Pics from the North Coast

[NightTrain]

Got a few pics I've taken as we bomb around Barrow... usually it's pitch black out, with a twilight about 2pm to 4pm - but we're gaining light very quickly up here, and soon the sun will be shining 24/7 in this neck of the woods. Haven't actually seen it in months here, though.


Caribou. And this is as much sunlight as we get up here right now.




Palm trees. Actually, they're made of baleen from whales. Baleen is the filter inside a whale's mouth to strain food like krill from giant gulps of water :




Coasties heading out doing a rescue mission for a couple of knuckleheads that went out on the sea ice on their snowmachines and the ice pack broke away from shore... and off they went on a little float trip, and it was more than a 3-hour tour, Gilligan.




I wish this would have turned out better. It's a shot of two Arctic Fox kits playing outside their den while Mama was out hunting. They're white, fluffy and awfully adorable. It was a ways off the road, and I was using my phone's digital zoom to try and get a shot of them.




Here I'm instructing my apprentice on the finer points of snow removal.








I'll add more later, but for now I need to get in the truck and head out to work. We're patrolling daily for polar bears to get a few shots of them, but so far they've eluded us - we hear they're on one side of town, we haul ass there and they're gone. We'll catch up with them, hopefully on our terms.