Alaska #9

It’s Saturday night and we’re back to Fairbanks at the Comfort Inn. The last day or so was really interesting. Yesterday we got up and had a big breakfast at the restaurant at Chena Hot Springs. After breakfast, we got our suits, and hung out in the hot swimming lake for a while. Brenda had signed up to go on a dog sled ride around lunchtime. We walked over to the dog sled area, and were met with an unbelievable sight. About 60 dogs, each with it’s own house and tie up chain. Brenda made friends with the dogs and driver and went off on her adventure. The dogs all went crazy when the sled was prepared. They all wanted to run. As soon as the sled left, they all got quiet. Brenda and the driver went out through the 2-mile course and returned from the other side of the dog compound. As soon as they got back all the dogs again went into plaid thinking something was going to happen.

After the dog sled ride we took some downtime to prepare for the Aurora viewing event starting at 10:00 in the evening. We got moving again to go on our tour of the Ice Museum at 5 pm. We met in front of the building and were escorted inside. The whole interior of the building is ice sculptures many of them over 3 years old. There is a huge intricate sculpture of two knights jousting. There is also a complete chess set in ice with figures 2-3 feet high. All the figures are modeled after animals of the Alaskan wildlife. There is an ice wedding chapel, and they report there have been over 50 weddings held there. On the far end of the building are 4 bedrooms complete with ice beds covered with furs. You can rent these “rooms” for $575 per night. Coming back the other side is an ice igloo with table and chairs inside. The acoustics are purported to be excellent inside. I tested it b y singing a couple of the songs from my repertory. On the same side as the igloo is a bar where they serve their signature appletini drinks in ice carved glasses. We had signed up for those so we landed at the bar on fur covered ice stools. We had our drinks and toasted the adventure.

After the tour, we went back and got ready for dinner. Once again, we dined at the Chena Resort. The food was again very good. Jerry had a smoked salmon penne in cheese and cream sauce that was excellent. After dinner, I think naps were had all around. At about 9:30 we donned our cold weather gear and prepared for our aurora adventure. We arrived in front of the activities building at 9:50 as required. It was a large group, and we were split into smaller groups to ride in the sno coaches. The sno coaches were tracked ATV kind of vehicles with a trailer of sorts that held 10 people. Another 3 or 4 could fit in the cab with the driver. We ended up with 6 folks in our trailer, which gave us a little room to spread out.

The caravan of 4 Sno Coaches headed out up the mountain for our destination. The ride was unbelievably rough. I likened it to being in a combination of blender and vibrator. Since the resort had not had any snow for a while and had been subject to the same 40-degree temps the track was mostly ice. If we had been riding on 6 inches of new powder the ride probably would have been quiet and smooth. The trip to the top of the mountain took about 30 minutes and was very steep along the way. When we got to the top they let us out and we found our yurt. The yurt was a round canvas structure with two propane heaters and two propane lights. It was pretty well sealed off from the wind, and they had hot water going for tea, coffee, hot chocolate etc. The temp at the top of the mountain was probably in the 20’s and the wind was blowing quite hard.

We all did pretty well with our cold weather gear. According to the guides, a couple of weeks ago it was 40 below outside with the wind blowing. They said it never got above –20 inside the yurt with the heat running. They could hardly get the water hot enough for coffee. We spent the next 3 hours looking for the aurora. As the time went by and it was not spotted, everyone became discouraged. I was enjoying the solitude of sitting outside watching the sky in the cold and biting wind. I decided that if I did some Alaskan chanting perhaps the aurora would appear. I chanted for a while, and low and behold, the aurora appeared.

When I thought I saw it, I called Vickie through the canvas wall of the yurt. There was a group of Japanese tourists with us on the mountain. Several of them were sitting inside against the wall waiting for the aurora to appear. When my disembodied voice appeared through the wall of the yurt, it frightened one of the Japanese girls so much she ran to the other side of the hut. Not only could she not understand English but it came after her through the wall. Vickie tried to explain it was me, but to no avail. As the aurora intensified Jerry went in and told the folks waiting it out in the yurt. All of a sudden I heard this huge commotion as all the waiters stampeded outside to see the finally appearing show. The Japanese folks insisted on trying to take flash pictures of the aurora. All they succeeded in doing was blinding everyone. Soon they figured out they were getting picture s of nothing and quit. Jerry used his new camera on a tripod with a timed exposure and got some good pictures of what we saw. We watched the ghostly lights for about 45 minutes, and then it was time to head back. We loaded up into our sno coaches, and were scrambled all the way back down the mountain.

