The cooler side of life

The Coolest Place on Earth

2009-01-06T01:20:00.003-05:00

When they say that Greenland is The Coolest Place on Earth, they aren't kidding. In fact, it's their motto. Here's a firsthand account of that coolness factor. This was truly one of the coolest experiences of my life - walking on the massive Greenland ice cap. This particular peak is known as Point 660. You can literally cross a little water stream and on to the ice cap by stepping on this precariously put wooden plank. It was summer so we were walking directly on the surface of the ice, while being careful not to slip and fall around one of the water streams.

It's more slippery around those. In summer, the ice melts faster and creates these streams on the surface that eventually end up in one of the holes, called moulin, in the ice cap. It is suggested that the moulins enable water to reach all the way down, causing the ice sheet to slide.

At the edge of the ice cap though, it is mixed with the land, and it almost looks dirty, but it also allows one to see the structure in detail providing a contrast for the eyes.

Niviarsiaq

2009-01-04T14:18:00.001-05:00

Niviarsiaq, which means 'young maidens', is the national flower of Greenland. It is also found in north America, primarily the Canadian archipelago. These flowers are everywhere in summer. I took these pictures on the way to one of the glacier sites - the one that is visible over the flowers below.

It is such a pretty site. There are limited flora in Greenland because of the rock and tundra landscape. Niviarsiaq grow on whatever little land they find, even if covered with rocks.

I had a hard time choosing what pictures to put here. So here's a selection from my dozens of Niviarsiaq pictures. If you Google Niviarsiaq, you'll find several more pictures of these pretty flowers on Webshots, Flickr etc.

Cuteness abundant

2008-12-31T20:58:00.001-05:00

Let's start the new year with some cuteness. I dare say we are all in need of something to cheer us up in these trying times. I am going to continue posting some (over due) pictures from my past trips to Greenland here. Huskies are the first thing you notice in Greenland. Summer is the season for them to rest, breed, and get ready for the winter. The bigger dogs are chained outside, and for a good reason too. The puppies are running around and are just about the cutest little things you'll ever see.

If you go near them, the big dogs try to scare you away, and the puppies try to emulate them, except they are kind of scared themselves. So they bark in their baby voices and fall back at the same time. Very amusing.

The way back

2008-12-25T21:31:00.002-05:00

On the way back from Gakona to Anchorage I didn't have much time to stop and take many pictures. 'Many' is a relative term of course. Although I don't recommend it, I must admit that some of these pictures are taken from a moving car (VERY slowly moving, which you can do since there is practically no traffic at all). But really, can you blame me for wanting to take a picture of a house by a frozen lake with a float plane parked on it ?

It was a beautiful day. Perfectly blue skies that brought out the color in the mountains.

And the water vapor hanging low in the valleys all day.

The golden sun

2008-12-24T00:17:00.001-05:00

Here it is. The grand entrance of the much-awaited Sun. It's golden. It makes everything colorful and breathes life into the surroundings. For me, the sun doesn't just provide life, but also livelihood. It makes my science worthwhile to study and helps me be useful to the society by aiding the exploration of the unknown.

On the horizon

2008-12-21T22:18:00.001-05:00

It's only moments before the sunrise. The sun is just below the horizon. We had been waiting to see the sun and clear skies. Because clouds = no experiments. Let's see..we can already see the first rays making the clouds blush on the top of Mt. Sanford.

Pull up a chair on the deck to watch the sunrise. Enjoy the steaming cup of coffee and the steaming river in -10 F.

Almost there. We can already see that the sun is hiding behind Wrangell. Once it makes it up in the sky, it'll make everything nice and toasty. Or not, you know. Stay tuned for the grand entrance.

Morning coffee

2008-12-21T10:33:00.001-05:00

As the sun starts giving warmth to the frozen earth, the flowing river wakes up and starts breathing. We watched this work of nature comfortably sitting close to a fire in the breakfast room with the morning coffee in hand and contemplated if the blue skies were there to stay.

Riverview

2008-12-21T01:36:00.001-05:00

This is the place I typically stay at in Alaska. The Copper River flows right next to the B&B, hence the name - Riverview. The river wasn't yet frozen in October. I am sure it has, by now. When it does freeze, sometimes the wolves like to cross it, so I was glad it was October. The first view here is looking across the river at the layers of shrubs and trees, each with a distinct shade. The second photograph is a log cabin at the B&B.

Last rays

2008-12-20T00:40:00.002-05:00

Winter evenings in Alaska are special. The sun is usually hanging low in the sky almost all day. When it sets, the last rays turn the mountains pink. It's the most beautiful thing you'd have ever seen. Here is Mt. Sanford on one such evening from an earlier trip. This time alas, I didn't get to view this. Look how different it looks from the previous post.

Wrangell Mountains

2008-12-18T02:08:00.003-05:00

A few minutes later I was looking at the magnificent Wrangell Mountains nat'l park in the distance. Mt. Drum and Mt. Sanford. These are the mountains I was looking forward to viewing from different angles for the next seven days. However, the weather decided to get in the way for the most of my trip, battering us with heavy snow fall, cloudy skies, and fluctuating temperatures. I had posted on these views back in this, this and this entries. Winter is really the best time to come here.

Frosted

2008-10-26T18:31:00.001-04:00

In Alaska, the air is dry. Any bit of moisture freezes instantly, and makes the dry trees and shrubs look Christmas-y. This was my last stop before Glenallen. A lone restaurant in a long, and otherwise lonely stretch.

These are the last of the Chugach mountains/Matanuska Glacier arms seen from the Glenn Highway. Only a few miles away lie the Wrangell Mountain National Park, where my destination was.

In the middle of nowhere

2008-10-25T01:09:00.002-04:00

Alaskans are amazing people. They live in the middle of nowhere. Literally. You will see houses completely out of the blue, in the middle of nowhere, at least 2-3 hours away from any major city, with no electricity or running water. Living like this is a choice, not a necessity for most of these people. It always amazes me. It seems to me like all you can do there is to live, and not much else. Generators for electricity, water is from a nearby stream,

or by melting snow, and hunting and fishing are main sources of food. Rough life, but the reward ? The beauty and serenity offered by the mountains and the calming snow.

Would you like to live here ?

Matanuska glacier

2008-10-23T00:51:00.000-04:00

Okay, so one would think that if I have travelled on this road about 5-6 times before, I would know if you could see a glacier from it. But then one would be wrong. May be I was sleeping during this particular patch on my other trips, but I just came up on this glacier, and was utterly surprised. I knew there was a leg of the Matanuska glacier somewhere here, but I didn't know you could see it from the road! Or may be I did and have forgotten. In any case, here is the Matanuska glacier, as seen from the Glenn Hwy, in all its glory.

Shades of Fall

2008-10-22T14:30:00.000-04:00

It's fall. In Alaska, the trees are already sans leaves. Everywhere, only 3 colors and their shades are visible. White, Blue, and Brown. Occasionally though, you see a red house propped up in the middle of all that brown.

On the road again

2008-10-21T19:11:00.004-04:00

This is the first time I've had the opportunity to stop wherever and whenever I wanted on the road from Anchorage to Gakona and take pictures. So I took advantage of it. Although at one point I had to make a conviction not to stop until and unless I see the "scenic view" road sign. Yeah that didn't last long. So anyway, these are taken on hwy 1/Glenn hwy. At one point I saw someone else taking a picture and that made for a nice frame.

2006-09-02T13:05:00.000-04:00

Ice fjord of Ilulissat

During my stay in Greenland, I took at trip to a northern Greenlandic town called Ilulissat with a polish friend. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. The town is situated near an ice fjord. The Greenlandic ice cap near Ilulissat is one of the fastest retreating glaciers in the world (3 meters/hour!!!), which creates floating ice bergs in the fjord. Above picture is approaching Ilulissat passing over the icebergs.

We camped near Sermermiut, which is a place to see the retreating glacier. The glacier used to be all the way out here and since it is retreating so fast, people would hike up to these benches on top of the surrounding mountains and watch the glacier calve. Now, there are only icebergs, but you can hear the calving among the icebergs breaking the silence from time to time.

When I showed some of my pictures to someone living in Greenland for a few years, he was surprised to see water here. When he visited here last (not so long ago), he saw only the glacier and it was impossible to take a boat in this place. Now, we saw waterways like this among the glaciers (it would not be wise to take a boat in there though!). A recent BBC article expresses concerns over melting ice caps.

2006-07-27T09:43:00.001-04:00

Flowers in Greenland

It's true. There ARE flowers in Greenland. This is the national flower of Greenland, known as Niviarsiaq, meaning 'young girls'. This is the season to see them. They grow everywhere they find some land and water, even in between rocks and ice, defying all odds.

Another widespread variety - Harebell.

..and Arctic Cotton, also known as Cotton-grass.

2006-07-23T15:21:00.000-04:00

Ice Castle

This is my first post on Greenland, or more correctly, Kalallit Nunaat, as it is known in Greenlandic/Kalallisut. The 81% of the area in Greenland is covered by ice, known as the ice cap. It is one of THE coolest sights. This is on the western border of the ice cap, known as Russel's glacier. We basically just sat there and saw the pieces of ice falling from the glacier into the river flowing below and wondering about global warming. I was here last summer also, and the only part that remained same was this, which I like to call the ice castle. Most other ice features that I remembered, disappeared into the river below.

2006-07-23T15:07:00.000-04:00

Changing this blog from Alaska to 'The cooler side of life' to include pictures from my trips to other cold places also. This will mainly have pictures from Alaska and Greenland and may be some pictures taken at other places during winter.

2006-07-17T00:59:00.000-04:00

Waiting for Spring ?

These tea tables and chairs remain all-year around near the bank of the Copper river flowing in the backyard of the B&B I stay at. In the winter of course they are half buried in the snow, but they always seem to me that they are waiting for the spring.

2006-06-15T23:30:00.000-04:00

Revisiting Aurora

Revisiting some pictures of spectacular Alaska aurorae. At this experiment facility, our goal is to create 'artificial aurora', so natural aurora is always so fascinating to us that we keep our experiment running on the side when it appears and dash out in -30 degrees F. My first post was on aurora, which also said something about the mechanism that causes aurora.

