Ash Ash Ash

Everyone wanted it, now we've got it.. Ash! After so much teasing and worry of an end-of-the-world ashfall, we finally got it, and we're all lucky to be alive. Especially my friend Bryan, who built a bomb shelter out of used popsicle sticks just in case he felt unsafe. Really though, it wasn't a big deal, and there may be more ashfall events in the near future, but after this one, I feel more confident that everything will be fine.
Here are some photos of yesterday's ashfall.
The first big one shows the accumulation on my car at the end of the night. followed by a few in our neighborhood while it was falling (compliments of Brook, as I was shooting Rachel and Matthew's wedding) and the last shot is of Flatop, showing how today's 70mph winds deposited ash in little pockets all over the mountain.

Girdwood/Anchorage Wedding - Rachel & Matthew

On Saturday, Nick and I headed down to Girdwood to photograph Rachel and Matthew's wedding at the Our Lady of the Snow's Chapel. Afterwards, we drove back to Anchorage where a reception was held at the Petroleum Club. Rachel and Matthew are both totally interesting people. When I first met them I think we spent about an hour talking about the things they did and 10 minutes on wedding photography. I don't want to reveal their whole life story as that wouldn't be very polite but they are both into a bunch of cool stuff. The party-favor for all the guests was pure Vermont Maple syrup from Matt's parents' syrup farm in northern Vermont. I can't wait to make some waffles or pancakes and try it out! The craziest part of the whole day was the ashfall in the middle of our photo session at Potter Marsh. One second we're popping the photos off like madmen, bouncing around getting the goods, the next Rachel, Matt, Nick and I are all wiping our eyes of Ash. We didn't realize it was coming at us so fast and our camera gear was getting covered, which is not good, so we had to bail quick. We drove to the reception under a steady ashfall and quickly got inside just ahead of the leading edge which we had outran a little while driving. Martin from Alaska Professional Entertainment was the spinmaster for the evening and it was a really nice reception. For our last photos, we got Rachel and Matt outside with a couple dust masks on to take advantage of the opportunity for silly photos.

Eruption # 7 & Counting

Redoubt went big today at about 9:30am as the #7 eruption of this big cycle of activity. As I type this at 10:50pm, I am looking at the current seismograph data and putting $10 on a huge eruption sometime tonight. The seismograph has been going nuts for about 4 hours now, and I think it's only a matter of hours before it goes big again. I am excited to wake up in the morning to see what happened overnight. Unfortunately for Homer, Ninilchik, Kenai, Kasilof, etc, there was a light ash fall today for those towns from this morning's big eruption. I found this sweet satellite image and had to share it because it's so cool. I added Anchorage, Homer, and the volcano for reference for those who don't know what you're looking at.



Image Credit: Jonathan Dehn, Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA)

Redoubt Photo Update

Not much to post here yet, but I'll add some more if anything interesting happens. So far all you can see from Redoubt is a lingering and thickening ash/smoke/dust cloud hanging over the Susitna Valley. Anchorage has been spared, but the line is clearly visible only a few miles away from Anchorage along the Susitna mudflats. Light Ash was reported down-wind of this area today in Willow and Skwetna, which are just up the Susitna River. Because it's not completely obvious, I've labeled some directions to the ash.

KaBOOM!!! Redoubt Goes Bang Bang Boom!

So it's 1:30am on sunday night/monday morning, I just got back from topping off all our extra gas cans. Beat the rush for sure. All the gas pumps were being used by people filling up the cars and extra 5 gallon jugs, and when I went into Safeway to get some extra milk, all the registers were open and there was a line of people wrapped around the entire produce section. Crazy hoarding people buying all the food and water..! Good thing I stocked up 2 months ago when this all started, and good thing we're on a well so we don't need water. I decided I didn't need to wait in line for 20 minutes just to get milk so I left. It was pretty strange to go into a grocery store at 1am and have a bunch of freaked out people with carts of water and canned food.. like we're expecting a hurricane or somethng. As I was walking in, one of the cashier ladies was chasing some young-hooligan types out yelling that "Looters will choke!!!!"
The latest report is ashfall is possible in Anchorage but not certain. We'll see if that happens. If so, I'll post some photos first thing in the morning. The crappy thing is that it was crystal clear for the past week and now it's cloudy, so we can't even see the awesomeness.
In the meantime, any family or friends in the lower 48 reading this, again, don't worry about us, we've got our own electricity, food, water, heat, etc for weeks, and this probably won't be a big deal anyway. The webricorder image below shows the current eruption.

Anchorage Wedding - Tali & Carter

On Saturday Tali and Carter were married at St. Mark's Lutheran Church followed by a reception at the Providence Health Park, which is not normally a reception venue, but worked out really well and was fun to shoot in because of it's cool modern architecture and interesting lighting that was setup. We started off at the bride's parents house and got a bunch of getting ready photos and then went to the church and got some of the group shots done ahead of time, which is always a nice way to speed things up later. After we arrived at the Health Park, we headed outside and I setup my mechanical moose so that Tali and Carter would have Moose pictures! Ok, I admit, it was a real moose.. but that's only because my mechanical moose was in the shop for repairs. Their DJ came all the way from Fairbanks and kept the party bumpin late into the night, and my sources tell me the later it went, the crazier it got! Here's a small sampling of the day's happenings...

