6:47 PM
| Sunrise at | 7:29 AM | in direction | 98° | East |  |
| Sunset at | 6:35 PM | in direction | 262° | West |  |
In 2.5 days, or thereabouts, there will be a winner of the 40th running of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race. At that time, for all intents and purposes, the Alaska dog sledding season comes to a close and life returns to "normal". Whatever that means in this region of extremes.
I will continue to focus on family matters, taxes, finances, necessary house projects and the wonderful increase of daylight. But that is in the future still because even after there is a winner, I will follow each person's progress into the finish line and watch each person video as they pass under the Burled Arch. It's just the way it is.
To be honest, I have am having to stretch to think of anything as interesting as the Iditarod right now. But, fortunately, my daughter provided me with one thing prompted by some thoughts I had. I noticed that Mitch was going slower than I'd noticed before. I saw his speed posting 0.0 four times in the course of his progress between Ruby and Galena. I can't say I have seen him stopped so frequently before. So I posted a question .. wondering if the river conditions had changed.
That prompted Teresa to say it was possible the river conditions had changed since Aliy went through. We later determined it probably was not the case because others seemed to be moving at an expected speed, but she brought up that conditions across water change rapidly. She mentioned lakes in the White Mountains called Ice Lakes. They can be solid ice and very skiable but change to slush in a matter of hours. It reminded me that I'd had to dodge slush and standing water that had warmed on top of the lake at the Willow restart last Sunday. I was told there was still a layer of solid ice under that, so it wasn't a matter of going through to clear water.
In Colorado, that is a possibility, even at high altitudes, of people or dogs getting stuck under the ice. But here, when lakes begin to freeze in winter, the freeze depth extends several layers down and the ice can be 6 feet deep or more. So this crazy phenomenon occurs where the top layer goes to slush and then refreezes - which is exactly what happened on the lake at Willow. Folks slid into soft snow and ice and dodged slush @ 2:00 PM and the by the time we left at 4:00 PM, we all walked comfortably on the frozen surface of the lake.
On a related tangent, the World Ice Championships are underway and each year a playground is carved at the ice park for children to crawl all over. It struck me that their introduction to ice and cold was radically different than mine. They are playing in and upon ice. They grow up learning its properties and how to live comfortably with it.
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