Galen James McCaa was born on 12:44pm Sept. 26th, 2009. He was 7.7lbs. Brown and Galen a few hours after the birth of their beautiful baby boy! It was very exciting Saturday.
Cob a few hours later. He was up shortly though and took the picture of Brown and Galen above.
Brown's newly knit socks.
The start of the 47th Annual Equinox Marathon in Fairbanks, AK. It is a huge community event and in addition to the marathon and the relay..this year we had an Ultra Marathon as well. This race is almost all on trails and goes up Ester Dome and back down to UAF and ends at the patty center. The Ultra did an extra 6 miles around the trails at UAF. So many of us did one form of the race and we all had a great day. I ran with Kristen Barton and Patrick as the "5 kidney's" relay team. I ran the third leg and only Ben had his iphone for a few pics. He was busy timing at the top of Ester Dome with Brown and the rest of the timing crew. Jackon's team was best dressed in Zubaz's zebra print pants and mesh tops, I don't have a picture, but the News-Miner does.
Matias in the lead off the trail and heading back on the trail and to the top of Ester Dome. He won the marathon again this year in time 2hrs 51min.
Finishing the third leg, only 9.5 miles and mostly down hill from the top of Ester Dome.
We had a breakfast party this morning to send off Robin, Chris and Mara back down to Anchorage. Robin is the new legend, winning the ultra marathon for the women's and 3rd overall. She ran a very impressive fast run that caught everyone's eye. She has an impressive resume that we embellished and it turned into she did the Wilderness Classic solo when she was twelve by the end of the day :-)
Chris and John relaxing after the marathon. What a great day it was! I am sure everyone else has more pics, I just thought I would post a few.
We headed down to the Denali Highway and into the Alaska Range this weekend for a packraft trip. We started out driving up Valdez Creek Trail and left the car. We hiked over numerous passes with many rivers, caribou, blueberries and alpine lakes to swim. It was a 30 mile hike, 30 mile paddle and 10 mile run back to the car. Ed, Heather, Ben, Dea and Patrick hiked this awesome Alaska tundra and did a first decent in packrafts on the East Fork of the Susitna river. It was a great trip! This picture is the first of a million stream crossings on our hike.
The the first pass and the rest of the trip we had incredible weather and aweome views of the Alaska Range. Heather, Patrick, Ben, Ed and me falling over as I ran from the self timer.
Saddle of the first pass.
Ben and Heather hiking along side Mt. Deborah and caribou.
Just two of many curious caribou on the hike (Ed Plumb photo).
Some small scree fields over the passes, but for the most part great tundra hiking.
Ed filtering water at an alpine lake before we all took a dive in.
Finally day2 decending down to the East Fork Glacier River.
About to start our descent down the river in the packrafts.
A few sprinkles during the paddle and one big thunderstorm with hail 1/4 mile from our take out bridge.
2nd portage around some large rapids, part of the excitement of an unknown river in a remote area.
Another unknown was downstream from the headwaters of the glacier, the river fanned out into many shallow channels over a mile wide. This is Heather pushing off with her paddle to break loose(Ed Plumb photo), but mostly we had to walk in the middle of this shallow glacier river until we could jump in again. I don't think it is technically a portage or line when you're walking with your boat down the middle of a river. We will call it as ed says, a good experience :-) We all had a great time!
Mt Healy Challenge was a running race 1.5 mile and 1600 feet of vertical. It was pouring rain and around 37 degrees, fun running weather. It was a little tough for me, but I took my waterproof camera to get some pics. Here is the top, with Ben and Matias the race director.
The flags mark the course up from the road, this picture is on our way down.
Ned and Anna at the start watching Kristen race. She had to run fast so Ned could get to his book signing in Denali Park, but this was no problem she won.
I raced a 5k this past weekend that felt pretty good....there was also a 10k race that most did. Heather won and Kristen was second.
Ben ran the 10k too!
Jackson had a taco party at his house. Magan cooked up some great Mexican food.
Lena and I enjoying the food!
Magan and I having a nice dinner and wine out on the deck during the ash fall from yet another new fire, 2.7 million acres so far in Alaska. This fire however is near Murphy Dome, very close to where Magan is house sitting (Jackson's) and then I am house sitting much farther down the road then that.
The yellow orange sky with limited visibility before it became nearly zero for the next day. The airport canceled flights and hard travel on the roads. We are surrounded on all sides with fires this year.
Tonight there was a community meeting for the Hard Luck Creek fire. We were given the map with the red line as the fire perimeter they think (too much smoke to tell yet for sure) and the blue line the point when they start to evacuate certain subdivisions....today though we have had rain all day, nice.
There were so many people they had to move the meeting outside. It was great to see all the communication and hopefully the firefighters can keep the fire at a safe distance. The incident base is at the bottom of Moose Mountain.
Kristen is training for the Humpy's Marathon in Anchorage. So we all did some of her 20 mile training run with her. I suggested the Moose Mountain mountain bike ride that I have done in the past and the route was great. I only did the out and back, but everyone else did the loop. This is my first outing with my new waterproof camera, finally. I just ruined another one packrafting.
Kristen, Ed, Ted and Ben starting off the trail run.
The crowd goes wild. OK, to be fair they just ran 20 miles :-)
Audrey moved from Fairbanks Alaska to Anachordes Island in the San Juan Islands outside of Seattle. She bought this boat and lives on it. We went on a great sail it was fun to be out on the ocean. I have sailed many times on dad's boat on Lake Michigan, but in the last few years only once or twice. Audrey taught us the ropes. Julie lives not far from the boat so we were all able to hang out and sail on a beautiful sunny windy day.
Coming out from the channel and heading into the straight. The funny thing about this picture is we were kidding around, put up sails and almost missed seeing a tug boat with a tanker on the back.
We sailed up wind and then on a broad reach on the way back.
Julie and Audrey trying to catch all the wind, our top boat speed was 7 knots!
Heading back to the harbor. Next time we hope to sail longer and stay over night at another more remote island. It was great to see the ladies and Julie's house with the new remodel and meet her parents.
Super fun Windy Creek packraft day trip. We started in Cantwell with a pretty easy 5 mile hike into Windy Creek. Mark, Ben, Ed, Dea, Magan and Tyler(taking pic).
Looking down from the trail to Windy Creek.
Blowing up the packrafts and getting ready to paddle.
Windy Creek was a big rapid the entire way with no flat water. A great river for such a short hike. Here is Ben and Tyler in the rapids. Nothing too scary, just a whole lot of awesome. Then the jack river is a calm float back to the take out and a 5 mile run back to the car.
Magan in the sinking packraft. It had a small leak and needed to be blown up several times, but it was no problem for her!
We drove down to the Denali Highway to backpack into 7 mile lake as the rest of the crew headed on a packraft trip. The trail ended in a few miles and we decided not to carry the chariot and Ann another 5 miles or so into the lake. We hiked McLaren summit trail instead. Both Ben and Ned were away for the weekend....Ben went into the Arctic Ocean! So we had a fun girls weekend while they were away.
After 7 mile lake we had a great dinner at McLaren Lodge.
The dogs ran free inside and out at the lodge. Here is another lab Denali and this cute little baby bird with it's mouth open wanting food from the lab. Denali did not know quite what to do.
Kristen and Anna hiking on McLaren Summit. Anna was a trooper at camping and hiked a ways with us each day.
