Betting on breakup — Rotary tests frozen waters for Kenai River Ice Classic

Photos courtesy of Merrill Sikorsky, Soldotna Rotary. Spenard Builders Supply donated use of a boom truck to lower an ice block into place onto the Kenai River from the bridge in Soldotna on March 27 during the installation of a block of ice and timing mechanism for the trial run of the Kenai River Ice Classic.

By Joseph Robertia

Redoubt Reporter

What do the Cookie Monster, a fire truck, a boom truck, a block of ice and the Kenai River have in common? This question was on the lips of many passing motorists when they saw all these things on the only bridge into Soldotna on March 27.

The answer comes courtesy of a joint effort by the Kenai and Soldotna Rotary clubs, as they are working together on a pilot project to establish a local version of the popular Nenana Ice Classic.

“Ours will be called the Kenai River Ice Classic,” said Rotary member Josselyn O’Connor, who, along with fellow Rotarian and project spearhead, Sarah Riley, have been working to bring the idea to fruition.

Started in 1906, the Nenana Ice Classic is a nonprofit fundraiser which sells tickets representing guesses for when the ice will go out on the Tanana River. A tripod is constructed on the frozen river and attached to a time clock that records the exact moment the tripod moves as a result of the river breaking up.

The inception for a local contest was — as with many great ideas — quite by accident. O’Conner said that, while reviewing other things, a Rotarian mentioned in passing that it was written into state statutes that Kenai or Soldotna Rotary could legally hold this type of “lottery.” This was followed up by a rhetorical question that became a literal reality.

The block nears the surface of the river ice.

“Someone asked, ‘Why aren’t we doing this?’ And that got the momentum going,” O’Conner said.

The brainstorming began, at the center of which was how to make the local contest unique.

“We went ’round and ’round about, ‘Should it be a tripod, or a buoy?’ And ultimately we went with an ice block. It seemed to be the best because it wouldn’t have to be returned,” O’Connor said.

As the idea grew, more agencies and organizations got involved, including the Kenai River Center, which gave input on the location; the Alaska Department of Transportation, which gave input on how to attach the block to the bridge; Metal Magic, which helped with the clock mechanism; and Spenard Builders Supply, which loaned a boom truck to lower the 2-ton ice block cut from a gravel pit off of Beaver Loop Road.

With so many emergency and industrial vehicles on the scene, O’Conner said that the dancing Cookie Monster, joined by Elmo and a lemon-headed mascot, were there to let passers by know that no disaster or crisis was happening.

“They were just there to keep the mood light,” she said. “We didn’t want anyone alarmed.”

Common Ground: Peculiarity of Patrick’s method

Photo courtesy of Christine Cunningham.
Patrick and William show off part of their ice-fishing catch.

By Christine Cunningham, for the Redoubt Reporter

The chances of catching fish were very, very small that day. So small, it was safe to say it could not be done. Not by me. According to my calculations, determined by faithfully logging all of my fishing occasions in a weather-resistant journal, then entering the data into fields in a database, which could be manipulated to determine patterns of success or failure, a fish could not be caught when the wind came out of the east.

Still, my nephews wanted to go fishing, and it wasn’t my fault that they picked a day with an easterly wind. Fishing parents often have contingency plans for the inevitable problem of disinterest. Plenty of snacks and a Plan B — sledding or ice skating, for instance. Under no circumstances was the Plan B to include matches or fire-building, their mothers told me.

“Not after last time.”

Since last time, all plans required clearance, so my Plan B was to bring hot chocolate. I forgot the hot chocolate.

Luckily, my 8-year-old nephew, Patrick, had only one plan. Within seconds of arriving at the lake he dropped his line down one of the holes I’d drilled. Before his dad could comment on the weather or his cousin, 9-year-old William, could choose a lure from the tackle box, Patrick was fighting his first fish. I tested the wind direction. It hadn’t changed.

Taking aim at biathlon revival — Ski group builds on youth interest

Photos by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Several youth take aim at targets 50 meters away during a biathlon event Saturday at Tsalteshi Trails in Soldotna. The event combines the athleticism of skiing with the controlled breathing and precision aiming and shooting of a .22-caliber rifle.

By Joseph Robertia

Redoubt Reporter

With each visibly steaming exhale, May Bruno’s cheeks grew rosier. The 12-year-old was working hard in the cool morning air, but her mind was not on the single-digit temperatures. Just arriving from skiing the short, but hilly, Raven Loop on the Tsalteshi Trails system, the teen was focused on her breathing.

