This is when you know it has officially snowed too much this winter!!!
I'm still sitting on some good pics from last year and have slacked on posting! Special thanks to Andrea for inspiring me to dust off the cobwebs. Here are a couple pics from Portage Valley, just about an hour south of Anchorage. How about the P's coming up from sweltering STL to hike the year-round snowfield below Byron glacier! 
Portage Valley - gorgeous! I think the P's agree. 
The North Pole hits its farthest point from the sun at 8:30 pm my time....then it starts tilting back toward the sun already! It arrived sooooo fast this year! I had barely started to notice how dark it was and how weak the light was even when the sun was around.
Sunrise: 10:14 a.m. Sunset: 3:41 p.m.
Tommorow we'll gain about 1 minute of light. But by the third week of January, we'll be tilted back far enought to gain five minutes of sun a day, every day, all the way until Summer Solstice on June 21, 2012. By then we'll have about 15 hours more of sun than today. Wooohooo - something to look forward to every day!
I won't get the quote quite right, but the best bus driver I ever had in Denali Nat'l Park (you generally can't drive in there) said something to the effect that at the zoo they put the animals in cages and let the people wander around, and in DNP they put the people in cages and let the animals wander around. Very true.
Today every living animal in DNP was born during a time when buses ran in the park. So, to them, it's just part of the environment. The bear in front of the other bus in this pic, oblivious to that bus, and to the one occupied by me and my P's, is proof of that.
I've heard tell that some folks go to DNP and do a six, or eight, or up to twelve hour bus tour and see no animals to speak of. Yeeeouch!!! I've done the bus four times (once in 2006 before I lived here, once on my own in 2008, and twice hosting the P's in 2009 and 2011) and have always seen an abundance of wildlife. This last time with the P's we saw moose, caribou, fox, wolves, dahl sheep, over a dozen grizzlies, and more, all very close up.
We also saw the most incredible wildlife encounter I've ever seen, and will likely ever see. I have no pictures, just memories, because it was well within binocular range but outside camera range.
We were just the other side of an area called Polychrome Pass when we saw a grizzly bear lounging in the bushes way off in the distance down the ridge. We were stopped for a rest stop, and he was just chilling down there. As we left, before we knew it, he was on the move. Suddenly a white wolf appeared, and they seemed to be circling one another, but still 30 yards apart, and it really wasn't clear who was after who. Then it became apparent the wolf had something in its mouth, which it dropped as the grizzly circled. No doubt that was food, part of a fresh kill. Then, as the white wolf and the bear closed in on one another, seemingly out of nowhere, because I didn't see them coming, four more grey wolves appeared (some other observers said five) and surrounded the bear. It was completely surreal! Where did those other wolves come from! Then, for the fifteen minutes we got to watch, the bear would launch into a charge toward a wolf full speed, the wolves would scatter, then the wolves would re-establish an attack formation around the bear and he would pick one and charge full bore again. It was UNBELIEVABLE!!! Unfortunately, on the bus, you have to keep moving, so we left at that point and didn't get to see it all play out. These things can easily go on for well over an hour or more.
When we came back by a few hours later on the return trip the bear was back to chilling, I assume satisfied with whatever snack he stole from those wolves. A ways down we caught up with the white wolf (obviously the pack leader) trotting down a river bank back toward the den. I've seen a lot of things up here and I'll say it again - most incredible wildlife encounter I've ever seen, or will likely ever see.
