Monthly Archives: April 2020

20 April 2020

Moose

By icefogger

Alaska’s Big Five:

Moose (Alces alces), is the largest of the deer family, and the Alaska-Yukon subspecies (Alces alces gigas), is the largest of moose.

A small adult female may weigh 800 pounds, while a large adult male can reach double that at 1600 pounds.  Calves are born in the spring, with single births being the majority, but twins are common.  Calves weigh a mere 28-30 pounds at birth, but within 5 months they will often be pushing 300 pounds.  A moose rarely lives to the age of 16 years in the wild.

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There are roughly 200,000 moose distributed widely throughout Alaska.  On average, 7000 moose are harvested during the hunting season, providing 3.5 million pounds of meat.

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19 April 2020

The Brown Bear

By icefogger

Alaska’s Big Five:

Brown bears and grizzly are classified as the same species, with the grizzly considered a subspecies of the brown bear.  Brown bears are found along Alaska’s southern coastline, and are larger and live in higher densities than their inland grizzly counterparts.  The main advantage to coastal living, is the abundance of salmon as a food source.  The thicker vegetation and warmer climate of the southern coast also helps to give the brown bear the size edge.

The Kodiak brown bear is considered a unique subspecies from the brown & grizzly bear.  The Kodiaks have been isolated from mainland bears since the last ice age, or 12,000 years ago.

Brown bear cubs are born in January & February, usually as twins, but a litter of 1-4 cubs will occur.  Cubs usually emerge from the den in June.  Cubs have a survival rate of less than 50%, even with ferociously protective mothers.  Cubs will stay with their mother for 2-3 years.  The oldest known brown bear female was 39 years old, with the oldest known male at 38.  They can reach a weight of up to 1500 pounds.

Bears have an excellent sense of smell, and their eyesight & hearing is similar to humans.  They are excellent swimmers, and can run in bursts at 40 mph.

Currently, the Alaska brown bear population is around 32,000.  Which is 98% of the population in the United States, and 70% of the total North American population.

Kodiak Island has approximately 3500 bears, which makes for .7 bears per square mile.

By contrast, Alaska has approximately 100,000 black bears living in the state.

 

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18 April 2020

One last Quest Run

By icefogger

Film Saturday:

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Yukon Quest Start 2020

Camera: Leica M3; Film: Fujichrome 35mm, Velvia 100 

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17 April 2020

Apollo 13: April 17, 1970

By icefogger
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The recovery of the Apollo 13 crew, near Samoa in the Pacific Ocean; Photo credit: US Navy

The command module, Odyssey, was the only module capable of reentering the earth’s atmosphere.  Apollo 13’s crew moved back into Odyssey, then jettisoned Aquarius.  They splashed down in the Pacific Ocean 142 hours, 54 minutes, 41 seconds from the time of liftoff.

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Fred Haise, Jack Swigert and Jim Lovell aboard the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima

Fred Haise remained in the astronaut rotation after Apollo 13, and was the backup mission commander for Apollo 16.  Following Apollo 16, Haise transferred over to the Space Shuttle program.  He retired from NASA in 1979.

Jack Swigert was selected as the command module pilot for the Apollo-Soyuz test project, the first joint U.S. – Soviet mission.  Swigert left NASA in 1977, and was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer in 1982.  Swigert died in December of that same year.

Jim Lovell is one of three men to have flown to the moon twice, but he never walked on its surface.  Lovell accumulated 715 hours in space, and watched 269 sunrises from space.  Lovell, along with Haise and Swigert hold the record for the farthest distance humans have traveled from earth.  He retired from the U.S. Navy and Space Program in 1973.

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Apollo 13 Command Module; Photo credit: National Air & Space Museum

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16 April 2020

Spring has arrived to the Last Frontier

By icefogger
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The melt has started

The temperature on Easter Sunday reached 56F degrees in Fairbanks.  The last time we broke the 50 degree barrier was on September 30.

My daily hikes have been taking place in the morning now.  Partly, because the day is usually wide open for interpretation, but mainly because the snowpack is still firm early in the day.  Breaking trail gets old in a hurry.  The mukluks will be retired any day now for the rubber breakup boots.

Our length of day has surpassed 15 hours.  In fact, length of visible light, has gone over 17 hours.  The northern lights have been out, but they are already faint, unless they put on a show around 2am.  Soon, we will not see them again, until late August.

Rabbits can be seen morning & evening, bounding over the massive piles of snow with ease.  Already, the new brown fur is mixing with the white of winter.  An owl can be heard at night, hooting off in the distance, and I have seen the tracks of lynx, but the wary cat has evaded my camera traps.  Neither the owl nor the lynx seem to have put much of a dent in the rabbit population.  The frisky bunnies seem as numerous, if not more so, than last year.

Plow it, and they will land: 

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Creamer’s Field on Wednesday

At the end of last week, the annual plowing of Creamer’s Field happened.  The old dairy farm is now a migratory waterfowl refuge.  The field is used to tempt waterfowl away from Fairbanks International Airport.  Fairbanks has an annual lottery on when the first Canadian goose lands at Creamer’s.  It’s not as widely bet on as the Nenana Ice Classic, but it may be as closely followed.  Creamer’s saw its first arrival on Sunday the 12th.  However, for only the second time since 1976, it wasn’t a Canadian honker that landed first, but a pair of trumpeter swans.  When I was out there on Wednesday, the swans were off in the distance and ducks were flying in, and landing on the puddles.  The woodchucks are also out and about at the refuge.

This is the first month of April that I have spent in Alaska since 2003!  I always leave around the end of March, if not earlier, to get some traveling in, and head to the Frozen Four Hockey Championship, wherever that may be held.  It’s a bit odd for me to be here to watch the snow melt.

With the above average snowfall this past season, and the quick upturn in temperature, we are in for a very messy breakup with winter.

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15 April 2020

Rest in Peace

By icefogger

America’s Poet: John Prine

Former Navy mechanic, and self-taught guitarist: Bill Withers

Patriarch of a jazz dynasty: Ellis Marsalis

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14 April 2020

Apollo 13: April 14, 1970

By icefogger

In the early morning hours of April 14, the Apollo 13 crew maneuvered their crippled craft into a free-return trajectory around the moon and back towards earth.  Radio contact was lost with Apollo 13 that evening, as the spacecraft passed behind the moon.

Apollo 13, the mission that was supposed to be the third lunar landing, came within 164 miles of the moon’s surface at its closest.  The mission set a then record distance from earth at 249,205 miles.

The above video was put together by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.  It uses data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to recreate the view that Apollo 13 had as it passed over the far side of the moon.

As Apollo 13 headed for home, oxygen supplies and cooling water remain in good shape. The astronauts had reduced their water intake to 6 ounces per day.  Electricity demand had been reduced by 80%.

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Apollo13’s “mailbox”

Aquarius was not designed to carry three astronauts, and its carbon dioxide filters could not keep up with what the crew was putting into the LM.  The filters from the command module did not fit Aquarius, so NASA engineers on the ground were forced to quickly design a makeshift adapter.  The setup was dubbed “the mailbox”.  All that mattered, was that it worked.

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13 April 2020

Apollo 13: April 13, 1970

By icefogger
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The damaged service module; Photo credit: NASA

The launch and following day, April 12 went perfectly for the Apollo 13 crew. On the evening of the 13th, the astronauts did a routine pressurization of the lunar module Aquarius.   Suddenly, a loud explosion was heard, and all three crew members scrambled into the command module Odyssey to examine the instrument panels.

Haise then contacted Houston:

Haise: Okay Houston-

Lovell: I believe we’ve had a problem here.

Mission control: This is Houston. Say again please.

Lovell: Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a main B bus undervolt.

The service module had two cryogenic oxygen tanks, and one of them had dropped to zero pressure.  These two tanks, along with the cryogenic hydrogen tanks fed the spacecraft’s fuel cells, which in turn, powered the generation of electrical power, the oxygen for breathing and drinking water.

Aquarius became the crew’s lifeboat.  The LM was designed for only two men, so it was a cramped living situation, and now all thoughts of a third moon landing were scrapped.  As the Apollo 13 crew moved into Aquarius, they were 20 hours from the moon.

 

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12 April 2020

Finally Forty

By icefogger
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There is a creek somewhere under all of that snow.

The high temp in Fairbanks was 46F on Saturday.  It was the first time we had hit 40 degrees since October 28.

 

 

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11 April 2020

Apollo 13

By icefogger

11 April 1970:

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The launch of Apollo 13 from Cape Kennedy, Florida

Fifty years ago today, the crew of Apollo 13 was launched from Cape Kennedy, pushed along by the massive Saturn V.  Just 2-1/2 hours from launch, the S IVB third stage reignited, providing the final push towards the moon.

Apollo 13’s trajectory was so accurate, the first planned course correction was cancelled.  A return to the moon’s surface was looking good.

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The crew of Apollo 13: James Lovell, commander; Jack Swigert, command module pilot; Fred Haise, lunar module pilot. Photo credit: NASA

 

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