When the winter wind blows in a normally calm place like Mendenhall Lake, it can sting. Aki knows this. If she didn’t before, she is learning it now. She trots just behind one of her humans as he skis into a thirty-knot wind. The skier takes the brunt of the wind. It flows over his unprotected face, making the 22-degree air feel like zero. Cleaver Aki uses him like a windbreak.

            It’s not all beer and skittles for the little dog.  When her humans spread out  she must leave her wind shadow and run back to round up someone who has stopped to photograph the glacier. Then she squints her eyes into the wind, spots her other charge and runs full tilt to him. In a minute she is back urging the photographer not to doddle.