What's up?

Here's what's been up with us lately... Redoubt was rumbling this weekend and let out a big steam and ash cloud on sunday, the biggest we've seen yet. Over the weekend we went down to Homer with Nick and Madeleine to take care of a few wedding related plans (for our wedding). There's some shots of us there on the beach, along with one of Brook and her sweet engagement ring that one of my bride's, Heather, helped me pick out at her family's jewelry store - 5th Avenue Jewelers. There's a pic of a strange sight we saw in Turnagain Pass - a live bear strapped down in the back of a pickup truck and not at all angry, a shot of Sunburst with some nice tracks and a few people on it. A shot of me skiing Flatop that Brook took from the driveway. A few of Nathaniel Wilder at the new Spenard Roadhouse restaurant which was pretty good. And lastly, a few from a film that I helped with on wednesday that Philip Casey is shooting with the new Canon Mark II camera that shoots both 21 megapixel stills and amazing HD video. The Dena'ina center doubled as an airport for filming purposes and there was even an authentic looking TSA checkpoint created from scratch. The final 10-minute short film should be pretty cool and I'll post a link when it's available to view online.

Anchorage Wedding - Erin & Joe

On Tuesday night, Erin & Joe had a very small and intimate wedding ceremony at Erin's Parents's house in the living room. There were about 30 people there which I always think is nice because it's always so relaxed and laid back. I also thought it was pretty cool that Joe's brother performed the ceremony. Joe's 80 year old grandma was one of the muscicians for the night, playing the piano and singing. Her singing voice was one of the nicest I've heard from anyone in a long time! Towards the end of the night, everyone gathered in the theater-room downstairs and watched a slideshow of Erin and Joe pictures. (That's the last photo).

Last Day of Utah

Getting ready to take off from Utah, but had to throw up the last of the pow pow shots. It snowed a whole bunch, we had untracked lines most of the day, yada yada yada.. waist deep snow everywhere, fun, etc. blah blah blah. Here's the photos, including two of Lorin with his new 'Stache. His work doesn't allow any facial hair except mustaches, and in rebellion (he prefers a beard or goatee) he is going to work tomorrow with this creepy, gross-looking mustache from 1981 and an old cowboy hat. We'll see how that goes over..

Finally Some Gnar to Shred

So the snow god Ullr finally gave us some Gnar to shred, aka Pow Pow, aka, Freshies, aka, new light fluffy snow. It was only about 12 inches on top of nasty ice ice, but it was good enough to keep us happy. Even more exciting though is the storm that will start tonight, with 18-30 inches forecasted through Tuesday. I'd like to offer a shout out to my homies back up in the AK who are missing out on the pow. Tomorrows turns are for you.

Today we went out to the Point of the Mountain south of Salt Lake City to try out Lorin's brother's Speedwing, which is a smaller version of a paraglider that is used more to "ride terrain" than to get lots of loft and vertical. After my brief experimental flight attempt, I think this might be a necessary toy. Since our videos aren't super exciting, here are a few I found on youtube that show what this sport is all about: This is at Hatcher Pass and this is in Utah. Lastly, here is a helmet-cam perspective from South America, after you get through the intro at 1:50.

Shredding The Ice Ice in Utah

After Mexico I headed to Utah with a brief 22 hour stop in Anchorage to get rid of the swimsuit and pick up the ski gear. I've had dreams of shredding Pow Pow for weeks, but so far all we've had to shred is the ice ice. We went out today with plans of skating up and down the slopes but forgot our freshly sharpened ice skates. Instead, we used skis to access a beautiful little area in the Little Cottonwood Canyon. Normally we pack a sandwich and some energy gels, and a bottle or two of water. Today was different. In an effort to go beyond the norms of acceptable backcountry ski behavior, Lorin lugged a BBQ grill on his backpack (see photos), and lunch consisted of Steaks, Portabello Mushrooms, Baked Potatoes, and a bottle of Norton Malbec Reserve, 2006. It was easily the best backcountry meal I've ever had and well worth all the extra effort. As we got halfway up, a storm blew in and winds were gusting around 60mph, making travel almost impossible as we were on ice anyway which is difficult enough to get up with skins. To save the day and not ruin our lunch plans, we dug a snowcave into the side of the mountain in some trees and stayed fairly well protected. Sorry for the photo of me looking like a crazy Wino - we planned on bringing fancy wine glasses but Lorin forgot them so we had to drink the wine out of the bottle. I think it made our meal even classier. Yesterday was in the mid to upper 40's and sunny but still pretty icy.. most of the sunny photos were taken yesterday which include our bread bowl and clam chowder lunch, and me sitting in Lorin's hammock (note how large my butt looks in that shot!) It's currently dumping in the canyons, so I'll post some true pow pow shots here in a few days. In the meantime, here's our over the top lunch and some ice: