At the beginning of August, I still had a couple of vacation days left over. I decided to spend a long weekend hiking two mountain trails in Kluane: Kings Throne trail, and Mt. Decoli. Im writing this almost 7 months after I did the hikes, so needless to say I dont have much to say. I should really try to stay on top of this...

From the top of Mt. Decoli:

 

A Dall sheep. This guy was a part of a group of 7-8 males :

Hoary Marmot:

Kathleen Lake:

From the base of the throne:

Behind Decoli:

What the hell is a porcupine doing above treeline?:

Untagged Squirrel!:

More from the top of Decoli:

In many ways July has been an incredibly uneventful month. With the exception of one squirrel, all of the nests are done for the season. As of late most of our work has consisted of camp maintenance, taking GPS locations of squirrel territories, and analyzing the vegetation around grid. The first two weeks of July were filled with rain so most of my evenings were spent indoors. I didn’t take my camera out very much at all, which is unfortunate since I encountered one of the most iconic animals that I have ever seen in the wild. When I first saw it climbing up into a tree I thought it was a grizzly bear cub, but when it looked down at me I immediately knew it was a mustelid. After it made its escape, I ran back to camp and looked through our field guides to confirm that the mustelid was indeed a wolverine. What a day to forget my camera.

Because camp is less busy in June and July, each of us gets to take 9 days vacation. Three of us (Matt, Kat and I) decided to take the week to go kayaking in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska.

Thursday, July 12^th

Our first official day of vacation was on the 13^th, so we decided to head out on the evening of the twelfth. Southeast Alaska is well known for its rainy weather so we were well prepared for a week of solid rain. I brought tons of extra changes of clothes, and packed them each in Ziploc bags, which I then packed in dry-sacs. 

                We started heading down the Haines Highway at about 6pm. Even on the drive down to Haines we managed to see some wildlife:

We got into Haines at around 9:00, and set up camp 10 miles outside of town. Although it wasn’t raining hard, it drizzled all night and well into the morning

Friday, July 13^th

The Ferry to Juneau did not leave Haines until the next evening, leaving us all day to hang out in Haines. Friday was a fairly laid back day. We did some laundry, checked our emails, and bought some food and supplies for our trip. We got on the ferry at about 7pm, and got into Juneau around 11. The ferry ride was a lot of fun, but it was fairly overcast and windy. Once we got to Juneau, we took a shuttle to our motel and caught a few hours of sleep before our ferry at 7 the next morning.

Saturday, July 14th
Its a pity we didnt get a chance to see Juneau before we headed out the next morning. Juneau is the Capital of Alaska, but there are no roads that lead out of the town. All access to the town is either by air or water, yet their seems to be pretty good infrastructure. Ill have to go back and check it out next time I'm in Alaska. The next morning we woke up and rushed back to the ferry terminal to catch our next boat. After we ate our breakfast in the ferry cafeteria, we headed up to the solarium to snag a few beach chairs.

The weather wasn’t exactly tropical, but the sky had started to clear from the night before.If we could only have a few dry days like this we would have a pretty good trip.

When we reached to port in Gustavus, we almost immediately found a taxi to Bartlett Cove (where we were picking up our kayaks). Once we got to Bartlett, we almost immediately started our kayak orientation. They gave us some suggestions for routes, and

July 15th

Tour Boat:

Kayak:

July 16th

July 17th

July 18th:

July 19th:

July 20th:

It’s crazy to think that just over a month ago there was a foot of snow still on the ground. Now the snow has been replaced by carpets of flowers; especially Lupins.

The weekend before last the entire crew took a two day weekend for the Chilkat Bike Race. The race started in Haines Junction and finished in Haines, Alaska for a total of XXXKM. There were 8 race legs and 10 of us so I decided not to sign up. I wasn’t too fussed about participating when we signed up for the race, but now I really regret not doing it. With that being said, biking 25-40km through a mountain pass looks like an incredibly painful experience.

It was cloudy for pretty much the entire drive, which really sucks since it’s such a scenic drive. Although we didn’t get to see much of the mountains, there were plenty of Arctic ground squirrels and even a few Rock Ptarmigan in the tundra.

Once we crossed the border we passed a pair of Swans with their chick:

When we got to Haines, we ate dinner and then went to a local bar. They served two dollar beers until well after 3am. Needless to say nobody felt all that great the next morning.

Last weekend I went into Whitehorse for the first time since I got here in the beginning of April. It was nice to be able to pick up a few supplies for the rest of my summer. I also decided to splurge a little bit and buy myself some binoculars as a graduation present. They were expensive, but I feel like a pretty useless field biologist without a good pair of bins.

 Since it was still sunny out, we lost track of time and didn’t start the 2.5 hour drive back to camp until about 9pm. About half way back to Haines Junction, we saw a Grizzly bear on the side of the road grazing on some dandelions with her cub.

                We sat there for about 15 minutes or so watching them from the top of the truck when some clouds started rolling in. It rained really hard for 5 minutes or so, cleared up, and then a double rainbow formed behind the bears. This photo doesn’t do the scene justice, but I feel like I need to post it anyways to prove that I’m not making it up.

To top it all off, we also saw a melanistic (black) wolf walking along the forest edge just out of the Junction. By this point it was about 11pm, so we watched the sun set behind the mountains on the last leg of our drive. What a day.

Oh Yeah! The squirrel pups are still cute:

On a side note, I’ve finally been officially accepted into University of Manitoba’s Master’s program. In September I’ll be moving up to Winnipeg, and next spring I’ll be studying Cape Ground Squirrels in South Africa. Booya!

-Dylan