As close as you can get to being here

This year our river has behaved strangely. All year long we've had high water after high water event with the latest one coming in October when the river is usually low and slow.  Of course the more water there is the faster it runs and the faster it runs the longer it takes to freeze. Well its been so cold lately that even with the high water the freezing process has begun here at Mile 14. About 4 days ago we had pan ice floating onto the shallows at Fall-in-Hole, pretty soon the pan ice was all across the river and by the hour it was raising here as the water backed up behind the ice dam downriver.  Pretty soon it got to where it was nothing but ice and it was all standing still, quiet and settled in for the winter....or so we thought.  We were in the sauna for about an hour and when I was drying off I could here the weirdest 'whooshing' sound, and it was loud.

As soon as my glasses went fog free I could see that the head pressure had gotten to the breakable point and all the reserved ice was flushing downriver, fast and loud. I ran to the house and got the camera and recorded the video. It was much louder at first but its still pretty cool, shows the power of the river and what I tell people all the time......its a living thing, just like us. If you can't hear it turn your volume up. Now, two days later its pretty much settled in again and maybe this time for good. We were going to walk on it today but the upper crust is still to soft and you break through. So just like Thanksgiving day we've been doing our walking in town where I took these pics on t-day morning about 10 am, temperature -6.

It wouldn't be Soldotna if you didn't run into a few fish while out on your walk. I also snapped this pic of MP after she'd fixed her drooping socks, is that pic cute or what? She was just slightly fogged up.

And the local High School art class was good enough to paint the retaining wall with our location, so me and MP might not act like it....but we're never lost.

Hows about that, my first ever video blog up link. Theres lots of possibilities that go with this video deal, my buddy Ernie surf fishing a schamoozle. Or Slah rattling on in his Arabic laced Spanish language after losing whats always the biggest fish of the year....lots of possibilities.