The Sun Is Back!!

The last couple days have been amazing all around the Seward Peninsula.  As you could see from yesterdays post the sun was shining up in Shishmaref.  Well this morning when I woke up in White Mountain the temps were around -30 and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  I decided to walk through town and shoot some video and then make my way up to the top of White Mountain to get some video of the sun rise.  As I walked through town it was fun to see the smoke rising out of each house.  It really looked cool on the cold morning.

I finally made it to the top of the mountain and as rewarded with a very beautiful sunrise.  Looking down over the river valley and the snow covered trees it really made for quite a picturesque scene.

As you know I like to take self portraits, it can be quite difficult when the temperatures are as low as they were.  You can see the bottom of my ruff building up with frost from my breath, and the sun trying to poke through the top edge.

Andy came and picked me up with the snowmachine and we stopped by one of the teachers houses to film what housing looks like in White Mountain.  As soon as we stepped in the door however the camera fogged right up.  They do fine out in the cold, and they do fine inside when they are warm, but when you take a cold camera inside you’ll need to wait about 10 – 15 minutes to let them warm up and defog.  So we left the camera inside and went to try out White Mountains new panorama kit.  When the school burned down last year their old panorama kit burned up in the fire.  So when Andy was making the order for the new one last spring I told him about the cool OneShot pano kit he could get from Kidan.  Its a half dome of optical mirroring glass that mounts directly onto the lens of the camera.  You take one photo and an entire 360 degree picture is taken.  You then take the photo into some software on your computer and it unwraps it and turns it into a normal pano picture or interactive Quicktime file.  Here is what the unit looks like.

We didn’t read the instructions before we went out, so we didn’t have any really successful results, but I can tell you this.  The very little time that we did take our gloves off to assemble the pieces to the camera and take the photo our hands went completely numb.  Man it was cold.  As soon as I could I put my gloves back on and jammed my hands into the little pockets on the chest of my parka.  It usually warms them up pretty well in there, but they were so cold it took us going back to the teachers house to warm them back up.

Here is a shot of the village of White Mountain from the top of White Mountain.  🙂

While I was shooting the sunrise on top of the mountain I looked over and saw a moose across the river munching on some willows.  I was able to get some pretty good video of him for quite a while.  Not super super close, but sill good video.  Then when we went to pick up the pano kit I looked across the river and saw another moose in a different area.

Sorry my little camera doesn’t have a better zoom, but if it did I probably wouldn’t have had it with me because those cameras are too big to take with you all the time.  But you get the idea from this picture.

Hageland picked me up from White Mountain and flew me to Nome.  We flew really low to the ground and saw two herds of muskox, and a herd of reindeer.  It was pretty cool.   I tried to shoot some video of it with my little camera.  It came out alright, but we were going so fast, you only get a glimps of them.

Hageland then flew me from Nome to Stebbins, putting my flight total for this trip so far at 23.   I came back to Stebbins because when I stopped there at the beginning of my trip it was very blizzardy out, and I didn’t get very good video.  Today was a different story.  The sun was shining and the snow was glistening.  Stebbins has some land features in the area that are very noteworthy.  On one side of the village is a very large cliff.

On the other side is a hill that drops down into the ocean.  Very pretty.  So just like the sunrise in White Mountain I was able to catch the sunset in Stebbins.  Here it is about to drop down behind the frozen ocean on the horizon.

I’ll shoot a little more here tomorrow and then head to Unalakleet in the afternoon.  I’ll do some shooting there, stay the night, and then head down to Talkeetna to see the Holts.

Video Misconseptions

This morning I woke up to some pretty chilly weather in Wales, Alaska.  After a quick breakfast of oatmeal, I bundled up and headed out into the cold.  It was about -20 and a slight breeze that really bites at your nose and cheeks.  I hiked around town a bit and shot some video.  Wales has some impressive drifting going on.  The snow builds up all around the houses.  While I was out I snapped this picture of Razor Back Mountain.

By then my hands were getting quite cold.  I have to take my gloves off to film, and even though I have the fancy bag that encases the video camera the folks at the DO failed to send me any of the hand warmers that fit in pouches inside the bag.  So it helps cut down on the wind, but its not any warmer inside the bag.

Around 1:25 Doug landed to pick up a BSSD school board member and myself.  We were the last two on the plane filling all 9 seats.  It was a quick flight up to Shishmaref, following the coast all the way up.  We flew over a few caribou, and I kept my eyes pealed for Polar Bears.  Unfortunately we didn’t see any.

The reason the flight was so full going to Shishmaref was because one of the BSSD school board members wife had just died of cancer.  He was from Shish, so the rest of the board and a couple DO staff went up for the funeral.

When we landed in Shish, it was noticeable colder than Wales  I shot some video as I walked into town, and then got into the school to warm up and check the temp online.  Weather Underground had Shish at -29 with the wind chill at -49.  So it was pretty chilly.  I warmed up a bit and talked to Erin on the phone, then went out and shot some more around town.  I was able to get some video of the sun setting over the tundra.

I didn’t stay out long.  The cold was making my fingers go numb pretty quickly.  The metal tripod was also a bit troublesome.  If I ever touched it with my bare hands it kind of burned them with the cold.  Any moisture in your fingers freezes instantly so you get a little freezer burn wherever you touch.

After the funeral was over Doug flew back to Shish and picked us all back up.   We went back to Wales and dropped off that board member.  As we were coming in for our landing I noticed another plane in the sky.  It was dark out, but you could see its lights flashing.  I thought I saw another one near by it.  The Russian have been known to fly over to see if the U.S.A is on the ball as far as intercepting their illegal entry into our air space.  Just a little while ago we had to scramble some fighter jets from Elmendor Air Force base to intercept a Russian war plane over Wales.  So I was thinking to my self… Great we are going to be caught in the middle of some international mid air relations.  Turns out the one plane was actually an Evergreen helicopter that was making its last trip off of Little Diomede for the night, and the other lights were from Tin City an Air Force radar site just on the other side of some mountains from Wales.  They are the ones that catch the Russians flying over and call in the fighters.

So we left Wales and flew directly to White Mountain.  Andy Haviland (the White Mountain principal) was waiting to pick me up.  I tossed my bags into the sled and hopped on the back of the snowmachine and he dropped me off at one of the school buildings to crash in for the night.  White Mountain school burned down last year, so they are in the process of rebuilding.  They currently have 4 or 5 building scattered throughout the village that they hold class in.  Andy was saying how nice it was going to be to not have to get the kids all bundled up to go to lunch or to the gym.

I’ll shoot around here tomorrow until about 12:30 when I hop a plane to Nome, sit for about an hour and a half, then hop a plane to Stebbins.  More to come on that tomorrow.  I hope the weather warms up a little bit.

OHH yeah the title of this post….

When its sunny out it looks great on video, but the viewers have no idea that its flipping cold out.  When its overcast and gray out, it doesn’t look that great on video, but its a lot warmer out.  So showing off these to hire potential teachers.  They are going to find out pretty quickly that the beautiful days are really so cold you think twice about going out and enjoying them.  🙂