Glacier hike

If you've followed the blog for any length of time, you know I'm just a little obsessed with our glacier.  :)  I think it is one of the most beautiful things on earth!  I love the color, the ice, the beauty.  I got a chance to go out on the glacier late this summer with one of my favorite work teams (they're Dutch so you know they have to be great).  You can bet I didn't pass up that chance!  To top it all off, the day was GORGEOUS!  It was sunny, but not cloudless.  There was actually rain coming in after a gorgeous morning which made for perfect picture-taking in my opinion!  I love variable light!  I'm just going to keep quiet for the most part from here on out and let the pictures do the talking.  Here we go!

Yes, my backside is wet.  It was a little slippery and better to slide than slip!

:)  Fun peeps!

Lion's Head!

Chitna dipnetting

Many families in Alaska get their salmon for the year by dipnetting, basically dipping a net in the water and pulling your fish out.  It sounds much less sporting and difficult than it is!  Last year just the guys went dipnetting. It isn't exactly considered "girly" activity. This year Jenny Lee really wanted to go before she graduates from high school and I love to eat fish so I really wanted to contribute to the effort so a date was set and off we went!  Here Dan checks out the trail before attempting to drive it.  From this vantage point it looks easy...

But there are parts where staying upright on the ATV isn't as easy as it looks.  From here it looks like Dan is just driving down an incline.  What you can't see is Rodney hanging off the other side keeping it from tipping.  

Like this:

But surviving the trail is well worth the effort.  We hit the salmon run on a great day and were at times hauling in two fish at a time.  This picture does give a good perspective on the Copper River.  The banks are incredibly steep so finding a good spot to fish doesn't always yield an easy climb out!  The Copper is also incredibly fast running and silty - not a place you want to fall in!  We made sure to tie off (blue rope) so that we wouldn't lose anyone.  Jenny and Rodney did most of the dipping.  The next person up (my job most of the day) hauled the net up to a small level spot where we would kill the fish and hang them on a stringer, then haul them over to the fish cleaner/fillet person (Dan).  I knew that I didn't have the upper body strength to fight the water with the net (yes, it was quite a job just to fight the current) but I neglected to consider how much strength it was taking to haul the fish up the hill.  I didn't sleep much that night due to sore shoulders!  Here Jenny is showing off her catch:

And another:

They weren't all that pretty by the time we'd hauled them half way up the hill, killed them and strung them.  They had been GORGEOUS before that!  These are red or sockeye salmon and they were HUGE this year!

It was a gorgeous place to spend the day, even if it wasn't sunny!

The salmon were then taken over to a quiet cove where Dan filleted them.  Once Jenny got tired of dipping she went over to help get them cleaned up before he filleted them.  This is also back at the river level, but you couldn't get there from the dipping spot without going up and over.  So once you got them half way up the hill you had to go back down to where they could be filleted.

The first 40 or so fish were fun, but by the time you hit 50 or 60, it was just plain hard work!  Once they were filleted, they still had to be hauled back up the hill to the ATVs!  A lot less weight by that point, but a lot longer haul!

Then we got to reverse our ATV ride and with a heavy load this time.  Rodney used the winch to assist Dan's ATV up that steep ledge.

But what scenery!

Oh, really?  Funny thing is, they actually take pretty good care of the trail out there...

The parking lots both right and left in this picture were packed.  The tables by the stream are there for cleaning your fish.  That road coming down on the other side was one narrow lane!  Glad we didn't meet anyone coming around the corner!  Almost everyone was pulling a trailer so there was no easy way to get out of there if you did meet someone!  We didn't see any bears but others had seen them quite recently.  Where there are fish there will be bears!  They like to eat the fish probably even more than I do!

The efforts were well worth it!  Copper River reds are incredibly yummy!  Take a look at that meat!  I'm drooling now!  Time to go grab some from the freezer and fry it up for dinner!  :)

Summer Camp

Wow!  It's October and the last time I posted was after the 4th of July!  I guess I'll be posting furiously until I catch up!  I do know how it happened, but it's kind of a long story.  The short of it is incredible busyness coupled with a computer crash or two or five.  

I might as well start with camp since that accounts for much of the busyness.  I started the summer working the front desk at camp answering phones, helping with general office "stuff" like organizing and ordering supplies, keeping in contact with work teams and keeping the lost and found items organized.  That was actually a lot of fun, especially catching up with a lot of the work teams that I have known for a number of years now and then getting to know the counselors and seeing them interact with their campers.  

Then somewhere about the time of my last post I was asked to help out with some of the bookkeeping, mostly scanning in bills, receipts, etc.  Pretty simple, right?  Guess I wasn't paying attention!  Someone said something to me about "becoming a VERY busy woman" and it sort of sailed right over my head.  I've actually taken over much of the Victory bookkeeping, with a few parts of it parceled out to others.  I can't say I don't enjoy it.  It's been an interesting challenge and the attention to detail fits me pretty well.  It has kept me incredibly busy though, leaving readers (and my parents too) wondering if I'd fallen off the edge of nowhere.  I'm happy to tell you that I have not!  If I manage to catch up all the posts I think you'll see where the time has gone!  

I might as well start with camp since we're sort of there anyway.  One thing I love about Victory is that everyone pitches in and does what needs to be done to make camp come together.  Some of the bigger camp weeks leave us a little short-staffed in other areas when people who are not normally counselors get pulled in to be counselors for the week.  On one of those weeks I offered to take pictures since one AV person was supposed to try to cover the entire camp's activities.  I was so thankful I did!  I got to see parts of camp that I'd never seen before!  The climbing wall is one of the camp favorites: 

 

I'm not sure if the air rifles or "Katniss" were the attraction, but it did seem to be mostly boys there...

The slack line was COOL!!!  The slack line is sort of like a balance beam, but a lot harder.  It is a line a few feet off the ground and you are supposed to try to walk across it.  Most of the kids didn't get more than a few steps.  They were beginning to think it was impossible until "Mulan" got up there and showed them how! She walked all the way across!

This is what most of the efforts looked like, with minor variations:

There were also quieter activities, but not too quiet with "JackJack" around!  The activities staff helped me greatly expand my tie-dye collection!  :)

Summer was almost over before I FINALLY got up to see the end of week horse show!  They do such a great job!  It is different every year.

"Sherlock" on the knee board wasn't too sure about horses, but by the end of the summer she was having a blast!

This was a crazy skit by "Cletus" and "Jedidiah".  That poor stuffed critter is what they were hunting.

Sergei and Austin were in a race here.  I'm thinking that Sergei should pick on someone his own size!  :)

Kacie and Evelynn were enjoying the show too!

This was the summer for babies walking!  If you remember the three babies born last fall, then add Evelynn and Cassidy to that mix, there were/are FIVE little ones all learning to walk!  Such fun!  Evelynn is walking like a champ now, but at this point she was still hanging on pretty tightly!

Nicholas is my little buddy!  Probably because he has the same little naughty streak that I have! :)  He cracks me up!

Cassidy is Nate and Maggie's granddaughter.  Their daughter Bonnie and her husband Brad came up for the summer to help out with the pack trips.  We've had a great time getting to know Brad and Bonnie and trying to talk them into staying on longer at Victory!  Cassidy is such a character!  She is so much fun!  Here Austin and Charity are teasing her with the beloved keys.  She wanted them sooooooo badly that she would take those dreaded steps to get them!

YES!  Success!

Oh!  You TOOK my TOY!!  GIVE!!!!

 Got them again!!!  Neener, neener!!!  :)