Bike ride - Day 10

A 40 mile climb to Fielding Lake with a free lunch bonus along the way. 

My first stop of the day was to watch the state bringing an old communications tower back off a mountain by helicopter. 

The pilot was really impressive, reminded me of the pilot who took us helicopter snowboarding.

Seems like a pretty good office view!

Though mine is pretty nice too...

The fine people of Alaskabike invited me to join their group for lunch below the black rapids glacier. They are doing the same route I am but only riding the "good parts".

The pipe line rests on 25 to 40 ft long rails with Teflon skids where it crosses the Denali fault line so it can slide in the event of and earthquake. Not a drop of oil was spilled during a 7.5 earthquake in 2002. A pretty good job on the engineering if you ask me. 

Watching pieces of lake ice float down the river bumping and grinding along the rocks was one of the coolest sights and sounds of the trip so far. It was almost mesmerizing like watching a camp fire but colder. Not shown: Nick's bath between ice flows (this isn't that kind of blog).

Corrie took another break from school work to come visit me. She thought of the fire analogy for the ice. She also brought hotdogs, vegetables, and eggs, what luxury food!

Looking the other direction from the lake. For some reason this camp ground doesn't have a fee station like all the other state recreation sites do. It was also nearly mosquito free and for reasons I can't explain largely empty. Maybe the ice scares people off?