Solstice Light

 

Post by Corrine

Holy Sh--! 

I couldn’t open the door to the outhouse. And I was inside!

How was I going to get out?! I could yell, but no one would hear me. The outhouse is a ways from Crowberry Cabin, our home for the night. Everyone else was snuggled inside the cabin, enjoying the toasty warmth of the woodstove. I only had the cold and the wind. That darned wind!

The wind had done this to me. I had gone out to relieve myself, but the wind had been blowing right inside the outhouse. Brrr! I tried to close the door, but the latch hook inside wouldn’t fit into the eye bolt. So, I pulled the door closed harder and it stayed shut without the inside latch. The wind stayed outside, and I could take care of business. Yay! 

When I finished, I pushed on the door to open it. It didn’t budge. I pushed again. No luck. What the heck? Peeking through the crack between the door and the door frame, I could see the latch was closed. From the outside! When I had pulled the door shut, the hook on the outside fell right into the eye bolt! What are the odds? 

After a moment of panic, I realized I could I probably slip my finger through the gap between the door and door frame. I tried and was barely able to unhook the latch. Disaster averted! Who knows how long Eric, Jill, or Beat would have noticed I was missing or needed to use the outhouse themselves.

I scurried back to the cabin where we all had a good laugh about my self-made trap. The incident was so strange, I was tempted to see if I could do it again. I didn’t, but I encourage anyone to try. If you do, let me know how easy it is. Just make sure that somebody is waiting outside!

Note to self - Leave the outhouse door open!

A Tradition of White Mountains Trips

A trip into the White Mountains National Recreation Area north of Fairbanks has become a solstice tradition for Eric and me. Usually, our friends from Colorado, Jill and Beat (pronounced bay-ott), come to visit and take trips into the Whites, training for their winter ultra races. 

This winter, Beat is planning to walk to Nome for the eighth time as part of the Iditarod Trail Invitational Race. Jill is planning to run the White Mountains 100 race for the fourth time. She has also biked it four times. We definitely have some crazy friends who make Eric and me seem like slugs. 

This year, Jill and Beat arrived on a Monday, and Tuesday morning they headed out for a 6-day, 5-night trip, walking and dragging sleds. Eric and I joined them by bike for the last two nights, Friday and Saturday, staying at Crowberry and then Moose Creek Cabin. 

Enjoying the Solstice Light

The light at this time of year can be magical. At winter solstice, the sun is up for just a little over three-and-a-half hours.  It never gets very far above the horizon, and we get long morning and evening twilight hours. It all makes for spectacular sunrises and sunsets that seem to last forever. The low-angle sunlight makes the snow seem to glow no matter where it lies – on hillsides, on mountain tops, on trails, in tree branches. Traveling on the trails, you get a constant display of light.

This show happens only if it’s not too cloudy. And on this trip, only the last morning had those kinds of clouds. Mostly, we had lots of time to savor the changing light and colors. We’ve done multiple winter solstice trips into the Whites, and it never gets old.

Cranking to Crowberry

I always forget how many hills there are to Crowberry Cabin but the trail was good, so we made pretty good time in spite of my legs feeling tired. Shouldn't my strength training improve my power? It didn't feel like it, but it still was a joy to be out biking. While we started biking from the Wickersham Dome Trailhead on the Elliott Highway, Jill and Beat had started dragging sleds that day at Lee’s Cabin, each preferring to travel their own pace. We passed Jill just before Moose Creek Cabin, but we didn’t pass Beat until about 5 miles from Crowberry Cabin. By then, the alpine glow on the mountains was spectacular and the almost-full moon was rising. 

Eric and I got to Crowberry Cabin first, where we lit the woodstove and started melting water. Beat arrived just as Eric headed out to collect firewood and darkness started descending. Eventually, Jill arrived, and we had dinner. That night we didn’t see the aurora borealis (another visual treat of a winter Whites trip), but we did get to see a moon halo, a ring of light surrounding the moon caused by ice crystals suspended in the air. And Venus was inside the halo. A perfect ending to the wonderful day. (Well, except for my little debacle in the outhouse!)

