continued infatuation with sea life.

This is Scott and I looking like a couple of eskimos or something. I tried to fog up the area in front of my face, but failed and so I just look funny.

Glorious snow

In my time in Anchorage before Christmas break there was only 6 inches of snow. This left me a bit skeptical about all the hype about the great Alaskan winter. However, when I left the Lord poured forth His blessing in the form of record snowfall, and this is a little taste of what I came home to.

This is Scott, my teammate's car after Wes dug it out. If you look closely you can see the handrails just over the hood of the car are about an inch above the snow. All told there was about three feet of snow on the ground. Off of the highway I saw a fifty foot high snow pile that had been dumped from other parts of the city. Its really cool.

Wes took this picture after the snow fell. It is just really cool. Ansel Adams wishes he could have taken this shot.

This is Wes in waist deep powder. Unfortunately Wes doesn't ski so he doesn't know how to properly use powder such as this. Luckily, I brought my skis back and won't let it go to waste.

Winter Conference

I spent Dec. 27 throught Jan 3 in Portland for the annual Winter conference. It was a really refreshing time with lots of great teaching and plenty of fun with friends from all over the northwest.

This is Bryan Loritts, the main speaker for the conference. His father is Crawford Loritts, who is apparently fairly well known, but Bryan was definitely a powerful preacher. I really enjoyed him.

This is the worship band. I really enjoyed them they were a local church's band from the Portland area. The conference was held in the Portland Convention center and was made up of about 600 students.

This picture is a bit dark, but this is the masses of students who would walk the several blocks from the hotel to the convention center for each meeting. I was one of the guys who stood out on a street corner making sure people didn't get lost or jaywalk. It was a cold, boring job, but its part of being an intern. Interns get all the crappy jobs even in the ministry world.

This is a good picture that hopefully gives a feel for the size of the conference. It was a lot of people from a lot of different schools. it was pretty encouraging to see all the schools represented. The biggest groups come from schools like WSU, Idaho and Montana State, but there are also many from EWU, Nevada-Reno, as well as the Portland and Seattle areas.

No fun was had at this conference. If students acted out during the meetings they were forced to dress in these oversized suits and fight eachother in front of all their friends. It was harsh, but I think it got the point across.

Our first Alaskan home

These are pictures of the church that Scott, Wes and I stayed in for a week before we found an apartment. They are pretty funny to look back on now. We now attend the church that first housed us, and have done work to tear apart this building so that it can be rebuilt into the new
sanctuary.

This is where Wes and I slept. It was a nursery that was being converted to an office. The baby nap mat treated me well.

This is our living room, which will be the foyer to the new church.

This is going to be a youth play room equipped with a basketball hoop game, fooseball and a climbing wall. During our stay the walls were painted which wasn't the most enjoyable part of the stay. I put in a lot of time on the hoop shoot game. So much that I almost bought one for our apartment. However, that proved to be a tough purchase to justify.

I'm super thankful to the Anchorage Wesleyan Church that helped us out. They've been so good to us, and continue to bless our team as the year goes on.

Domestication

These are some pictures of the derby pie I baked yesterday. Its the only thing I can ever remember baking in my life, but I think it turned out okay. This operation started because the family I'm having thanksgiving with told me to get the recipe of my favorite dish back home. Derby pie is amazing so I hope I didn't screw it up. I had fun either way.

Juneau = Beautiful

After our trip to Fairbanks was over we had about 36 hours to prepare for a flight to Juneau. I was pumped to see Southeast Alaska. I had heard of the amazing forested islands and was looking forward to something like western Washington. The only difference was in Juneau, they have a glacier that comes all the way down to sea level and can be seen almost from the airport. It was pretty cool to see as we drove around, but then after we finished our work we were able to take a kayak tour of the glacier which produced these amazing pictures.















This waterfall was covered by Mendenhall glacier about 7 years ago. It is now about 100 ft away from the ice. The glacier recedes 24 ft per year.














Mendenhall glacier is 12 miles long and 200 ft deep where it hits the lake. It has boulders the size of cars caught up in the ice.














Chris in his kayak loving life.















Laura and Debbie. Debbie was our guide, and is the cousin of the head of Campus Crusade. I guess it pays to know people.














Debbie said if we touched the icebergs we'd probably sink our boats. I didn't test it.














This is a hole in the glacier that goes down into an ice cave which we explored for a while.














Basically, if I could live in an ice cave I would. This cave was about 150 ft long. I"m standing across a stream if its hard to see. The ice was crystal clear above us.

Life in Alaska

Pictures at last!!!

I'm sorry its taken me so long to get this up and going. I've been aiming at it for almost a month. To my supporters, I hope this gives you some good pictures of what our travels have looked like so far. These pictures are the highlights of our Fairbanks trip, with more from Juneau to follow.

This is the team, from right to left they are Wes, Scott, Amy, Laura and myself. Wes just graduated from Montana State University. Scott has been on staff for four years and was previously at Central Washington University. Amy just graduated from University of Montana, and Laura is from Oregon State University. Other than Scott, we're all interns which means we're up here for the year. Scott hopes to stay and keep the Alaskan ministry going in the future.

This is Wes and I climbing around in Denali National Park. In these pictures we are both over 500 feet up a shere rock face. We didn't really need climbing gear for these intense climbs because we are just that good. The views were incredible. Over Wes' shoulder is a huge river valley, and the mountains surrounding Mt. McKinley were massive. This was a nice side trip on the way back from Fairbanks. Nature in Alaska is big, everything is big, the rivers, the mountains and the valleys. Its amazing.

While in Fairbanks we had the opportunity to hang out with the Campus Crusade group from University of Alaska Anchorage. They joined us for a saturday outreach at the campus and then our team, the UAA students, and some Fairbanks students hung out and played games at a local church. As you can see it was some good times.