Thaw di Gras was last weekend and I didn’t participate in any of it 🙁 It was cold, windy, snowy, and for some reason we just didn’t get into it. I did go for a hike of the 9th Ave trail though, and break through all the drifts for the next guy.

Starting this week, the winter streets are getting stripped! As you know, this is the annual event that really marks spring in Dawson City. All the snow in the downtown is ripped up and put into big windrows that block the intersections, and then the snow is removed by big front end loaders, loaded into gravel trucks and trucked away to a snow dump. That way the snow doesn’t melt on top of our permafrost, which would turn the town into muddy soup once it gets warmer.

On Tuesday the afternoon temperature tickled the 0°C mark, and that was enough sun on the edge of our metal roof to trigger the annual avalanche of snow off the roof on the south side. There isn’t near the snow on the roof as we’ve had in recent years. It’s been more of an average winter. Jeff had talked about pulling the snow down with the roof rake (to prevent it from coming down on our heads) but the majority of it slid on its own. Now we’ll wait for the south side and the front porch roof to follow in the coming weeks as it warms up.

The Yukon River froze last fall leaving the strip of open water in front of town again, so there hasn’t been an official government approved ice road/bridge across the river to West Dawson. Locals made a walking trail where they could, up river, and that has morphed into a snowmobile trail, and now people have started driving across it. You can spot a truck in the middle of this pic:

Here are some recent hiking pictures. I’ve even hiked a couple times without long johns under my pants now! Warm! It’s neat to look back on these pictures and see me shed my snow pants, parka, face mask, etc. Sure makes the hills easier when you’re not walking in big boots and snow pants.

Occasionally my glasses don’t frost up and I can actually hike with them on!!

Jeff got eager even earlier than last year and took us out to Bonanza Road for a 10km walk. It’s still snow covered, of course, with a layer of hard ice underneath, so I walked with my ice cleats on my shoes. Still managed a 2 hr, 4 min time! Jeff and Hank were 7 minutes faster, of course. The wind was pretty brisk by the end of the walk! I had my coat off for a bit, but ended with my toque back on.

Either someone walks a massive dog out there, or we were following wolf tracks. Hank’s paw prints are on the left, the other ones were twice as big!

A bit of overflow was showing on Bonanza Creek:

The glaciers have started building again. We’ve got one at the end of our back alley. Look at the ground water coming out of Pierre Berton’s lot:

The city has scraped it down a couple of times and covered it with gravel but it keeps building faster as it gets warmer. It actually continues down the back alley, off and on, for several blocks. Must just be ground water coming out of the hill behind us.

And I’ll leave you with a picture of our beautiful Sally.

Poor thing is totally deaf now and hollers sometimes, day and night, which gets Hank howling like a siren some times. Here’s a little video: