PS: I updated last week’s post

The story for this week seems pretty similar to last week, since the fresh snowfall melted pretty quickly. The temperature drops just below 0 at night, but is usually 5-6 degrees by 10am. On the 15^th of May we got another huge dumping of snow that started at about 10am and lasted well into the night. We probably got about 30-40 cm of accumulation by the time it had finished. My mom has been bugging me for a photo with my face in it (which is quite difficult to do when I am the one taking the photos), but I thought that this morning was probably a good time to do it:

The day after the snowfall turned out to be an amazing spring day. The temperature got up to about 10 degrees and there was tons of activity in the forest. With the snow on the ground there were tones of fresh lynx, hare, squirrel, mouse and bear tracks.

                Yesterday I had my first bear encounter. I was sitting on a squirrel midden trying to record a squirrel vocalization when a black bear approached me. I made a bit of noise so he knew that I was there, and he started to walk the other direction. About 30 minutes later I ran into him again at another midden. At first I was a bit worried that he was following me, but after making a little bit of noise to get his attention he took a few sniffs, and plopped himself on the ground. The bear seemed completely uninterested in me so I spend about 15 minutes watching him forage for bearberry before I continued on my rounds. The photos arnt the greatest but here they are:

                Spring is definitely just around the corner now. Bears and ground squirrels are out of hibernation, and hares are starting to change color:

                The amount of daylight is increasing at an unbelievable pace as well. Last night I walked to my cabin at 11:30pm and it was still dusk outside. It’s hard to believe that in a few weeks the sun will still be up past midnight.

                And just in case I didn’t give my mother a heart attack with my bear story, I thought I’d throw this photo I took yesterday from the top of an enormous spruce yesterday evening. Don’t worry it was a really safe climb :P.

Until next time!

-Dylan