She glided in and quickly transitioned to lying in a prone position, then picked up a .22-caliber rifle, rotated the bolt in battery, and took aim with the iron sights on a small, 1 ¾-inch target 50 meters downrange.

As she concentrated and got her breathing under control, she moved her still-gloved index finger onto the trigger. Without jerking she smoothly squeezed off a shot. The rifle popped, and a “ding” of success could be heard even before Tim Bruno — her father and a level-one biathlon instructor staring at the target through a spotting scope — announced that she had hit her mark.

Her bluish lips formed a large smile, the kind that comes from success, but she continued working through her still-full clip. Pulling the bolt back, a small brass shell flew out, glinting in the morning light. Before the still-hot empty cartridge hissed into the snow, Bruno had already slammed the bolt forward and loaded another round. Over and over again she hit her mark, until finally her rifle ran silent. Only the sweet smell of gun-smoke emanated from its empty chamber.

“These are difficult targets to hit even without breathing hard, but when you add in the hard breathing and increased heart beating from skiing so fast, this can be daunting to kids,” Tim Bruno said.

Common Ground: No contest — Laundry vs. anything outside

By Christine Cunningham, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo courtesy of Christine Cunningham. Lake trout lie hidden in Hidden Lake —especially on windy winter days.

The day my fishing partner decided that enough time had gone by that we needed to go ice fishing happened to be on a day in which the wind was blowing about 45 mph and the temperature had risen to negative 20 degrees.

My personal views on ice fishing held that fish don’t much like the wind. I don’t know what goes on underwater in a wind, but based on the attention that gets paid to my lure by fish, my guess is that they are hanging on to a reed by their lips waiting out an underwater storm. But since fishing is better than ironing my clothes or washing my dishes, I decided to go anyway.

The road to Hidden Lake wasn’t all that bad. As long as we kept the speed of the vehicle to less than 10 mph and stayed in the middle of the road, there was every chance we’d make it to the lake.

The chances weren’t as good on making it back. But, those were the odds that we were willing to take in order to catch a lake trout and avoid domestic chores. When my life flashes before my eyes, as it did on the last downhill curve in the road to the lake, I certainly don’t want to have any images of myself ironing clothes. I’m just not that good at it.

From the parking lot it was clear to us that it wouldn’t be a good idea to drive out on the lake. Freeze and thaw conditions had created about a foot of overflow. We loaded up our sled with the barest of essentials. The hand auger, the ice scoop, our fishing rods, our spare fishing rods, tackle boxes, two camp chairs, my portable ice shanty, my propane heater, several extra cans of propane, a Thermos of coffee, a bottle of blackberry brandy, and, in my case, a book on the life and legend of Crazy Horse, who defeated Custer in the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Once the sled was hooked up to my fishing partner, we began the long walk to our favorite spot. Luckily, the wind was at our back and so my added weight in the sled was of little inconvenience.

Cool running — Race to stay warm in winter solstice run

By Clark Fair

Photos courtesy of Andrea Hambach, Willow Running Company. Yvonne Leutwyler, of Soldotna, and Clark Fair, of Sterling, complete the Willow Winter Solstice Half Marathon on Dec. 22, in temperatures dipping to minus 30.

Redoubt Reporter

I awoke at 4 o’clock on the morning of a race and struggled to get back to sleep because I was worried about whether I was capable of finishing the event, and, given the conditions outside, whether I was capable of even surviving.

My running partner, Yvonne Leutwyler, and I had spent the night with friends (and race organizers) Andrea Hambach and Dave Johnston in Willow for the Dec. 22 inaugural Willow Winter Solstice marathon/half-marathon. At 6:30 a.m., their outdoor thermometer read  minus 32 degrees. The clear dark skies were pinpricked with stars. We were about three miles from the race venue and at least four hours from sunrise. Normal, rational people would not have ventured outside on a day like this. They would have cranked up wood stoves, snuggled under wool blankets or wiggled their tootsies inside of fuzzy slippers — but not us. We planned to run in it.

For Yvonne and I, that meant 13.1 miles of ice and hard-packed snow mainly across a series of low-lying lakes, starting at the Willow Community Center on the western shore of Willow Lake. This would be the longest run of my life — if I made it — and, by far, the coldest.

