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 Now the snow has been replaced by carpets of flowers; especially Lupins.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

 So I have been seriously slacking on the blog front, but I should have a decent update next week. Until then, here are some cute photos of squirrels to look at :P.

-Dylan

After a long week of work, I was feeling pretty sore last Friday. A bunch of us in camp decided to have a nice relaxing…. mountain hike. Sheep Mountain is about 20 minutes from camp, just on the side of Kluane Lake.  Having never climbed a mountain before, it was one of the most exhausting things I’ve done in a long time. It only took us just over 4 hours to reach the summit and get back to the truck. Although I didn’t manage to see any sheep, the entire walk was filled with a chorus of ground squirrel alarm calls. Here is a view from the summit:

 This is the side of the mountain that we hiked up. If you look really closely you can see the truck on the side of the highway. Im not sure what the overall elevation is, but the summit is 1165m above the base (according to the internet).

               

It was pretty cloudy last Friday, but we’ve had nothing but sun since then. Sometime in the beginning of the week I finally made the decision to stop babying my SLR camera. I’ve taken it out with me during my trapping rounds almost every day this week, and managed to get some pretty good shots. The very first day that I brought it with me, I ran into a porcupine. It climbed up into an old snag, and after a bit of convincing it turned around and posed for me:

 

I have had some pretty good luck spotting wildlife the rest of the week as well, including on of the most beautiful black bears I have seen. It seems to hang around the front of one of our grids quite a bit, but hopefully it wont venture on grid too often:

And now ill just overload you with wildlife photos:

-Here is a Least Chipmunk:

An adult Gray Jay:

 A Raven:

 A Spruce Grouse just after a dust bath:

 and a Tundra Swan that is nesting in a pond behind my grid.

This week I'm also starting to see many of the pups that I tagged last month start to emerge from their nests. A few posts ago I showed you a photo of pup hanging out of my shirt pocket. I walked over to his nest the other day and he came out to say hi:

Overall the the conditions seem to be pretty much perfect for being outside. There are no bugs out yet, but its getting pretty warm in the afternoon (about 14 degrees). The trees and shrubs are just starting to leaf out, and some plants are just starting to flower. Work has just started to calm down a little bit, as most females have given birth at this point. Maybe ill have a bit more time to do something other then work in the next month or so.






Well sorry for the photo overload. I leave you with yet another photo of Mt. Decoli.

-Dylan