10 December 2005: As we left the Hotel in Wasilla on Saturday morning, 10 December, a light rain was falling. As we drove north to Willow the rain worsened. Adding a definite soaking from above to the possibility of a soaking from below by slipping and falling on the ice was not an attractive proposition, so we postponed setting up the study site.

Pam Horton, who is teaching kindergarten this year at Willow Elementary School, had assembled a group of interested parents and children to help put in the ice gauge and wooden stakes, and learn how to make measurements. I hope they weren’t too disappointed about or inconvenienced by not going on the ice, but I think we made the right decision for safety and personal comfort reasons. Since we weren’t going out on the ice, we sat in Pam’s classroom and talked for about 90 minutes about ALISON and related topics.

We agreed to set up the Willow study site on Wednesday morning, 14 December, when the weather is expected to have improved and we would be driving north to Fairbanks. Then we left for Anchorage.

We met Pam Horton (fifth from left) and these parents and children at Willow Elementary School on Saturday 10 December 2005.

You can’t miss Willow Air on the shore of Willow Lake: just look for the huge sign and the plane on the roof.

14 December 2005: Today, Willow was a very different place compared to when we visited on Saturday 10 December: it was dry, cold (-10°C) and calm, and there was no question about going out on the ice to set up the study site on Willow Lake.

After a brief talk with Pam Horton’s kindergarten students, we were on the ice soon after 10 am. The study site was set up in much the same place as last winter: a short distance offshore from Willow Air. The ice thickness gauge was installed in 0.317 m of ice with a ~0.13 m deep snow cover. There was sufficient mass of snow on the ice that a little flooding was occurring along the line of wooden stakes.

We left Willow at noon anticipating that we would be home at about 5 pm. We actually arrived at 5:15 pm after an uneventful drive up the Parks Highway. There was an almost continuous ice cover on the highway between Willow and Cantwell, but the road was well groomed and we were able to zoom along safely at 60 mph. Once we passed through Cantwell, the road surface quickly improved and there was little or no ice.

Because of the clear, dry weather , we once again enjoyed good views of the mountains as we drove north beyond Trapper Creek. Denali/Mount McKinley was shrouded in cloud, but the lower elevation peaks were visible and often bathed in sunlight. The mountains west of Broad Pass were assuming a pinkish hue as the sun descended quickly to the horizon at about 3 pm.

The rising moon in the centre of the photograph showed us the way through the mountains from Broad Pass to Fairbanks via Cantwell, Healy and Nenana.