Climb Every Mountain

When you live in the Arctic, nice weather is not a given. Word on the street (an ironic figure of speech considering my location) is that you could count the number of sunny summer days in Gambell on one hand. Therefore when the day turns out to be clear and cool and gorgeous, you drop everything and enjoy it! The teachers have been hard at work for days getting classrooms and lesson plans in shape, but when the sun finally made an appearance in Gambell a few of us decided to ditch school. :-) So, we went the only logical place: up the mountain.

Here is the fearless mountain-climbing crew:



Sivuqaq Mountain is really a bluff, but when you sit on a base of gravel at sea level anything that rises 700 feet seems like a mountain. It's rock and tundra the whole way up so it was a nice change of ground for us. The tundra is much spongier than I imagined it to be; it's like one big memory foam mattress!








Once we got to the top, it was beautiful! Swampy in places and rocky in others, but windy everywhere. You could see all the way to Savoonga.









And of course, Russia was clear as day. We could actually see the snow on top of the Siberian mountains! The obligatory 'Pointing Towards Tomorrow' photos were taken.





We walked over to the cliffs, and saw puffins darting about! We tried to get them on camera, though the results weren't fantastic. My video camera wasn't charged unfortunately, so all I had was my still camera's video setting.


Puffin Narration


I Spy Puffins


-Megan