Odds and Ends

A well-used ski shows its age as it soaks up the morning sunlight after a cold night.

I went into Anthony's snow cave to relax and check it his interior design acumen. Pretty good I have to say. A nice texture on the interior walls and a brick type entrance. The bed is elevated above the floor for ease of egress. The door is sized so that a pack will fit in the entrance way and provide additional insulation. In a word, functional.

Say, that reminds me... Last year I took an arctic engineering short course at the University of Washington. The guys who taught the majority of it were both Alaskans and Michigan Tech alumni. They told us a story about the ice hotel at Cheena Hot Springs. The ice hotel is exactly that - an actual hotel made out of ice. Okay, it does have an insulated exterior shell but the interior is made completely out of ice. Ice walls, ice ceiling, ice floor, ice furniture, ice beds (or at least bed frames), world-class ice sculpture, etc. To keep folks warm, all the furniture is decked with Alaskan furs. It is kept at a constant 20 degrees and at optimum humidity levels to eliminate sublimation but also prevent the build up of frost. During an fire safety inspection of the facilities an stringent inspector noted that the hotel was in violation of the codes governing hotels and would have to be shut down immediately. Apparently the ice hotel was lacking a critical piece of mechanical infrastructure that would make staying at such a facility hazardous to one's health. Yup, you guessed it, the ice hotel was unsafe because it was lacking a sprinkler system. Never mind the little problem that water within a sprinkler system doesn't work very well at 20 deg F. Never mind that the entire building is made completely out of water - albeit in a frozen state. Oh, I could go on and on. What is really pathetic is that the inspector and whoever he reported to wouldn't back down. Fortunately the owner of Cheena Hot Springs resort is known for innovation. It didn't take him long to figure out a way to reopen his hotel. Actually, it is no longer a hotel. It is now an art museum - you can even rent your own private studio between 4pm and 11am at rates curiously similar to that of the former hotel.

I went with a commercial design and slept in my tent. Yeah, it was quite a bit colder but I enjoyed the views that my open doors provided.

As a group, we headed over to see visit the face of Shakes glacier again. The trail was starting to look like a highway.