All the tripods were taken while trying to take this one. So the picture is a little blurred. I like it however, because it looks like a brush art instead of a photograph.

2006-05-27T01:52:00.000-04:00

Serenity

This was the most peaceful place I have ever visited. It was very soothing both to the eyes and to the ears. Very white as evident from the picture. No sound of people or cars, only a gentle sound of water flowing beneath the surface of ice. This is Lake Portage.

The Portage glacier used to be all the way out here and a visitor center was built on the edge of it, but the glacier has retreated since and now you can only see the remnants of the glacier like in the pic below - the part that is strickingly blue. You can't see the glacier from the visitor center. You have to keep driving further and cross a tunnel to get here. It is very hard to see even then. This is 12x zoomed.

And they say global warming is a myth.

2006-05-24T01:53:00.000-04:00

Classic Western

I was driving in downtown Anchorage when I saw this truck. So very western :). I couldn't resist. Applied some sepia and film grain from Picasa to give that old rustic feeling.

2006-05-12T22:30:00.000-04:00

Glowing

It was a beautiful day. The clouds actually provided a nice vivid background. That's all I have to say for this picture actually.

2006-05-12T22:16:00.000-04:00

Contemplating...

On the way to Portage, I stopped at this scenic view point to eat my lunch. I was about to be done when this person came and stopped right in front of me. Then he went down to near the ocean. It was pretty windy outside. He probably was a rock climber. This was an irresistable shot.

2006-04-29T15:36:00.000-04:00

The Oceanside

I had one extra day in Alaska, and I decided to take advantage of it. I was in Anchorage and rented a car to go on a drive upto Portage Valley. There is a glacier and a ski resort. I took Alaska Highway 1 to Portage. It is a scenic drive where you find mountains and ocean in a single frame. Of course, the broken pieces of ice from a glacier remind you of global warming.

2006-04-13T23:04:00.000-04:00

Burning Mountains

(click on the picture to see the fine details!)

One of the owners of the B&B I always stay at is an amazing pyrographer. Here is his latest artwork (It's top of a bench in the rec-room). It depicts the surroundings as seen from the B&B - frozen Copper river in the foreground of Mt. Sanford (on the left) and Mt. Wrangell (on the right). In winter, you can see moose and caribou walk around if you are, and more importantly if they are lucky (you know, escaped the bullets). A pack of wolves also visits frequently. You hope that they don't cross the frozen river to come visit you personally. Bears are still in hibernation during this time ( which is good, since we have to work outside).

2006-04-09T01:36:00.000-04:00

The Sunset

And here is the Sunset which casts pink shadows on the snowy mountains. Hard to say, which one is prettier, the sunset or the mountains in the evening. I have literally taken about 20 shots of the sunset here. No Picasa-editing here, this is what the camera saw. The silhoutte that you see is of the research instrument that we use, and Black Spruce trees.

2006-04-06T22:47:00.000-04:00

Sanford and Suns

Here is Mt. Sanford, your everyday, picture-perfect mountain. It provides a perfect background for our research facility as evident in this classic view. (Everybody with a camera on site has a picture like this !)

Enter a few clouds, and the game of light and shadow begins. It brings out the texture in the landscape beautifully. It looks to me like a giant white silk cloth put up for a display, like you can pick it up and fold it !

Mt. Sanford is the tallest mountain in the region, so it also gets the last rays of the sun, which creates this flashlight-from-above effect.

(Note: Does anybody know how to upload multiple pictures to the same blog using hello from Picasa ? I would appreciate your input.)

2006-04-04T00:50:00.000-04:00

Mount Drum and its mood swings

Alaska is a land of serene snowy mountains..especially in winter. I was near Wrangell mountains in the Copper River Valley, at a place called Gakona. These mountains change their mood as the day goes by. Here is Mount Drum during the day. I always thought it has the most character among all of them.

The snowy mountains become pink at the sunset and the day slowly and quietly slips into the night.

Two weeks in Alaska

2006-03-27T06:27:00.000-05:00

Alaska, a land like nowhere else. Everything is just...beautiful. A nature preserve that we, as human beings, are still to destroy.

I always find the trip to Alaska very reassuring and peaceful. My research takes me to the heart of Alaska - in the middle of nowhere. I always wanted to capture the serenity of it in pictures. During my recent trip, I had a newly bought Minolta Dimage Z3 with me and believe me, I made a good use of it. The surroundings are so picturesque, it is hard to get a bad shot. I will try to share some of the beautiful moments from this trip here.

The Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights, is what Alaska is most famous for. We didn't expect to see much auroral activity this time around since 2006 is the year of solar minimum. But as it turns out, this time we had more clear nights and geomagnetic activity wasn't quite so low as we thought it would be. On one particular night, although it was -20 deg F outside, I could brave the cold to see one of the most spectacular displays I have ever seen.

...and the fact that my camera could capture it, made it all the more special.

Stay tuned for more.