This photo was from the second night Venus is just at the edge of the halo

A More Relaxed Day 

The next morning, we took it a bit easy. We had only 9 miles to go back to Moose Creek Cabin. We didn’t want to leave too early. Checkout time at the cabins is noon, and we didn’t want to arrive at Moose Creek before the previous renters left. We had a leisurely breakfast and extra hot drinks before heading out. We caught another spectacular sunrise while on the trail and enjoyed the show as the sun slid low across the horizon, lighting up the snow in different ways.

Since we were on bikes, Eric and I took only an hour-and-a-half to go the nine miles. The group at Moose Creek Cabin was out of the cabin and getting ready to leave when we arrived a little after noon. We loved arriving to a warm cabin and some already-melted water. And, wonderfully, the woodshed was half-full of wood. I have never seen so much wood at one of the White Mountains cabins. Eric still felt a need to cut firewood to replace what we used. (To “appease the cabin gods,” as he puts it.) He rested a bit first, and still was able to head out in broad daylight to cut down some standing dead trees, a task he often does in the dark around solstice.

Eric collects firewood

Now that's a stack of firewood

Beat showed up a little later, right at sunset, and Jill wasn’t too far behind. It was fun to just relax, watch the sunset and moonrise, nap, eat, and have lively conversations until it was time for bed. 

Beat arrives at Moose Creek Cabin at sunset

Moose Creek Cabin gets some cell service, so I checked the weather. Uh-oh! For the next day, the National Weather Service was predicting warmer temperatures with a chance of “wintry mix.” That may sound like a nice cocktail drink, but it really means a possibility of rain mixed in with snow. Yuck! Not something we wanted. The NWS also had a wind advisory starting overnight and getting worse the next day. It would start as a tailwind but then switch directions to be more of a headwind. Or so they predicted. 

We had 16 miles to go back to the trailhead. Jill and Beat decided to leave early the next day to get home at a decent time and to hopefully avoid the worst of the bad weather. Eric and I decided to get up with them. So, early bedtime for everybody. 

Cruising Back to the Trailhead

The next morning, Christmas Eve morning, we were all up by 6:30 AM. We could hear the wind outside. It had been growing stronger through the early morning hours. Fortunately, it was a tailwind as predicted, and while the temperature had risen to 30F degrees, it wasn’t accompanied by any snow or wintry mix. 

Jill was out the door by 8 AM. Beat followed, and we were a little after him. Moose Creek Cabin is in the middle of a long hill. On our bikes, Eric and I zoomed down, zipping along until we hit the flats. Thud. A soft, but momentum-stopping thud. After only three hours, the strong winds had blown loose snow into large drifts where the trail crosses an open area below the cabin. But we’ve dealt with that before. Eric had a hoot trying to ride through the drifts, while I just pushed my bike. Fortunately, the open area is relatively short before the trail once again enters protected forest. 

Drifted snow on the flats. There was some bike pushing.

The trail in the forest had no drifting, and the wind really pushed us along. I was going 7 mph uphill on slightly soft snow. (For those of you who don’t snow bike, that’s pretty fast for an average rider like me going uphill on a loaded bike.) 

Eric and I passed Beat on the first uphill and Jill a little later. We figured there would be more wind and drifts when we topped the ridges on the way back, especially the high open ridge just to the north of Lee’s Cabin, but when we got there, the wind was gone. And there was no drifted snow. What the heck? Was the wind all further east or had it just died down? We didn’t care, happy to have good trails the rest of the way out. The possibility of wintry mix also didn’t materialize. We had a pretty darned good last day. 

This day was cloudier, so we didn’t get the spectacular light of the previous two days, but we still had a nice brief sunrise as we approached Lee’s Cabin. The trail is usually better between Lee’s and the trailhead, packed down by more cabin and day-use trail users. That’s how it was on that day, and we were soon back at our car, passing several people heading out on the trails via several modes of travel. 

A Solstice Celebration

Solstice light really is magical. Spending these short but beautiful days in the White Mountains is a great way to appreciate the winter light. It’s a special kind of light that will soon start to disappear, slowly at first, then faster. We gained a whole minute of daylight today and each day brings increasingly more light as the changing tilt of the earth moves us back toward summer. If you wait too long, its gone. At least until next winter. 

That’s at least part of the reason we have cabins in the Whites already booked for next weekend. Jill and Beat will again be dragging their sleds. Eric and I will either be biking or skiing. We will all be soaking up the unique light that turns the blank canvas of snow-covered landscape into a show of color that is somehow muted and dazzling at the same time.