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On our trip to Valdez during the memorial weekend we were 7 people from 6 different nations. Being such an international group was a lot of fun and interesting. The highlight of the trip was of course the Humpback whale but we saw a lot of other spectacular animals such as Bald eagles, Tufted puffins, Dall’s porpoises, Black bear, Sea otters and Stellar Sea Lions.

Valdez is a seaport town of 4000 people in southern Alaska. The Alaskan pipeline has its terminus in Valdez and runs 1300 km from Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska. In Valdez, oil tankers load the crude oil and transport it to refineries in other parts of the US. It was an oil spill by the tanker Exxon Valdez on Good Friday 1989 that suddenly made Valdez the most known town in Alaska. The oil spill was the largest ever in North America and some remains of oil can still be found along the shore. Another catastrophe hit Valdez on a Good Friday in 1964. An earthquake had its epicenter 45 miles west of Valdez and ruined most of the town. The earthquake was the third largest recorded in history with 9.2 on the Richter scale.

I was on a cruise boat in Valdez this weekend where we saw a Humpback whale breaching like a dolphin. Humpback whales are, however, much larger than dolphins. They average 14 m, weigh 35 tons and during the summer they consume nearly a ton of food a day, mostly plankton and krill. In the winter, they migrate to lower latitudes where they have their breeding grounds. These breeding grounds are very sparse in food resources so the lipid reserves they build up here in the north during the summer will serve as the sole nutritious source for their newborn calves for several months during the winter.
Whale researchers are not entirely sure why Humpback whales jump out of the water. It might get rid of barnacles and other parasites or it might be a form of communication. While we were watching the breaching, we saw some Dall’s Porpoises swimming over to the whale to tease it. Our whale did not like the company of Porpoises and it started to slap its tail with a very strong force.

Outside my office, the cherry trees are blooming and bees buzzing from flower to flower. Just two months ago I walked by the same trees and it was -30ºC and everything was covered by snow. It is such a contrast with the rapidly changing seasons here in interior Alaska.

Alaskans like to live far apart and many people do so by living in small primitive cabins. Most cabins don’t have well water so you either have a water tank that is filled up by a truck once in a while or you carry your own eater home in jugs. Because water is such a rare commodity in central Alaska you don’t find flushing toilets in these cabins. Instead, each cabin has an old fashioned outhouse like the picture below from the cabin where I live. Another picture shows the cellar (a simple hole in the ground) of my cabin where the kerosene furnace is located. Heat is distributed to the cabin through the crevices in the floor above and it is probably not very energy efficient. For the same reason, it’s rather cold inside most cabins during winter. But during the summer it’s really a wonderful way to live.

My cabin is located in a small village called Ester app. 11 km west of Fairbanks. Ester was originally a gold mining camp, which has left large scars in the surrounding landscape. Today, a lot of artists live here and I’ll return later with tales and pictures from this peculiar village.

I had an opportunity to visit Denali National Park once more. Like last time it was snowing quite a bit and it did not feel like spring even though the calender was saying May 12. I went there with my friend Steffen and his friend Marie from New Zealand. Moose and Caribou were easy to spot in the white landscape and up on the mountain slopes we saw Dall Sheep and Golden Eagles. We were also lucky to see a Grizzly with its cop.

Find more pictures and comments from the trip here: http://www.alaska.2ap2.com/Denali2007

If you suffer from birch pollen allergies you are probably better off not staying in Alaska for the next week or two. The leaves are just about to emerge from buds but luckily for allergy suffers the pollen season is very short. And there might be a remedy to cure birch allergy readily at hand. Some people have reported that they have overcome their birch allergies by drinking birch sap. You can also make sugar sap from birch trees although the sugar content of birch sap is lower than that of maple trees.

By the way, this is one of my first photos taken by my new Nikon D80 that I received yesterday:-)