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