The Taku Winds are back.  They start in the Yukon Territory and gain strength on glaciers and ice fields then push long snow plumes over the shoulders of Mt. Juneau. The winds hammer Chicken Ridge but not the Mendenhall Valley so we take our Sunday walk there on the Auk Lake Trail.

The trail is iced over and runs through dark woods so we abandon it for the sunny lake ice. A bicyclist rides by followed by a disapproving Queensland Blue Healer. Aki slides over ice toward the dog but it moves silently on behind his master. The rider’s success encourages us to return on the newly refrozen lake.

Last nights hard freeze documented the passage of a walker who braved the lake when it was covered in slush. The sun turns this history into art. Deer tracks show a  hard passage through crusty snow from forest to the icy lake. I’ve come to expect signs of human folly in winter ice but not that of a foolish deer.   Why would it leave the safe forest for the exposed ice where a predator’s paws work so much better than cloven hooves?