An interesting aside. While we were awaiting the aurora on the mountaintop, Jerry and Vickie got to talking to one of the guides. She was married to another guide. Together they had 2 children. They lived even further out than the resort and had a house with no TV, no satellite, no phone, no newspapers, no indoor plumbing, and a 45 to guard from bears on the way to the outhouse. They had a generator they ran part time, and spent most of what they made on fuel to heat their house. The girl told Jerry she left the lower 48 in 98 and hadn’t been back since. Jerry mentioned that if Hillary won the election, we all might be moving to Alaska. To this the girl replied “Is SHE running?” She hadn’t a clue about the election. We are finding the Alaskans are really a different sort, very self reliant, and fiercely independent. They love the life here, and most have little interest of ever returning to the US mainland.

After the aurora viewing, we finally were back in our rooms around 3:30 am. We all crashed, and the next morning packed up for the return trip to Fairbanks. Checking out of Chena was complicated by their technically challenged staff, and Jerry and I will be straightening out our bills on our own later. On the trip back to Fairbanks, we saw several moose and other game. One of the moose was quite tame and spent some time posing for us to take his picture. They sure are big and funny looking. Tomorrow we’re off for the train back to Anchorage. More later.

Wes

Alaska #8

It’s Friday morning, and the last 24 hours have been very interesting. We packed up everything yesterday and moved out of the Comfort Inn. We headed out of Fairbanks for Chena Hot Springs on the Seward Highway. Along the way we made a quick detour to see the last remaining gold dredge in Alaska. Dredge #8 as it is called is along the highway just past the pipeline viewing area. It was last operational in the late 60’s and was parked the last place it worked. Gold dredges were about the size of a large tugboat and used metal buckets about the size of a lawn tractor on a chain that dug up the gold bearing gravel for processing.

After that we headed out the Chena Springs road toward the resort. The road follows the Chena River the whole way and it is about 60 miles of narrow 2 lane with virtually nothing on it. We saw 2 moose along side the road while traveling. They were in the forest but we were able to stop and take some pictures. We arrived at the resort and checked in. We went directly to the activities center to sign up for the things we wanted to do. There was a Renewable Energy Tour at 6 pm and we signed up for that. We also signed up for a Snow Coach Aurora Tour the following night. We unloaded our stuff from the car and moved into our rooms.

The resort is nice. Not fancy or plush, but very nice. All the staff folks we have come in contact with so far are very accommodating and pleasant. While moving in I noticed our smoke alarm was chirping from a low battery. I called and promptly a maintenance guy came and replaced the battery. He was a young guy, and he told us he was on duty 24/7 from November to April. All the kids here work pretty much full time since there really isn’t anything else to do. The boy at the front desk said it was a great place to work and save money for college. He worked, watched DVD’s, and saved his money. We met a couple other staff folks later in the lounge while we were waiting for a dinner table and they spent a little of their money on adult beverages.

We had dinner at the lodge restaurant, as it is the only game in town. The menu was not extensive but had several interesting selections on it. The prices were pretty much comparable with what we had seen in Fairbanks. A little high by lower 48 standards, but considering Alaska imports 90% of its food, not ridiculous. Jerry had a salmon entrée, Brenda had a dinner salad, and Vickie had a bowl of vegetable soup. I had a duck salad with orange vinaigrette. All of the food was great. More later about the food.

Prior to dinner, Jerry and I went on what was called the Renewable Energy Tour (link to their renewable energy info website). It was purported to be a tour of the geothermal energy sources, green houses, and cooling for the Ice Museum. The young girl who took us on the tour was a Stanford Engineering Master’s grad. She was working here for some experience. She started the tour by explaining how the resort was situated. It sits on a geothermal heat source that produces 165-degree water. They pump water down into an 800 foot well, and get it back hot coming up another 800 foot well. That’s how they heat the spa pools, hot tubs, and outdoor swimming pond. But she also went on to explain this facility was unique in that they produced all their own electricity geothermically. Especially interesting was this is the only facility to produce electricity from a low temperature geothermal source. Most other geothermal sites have 212+ degree water to work with so they can use normal steam electricity production equipment.