About 50 percent of the 31-person field would be joining us for the half-marathon. The rest would be running the full-meal deal — 26.2 miles, all the way to a tiny island on Red Shirt Lake (in the Nancy Lake State Recreation Area) and then back again. (The marathoners, obviously, were the real crazy ones.)

Warming up to cold-weather recreation — Get dressed, get out, get moving

By Jenny Neyman

Photo courtesy of Clark Fair. A Kenai Central High School skier is dressed for success in a chilly ski race in Homer on Dec. 16. Wearing layers is always recommended outdoors. In particularly cold temperatures, be sure to cover your head — particularly the ears — protect your eyes against wind and snow and cover your nose and mouth to warm air before it hits your lungs.

Redoubt Reporter

Jane Adkins, of Kasilof, grew up a California girl, surrounded by concrete in San Francisco. She had little familiarity with temperatures below freezing, much less below zero. She certainly didn’t know there were people who spent days at a time out in minus 10, minus 30, even minus 50 and colder. Willingly. For fun, even. Not until she moved to Alaska, started mushing and was out there herself.

“I didn’t know people did this growing up. I didn’t know where snow came from when I grew up. I was in my teens the first time I saw snow come down out of the sky, so I think I was in awe with a lot of things,” she said. “The more I saw, the more I wanted to be out there.”

Despite the immediate interest she had for outdoor winter recreation in Alaska, being able to embrace it safely was a learning process with an intimidation curve to conquer.

“They taught me the wrong way. They made it scary and they made me nervous,” she said.

While frostbite, hypothermia and other cold-condition dangers are legitimate concerns, outdoor activity in the winter doesn’t have to be out of bounds, as long as it’s done with knowledge, gear and preparation.

“You learn to deal with it. What I used to be able to tolerate and what I tolerate now are very different. You acclimate,” she said.

But first, you bundle up.

Gearing up

Ease uphill battle of downhill ski skills

Photos courtesy of Clark Fair. Figure 7: Use a longer arm extension on flat ground. Here, Logan Hemphill, of Skyview High School, skis in the 2011-12 Region III meet held Feb. 17 and 18, 2012, at Tsalteshi Trails in Soldotna.

Editor’s note: This is part two of a series of columns explaining the techniques of cross-country skiing.  

Last week, we began with the Seven Magic Movements of Cross-Country Skiing — No. 1, athletic posture; No. 2, forward lean; No. 3, the kick; No. 4, the glide and No. 5, compression. This week, we pick up where we left off in classic skiing:

• No. 6: Pole plant. Arms should be bent at a 60-degree angle or less. If viewed from the side, poles should be planted with a forward angle. If viewed from the front, poles should be vertical or angled slightly to your centerline. The shoulders should be parallel, not hunched on the pole arm. Common problems: If you find your arms are too straight, try bending an arm as you bring it forward to plant the pole. If the pole shoulder is hunched, try keeping shoulders relaxed, and don’t overswing your arms too high when diagonal poling.

Make nice with ice — No need to cool heels indoors when lakes lure recreationalists

By Jenny Neyman

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Jacob and Katie Creglow, and family dog, Ally, cruise along Scout Lake in Sterling on Sunday. Lakes are frozen, flat and free from snow, making excellent ice-skating conditions.

Redoubt Reporter

Welcome to the weather in between: The frenzy of hunting and fishing seasons have cooled, and frost heaves and freeze-thaw footing are putting the chill on hiking, biking and other trail pursuits. Temperatures tell us winter is here, yet the change in season hasn’t yet brought enough snow to make a go of skiing, snowshoeing, sledding, snowmachining or dog mushing.

What’s an outdoorsman or -woman to do? Pining for snow or reminiscing over summer is living in the future or past. Why not embrace what’s available here and now, and make nice with ice?

“It’s a beautiful day, and it’s perfect ice-skating ice. No snow, it’s nice and smooth, this is great,” said Kelli Creglow, of Sterling, out with her husband, Chris, kids Jacob, 13, and Katie, 11, and Ally, their German shepherd, on Sunday.

Chris has a plane and can access sites off the beaten, road-accessible path, but the family decided to stay close to home for their first winter lake expedition, packing up a sled with skates, warm layers and ice-fishing equipment and heading out on Scout Lake.

Even though it’s near their house and their common destination for canoe fishing in the summer, Scout Lake still took on an exotic, almost otherworldly feel Sunday, with the sun blazing in a clear sky overhead and glinting off the bare, clear, frozen water under their feet. If it weren’t for a light sheen of dust and the occasional crack, encased lily pad or other imperfection in the ice, skating could almost feel like an escape from gravity.