This is where the tour really got interesting. It seems they, in concert with a University and Carrier AC Company, have pioneered a turbine generator that runs essentially on the temperature difference between 165-degree water and the outside air. The really interesting thing is the colder it gets the more efficient the whole thing is. (-20 degree outside temperature makes it work real well) What they are doing is using sort of a reverse heat pump powered by the hot water. They boil R134 refrigerant and use it to turn a 15000-RPM turbine that turns a generator through reduction gears. Then they use the cold outside air to condense the R134 for another trip. In the summer they use cold ground water for the cooling and then pump it down the geothermal well. Because they are reusing the same water all the time, they don’t deplete the aquifer. They are producing 250 kW of electricit y (they have two 250 kW units side by side) with an installation about the size of a truck trailer. Neat thing is it is totally modular and uses many off the shelf commercial air conditioning components. What’s very cool is there are limitless applications where this process can be used to produce electricity from waste heat. (like at big electrical plants with giant cooling towers) Adding these modular generators to use the waste heat from the cooling towers could improve the efficiency of existing power plants by many percent. (translation—a bunch more electricity for same amount of fuel burned) In addition the same units can be used to produce electricity from what the oil industry calls stripper wells. These are oil wells where they inject hot water into the ground to bring up the residual oil that will not flow on it’s own. There are only about a zillion of these stripper wells operating.

The tour then went on to show us the greenhouse operation. It is heated by circulating the hot water through pipes in the concrete slab. It has withstood temperature differentials of 74 degrees inside and –54 degrees outside. They grow everything hydroponically, and the various lettuces they were growing were incredible. (hence the concentration on salads at dinner I mentioned earlier) They have a tomato room where she said they had harvested 6500 pounds of tomatoes before they had to replace the vines. Some of the vines were 90 feet long weaving back and forth across the room. Then we moved on to the chiller for the Ice Museum.

The Ice Museum (originally called an Ice Hotel) is a huge structure made up completely of ice. We have a tour of that scheduled for later today. It takes a lot of refrigeration to keep it from melting in temperatures that can get to 90 degrees here in the summer. At this point the guide talked about how things had been in the past at this resort. A series of owners had gone out of business due to the energy costs. Prior to the geothermic project, since they are 30 miles from the nearest electrical grid, it cost $1000 a day in diesel fuel to produce electricity for the resort. In addition it took another $700 a day to keep the Ice Museum from melting. (and this was when diesel was $2.00 per gal rather than $3.50 like now) Now they keep the Ice Museum from melting and maintain a 20-degree year round interior temp with a little ammonia adiabatic system that would fit in the back of your pickup truck. They use the geothermal heat to boil the ammonia to power the thing. They use the waste heat removed from the ice structure to either heat the resort or store in a ground loop. It is an amazingly simple and efficient system. They are getting ready to start up a hydrogen production facility that will take surplus electrical energy from their geothermal generators, and produced hydrogen by electrolysis to mix with their existing propane system and save them thousands a year on propane. Due to the efficiency of all the energy stuff they are doing, this resort is now financially viable, and prospering after years of decay. Jerry and I can only imagine what it will be like in 10 years.

So here we are, in the middle of nowhere in Alaska. But what did we find? We found cutting edge energy technology that is primarily the brainchild of a guy named Bernie Karl. He and his wife bought the resort from the state of Alaska in 1998, and have turned it around completely. In addition, they have folks coming from all over the world to see how the geothermal system operates. I felt like I had been beamed up by aliens and shown technology that could only exist in the far future. I can see modular 250 kW or 500 kW or even bigger electrical generators operating environmentally friendly, with no carbon discharge, all over the world. All of a sudden I don’t have such a gloomy view of us hurtling down a tunnel to energy doom. If this type of stuff can be going on by one visionary guy and his staff in the middle of nowhere Alaska, then there is hope for us all. As our guide put i t, you don’t burn the oil for fuel, you use it to make the invaluable products that can come from it. (plastics, chemicals, etc. etc) And I added, and oh yea, you send Venezuela or the Arabs (who all hate us) less $$$ every month.

After dinner, we rounded up our suits, and headed for the spa. We changed cloths in the locker rooms provided, and made the 22 foot outdoor walk (at about 20 degrees) to the spa swimming pond. The pond is rimmed with granite rocks, and has a coarse sand bottom. It is lit with a few scattered colored lights and the steam rising from the hot water creates an alluring, relaxing aura. The water is about 103 degrees, and is much hotter in areas where the feed water flows in. We spent at lest half an hour in the very interesting environment of 20-degree air and 100 plus water. After that, everyone was well relaxed, and we headed back to our very comfy beds.

Tomorrow, we are going to explore more of the interesting things Chena Hot Springs has to offer. More later.

Wes