“We were just checking out all the air bubbles that are trapped, layers and layers deep. We were stopping and

Air bubbles trapped in the ice are one was to visually gauge the thickness of a lake’s ice cover.

rubbing the ice and looking at how far down the farthest air bubble is we could see. It’s pretty cool,” Kelli said, as she, Katie and Ally returned to where Chris and Jacob were bobbing fishing lines in holes they’ve augured into the ice.

Of course, the illusion of floating is bludgeoned into reality immediately if and when fleshy matter meets the unyielding lake surface, but skating conditions have been near perfect lately for even beginners to get — and keep — their skating legs under them.

A high-pressure system lingering over Southcentral Alaska has held with cool, dry air, freezing the peninsula’s smaller to midsized lakes to a safe, solid 5 to 10 inches deep, and leaving their surfaces glassy and clear.

“I think this would be a good place right now to bring even a little kid to learn to skate, because a lot of times the wind will blow and the ice will get washboardy, and it’s a lot harder to learn how to skate on washboardy ice,” Kelli said. “This is so smooth you could grab one of those little chairs and stand a little toddler up with it and push them and they’d take off with something to hold onto. This is a great time right now to learn to skate if you’ve never done it before,” she said.

Science of the Seasons: Frozen (just in) time — Lake ice takes variable durations to form, sink, rise again

By Dr. David Wartinbee, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Smaller and midsized lakes, like ARC, Sports, Scout and Headquarters, seen here, are frozen enough for skaters, but care should still be taken, especially with larger lakes and ones that have streams flowing into and out of them.

As we shivered through this past week’s zero degree (and less) temperatures, there was really a silver lining for some of us. That is, if you are interested in ice fishing or skating on some of our local lakes.

Several weeks back I flew over a number of local lakes and some were completely covered with ice, while others were completely open. This time of year reminds me of the changes taking place within the lakes, as well as the physical properties of water that put ice where it is.

In order for a lake to form ice, the entire lake must first reach 4 degrees Celsius, or 39 degrees Fahrenheit. The way this happens is quite interesting. As water cools and gets closer to the magical 4 degrees C, it becomes more dense and sinks to the bottom of the lake.

This way, warmer water is forced to the top of the lake and it gets exposed to the colder air. When that surface water cools, it then sinks and warmer water from a little bit lower takes its place. Eventually, the entire lake water is the same temperature. Since shallow waters around the edge of a lake, or shallow coves of a lake, can more quickly reach the critical temperature of 4 degrees C, ice usually forms there first.

Lakes like Tustumena and Skilak contain huge volumes of water at great depths, so it takes a long time for the entire lake to reach the 4-degree C level. Only then can ice formation begin.

When the surface water starts to get even colder than 4 degrees C, the density reverses itself. Water colder than 4 degrees C becomes a little bit less dense and stays on top. Now it can cool to zero degrees C. Once some of the surface water has reached freezing temperatures, the “heat of fusion” needs to be satisfied. This simply means that once the water has reached zero degrees C, it must now give up 80 calories of heat per gram of water in order for it to change into ice. After all that heat loss, the newly formed ice is still only zero degrees.

Almanac: Dislodged — Early backcountry ski facility at Manitoba destroyed in fire

By Clark Fair

Photo by Theresa Zimmerman, courtesy of Alaska Lost Ski Areas Project. The Glacier Ski Lodge at Manitoba in 1946 with the Kenai Mountains to the west of the Seward Highway in the background.

Redoubt Reporter

Oliver Amend was working in Seward in the spring of 1960 when he heard that his ski lodge on Mount Manitoba was on fire. As soon as he could, he fired up his single-engine airplane and flew over the mountains to check things out.

By the time he arrived, the Glacier Ski Lodge was gone.

Amend had been given the lodge five years earlier by its original builder, Gentry Schuster, when Schuster decided that he was too busy with his Bush-flying business, Safeway Airways, to bother any longer with an alpine skiing business.

Photo by Bruce McClellan, courtesy of Alaska Lost Ski Areas Project. The view is from the top of the ski run on Manitoba in 1942.

“He just turned it over to Oliver Amend to operate — no sale — just a ‘you take it,’” said Schuster’s ex-wife, Virginia, in a 2006 letter published on the Alaska Lost Ski Areas Project website.

Mount Manitoba is located along the Seward Highway near the confluence of Mills and Canyon creeks, about three miles north of Summit Lake Lodge. When Schuster built the Glacier Ski Lodge in 1941, no Seward Highway existed, so the road designation was Mile 50 of the Seward-Hope Highway.

Photo by Bruce McClellan, courtesy of Alaska Lost Ski Areas Project . Gentry Schuster works to build his Glacier Ski Lodge in 1942, referred to at the time by the Schuster family as simply “the cabin.”

By the time Amend took control in 1955, the Schuster marriage was ending, and neither Gentry nor Virginia continued with the lodge in any capacity. Amend, a resident of Seward who had a regular job during the week, ran the place as “strictly a weekend affair,” according to the ALSAP website.

Whenever he was gone from the mountain, however, problems occurred. While the lodge was vacated during the weekdays, it was left vulnerable to uninvited and often destructive visitors.

These vandals — Amend blamed Army soldiers then stationed at Seward — took residence at the lodge during the week without permission. They often burned through the firewood that Amend had stored there for the weekend, and one time they apparently began incinerating

Photo courtesy of Alaska Lost Ski Areas Project. A special-use permit card for Manitoba ski area in 1942.

wooden skis for warmth when they exhausted the supply of stove wood.

According to ALSAP, Amend suspected that in the spring of 1960 the vandals were more careless than usual and caught the whole place on fire. The Glacier Ski Lodge was never rebuilt, and its special-use permit with the Chugach National Forest was not renewed.

Old Duck Hunter: Thinking back on winter as spring is sprung

By Steve Meyer, for the Redoubt Reporter

This time of year is always one of mixed feelings for me. Mid-February to the end of March, at least in my mind, is second only to the September to October season when bird hunting is at its best. With the middle of February come longer days, generally warmer temperatures and, most important, settled and stable snow on which my setters can hunt.

Again, to me, there are few things in life that match being above tree line in the snow on a bright, sunny day watching these gorgeous animals work their magic. But along with being out in the backcountry comes the inevitable viewing of animals, particularly moose, that you know just are not going to make it through the winter. We may breathe that sigh of relief when we know that winter is on the downhill slide, but wild animals are a long way from breathing easy.

There are folks who tend to glorify the lives of wild animals. They believe they live out their days in a utopian existence where every day is just another walk in the outdoor wonderland that so many of us enjoy — on a part-time basis. We snowshoe or ski into places so gorgeous they defy real description, spend the day doing whatever, and then we go home to a warm house and a hot meal. Those animals you see along the way are out there 24-7. No one is cooking for them, and for many, their home is right where you saw them standing.

If you are out there enough, you run into some of the unpleasant things that happen to animals in the wild. A band of sheep caught unaware in an avalanche chute; a moose, caribou or sheep taken down by wolves or maybe coyotes; the remnants of rabbits caught and eaten by a myriad different prey animals; the carcass of birds of prey that fell to another stronger or faster prey bird; or even the untouched and frozen animals that simply could not go on any longer. All are a stark reminder that life in the wild is not what is so often portrayed in the media.

Not long ago my hunting partner and I were visiting a local taxidermy shop. You simply cannot be in these places without looking around at all of the wildlife artifacts that accumulate over the years. For most it would be a startling education of life in the wild.

Moose shot after dog attack — Incident under investigation

By Naomi Klouda

Photo courtesy of Homer Tribune. Reports of moose in distress are becoming increasingly common as winter drags on.

Homer Tribune

A moose was shot Thursday after being severely injured after being run down by a pack of dogs on Ternview Place, in Homer, resulting in citations for the dogs’ owner and an investigation.

At about 7:30 p.m. March 23, Homer Police received a call reporting the moose had been shot to put it out of its misery after the dogs attacked it. The dogs, owned by Joseph Patten, were reported to Homer Animal Control for their aggressive behavior, said Police Chief Mark Robl. Patten was issued three citations, one for each dog.

It is not automatically OK for a resident to shoot a moose, either in defense of life and property or as a mercy killing, Robl said. The matter has been referred to the Alaska State Troopers for investigation.

It was one of four moose shot in Homer in recent months.

“One of the three dogs had severely injured the moose,” Robl said. “The neighbor and gentleman with the dogs decided they needed to put it out of its misery, so the neighbor shot the moose. The dogs had been reported as aggressive in the past. A report was made to the animal control officer, who issued three citations for having dogs at large.”