Monday, July 30, 2012

Week in Serpentine, part 2

Wednesday was by far our worst day, in terms of weather. We all awoke in the morning to wind rattling the entire building and rain pounding at the poorly insulated windows. When I decided to brave a trip up the hill to the outhouse, it felt like being on a boat in a small storm, the whole structure rocking back and forth and a cold draft coming up through the hole, bringing with it all the wonderful aromas an outhouse has to offer. Lovely experience.

The one good thing about the inclement weather was that it forced us to get a lot of work done. We finished painting the floors and helped build some more of the bunk bed. Later, our daily check-in call to dispatch and the office confirmed that we were experiencing sustained winds of 30mph with about 40-45mph gusts!

A family of Red-breasted Mergansers blowing down the stream
Instead of a hike in the afternoon, I opted for a soak in the hot tub. Also an exciting experience, the old bathhouse literally shuddered with every gust, the metal roof panels peeling up and slamming back down with bone-jarring force.

The next day, Thursday, winds had died down to the 20mph range and the rain was more scattered. We finished our work once again in the mid-afternoon and three of us went for a hike to check out some more tors in between rain showers.

Parent trying to land in the wind
One of our coolest sightings was a rough-legged hawk nest with the two adults flying overhead. It was so windy they couldn't really get down to dive-bomb us as it seemed they wanted to, but they continued to caw at us incessantly until we had gotten our fill of photos.

Hovering in the wind

The chicks

Nice spot for a nest

Remind anyone else of Mordor? 
As the afternoon wore on, the weather began to turn for the worse again, with increasing wind speeds and a cold drizzle of rain spitting down. It gave the landscape a wonderfully ominous feel though, reminding me of some kind of dark, Middle Earth realm.

More fascinating tor structures
By the end of our hike, it was pouring rain about as much as it can here -- which is to say, it was a drizzle heavy enough to soak you to the bone, coming in sideways with the cold tundra wind. I spent the rest of the evening inside reading a book, and by around 11pm the sky had opened up and the sun was casting long, golden shadows across the land.

Sunset on the hot spring

Mountain shadows
Morning skies
The next morning, everyone was up early and hoping for weather good enough for us to fly home. The sun was shining, but dark clouds loomed on the horizon. We packed up, cleaned and scrubbed the last corners of the bunkhouse, and proudly surveyed our work while we waited for our plane to arrive. 

The "before" pictures

Before the new paint job

Before

After! (New floor paint and bunk bed)

After
 I hadn't really mentioned it before, but you will no doubt notice all the writing on the bright yellow walls, one of the bunkhouse's most defining features. Some describe it as "grungy," but I immediately found it friendly and comforting, and spent most of my free time pouring over the signatures, messages, and drawings that cover every square inch of the walls.

Most of the names are those of native families who visit the bunkhouse often for spiritual retreats, hunting, class trips, and gatherings. Not a single foul word, insult, or negative comment can be found, and most simply have someone's name, where they're from, and dates they spent at the bunkhouse. Apparently there's been talk of getting permission from the villages to paint over the walls, but personally I would argue to leave it as is.

It brightens the room, and, in the most desolate and remote place, makes it seem somehow less lonely, as if you are simply part of a legacy of very fortunate people to spend time here.
After
It was 34 degrees when I got up on our last morning, and as the plane came in to pick up the first of our 3 loads, we all had our fingers crossed that the cloud ceiling wouldn't close in any further. I only had about a day and a half worth of food left, and our leader was thinking we'd have to call off the flight.

Fortunately, our pilot worked miracles and we were able to complete the operation and get all 4 of us back to Quartz Creek before noon. A two hour drive later, we made it to Nome and I've never been so grateful for a shower in my life!

Despite the iffy weather all week, I'm pretty happy with the way my photos came out, and I feel like we got a lot done as far as maintenance work at the bunkhouse. Even though it can be physically demanding and sometimes mentally rough to be away from friends and family for so long, I still can't believe how lucky I am to be here.

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Week at Serpentine, part 1

Monday morning I found myself once again traveling the long, dusty dirt road to Quartz Creek, the airstrip where we were to meet our bush plane to be dropped off at Serpentine Hot Springs in Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. Also known as Iyat in Inupiaq (meaning "cooking pot"), Serpentine is one of the most visited areas of the preserve, as it has an old bunkhouse and bathhouse pumped in with water from the hot spring, and has for centuries been known as a place of healing and spiritual energy. 

Although the weather was perfect on Monday, it took all day to get to Serpentine. We had to take 3 plane loads full of our maintenance supplies and the 4 of us staff members, as our main job for the week would be to paint the floors and built a bunk bed.

I went out on the second plane, which was so tightly loaded with plywood and fuel jugs (great combination, right?) I got to sit up front in the copilot seat. As we came in for landing on the small Serpentine airstrip, I was once again breath-taken by the beauty of the landscape. 

Tors across the hot spring
There was another small Cessna (I think a 182?) tethered down off to the side, with Australian flags on it -- evidently we would be sharing the bunkhouse this week with some other travelers. There was little time to explore at first though, as we had to unload the plane and haul everything down to the bunkhouse and wait for the final load and our last coworker to arrive.

Not long after we had everything unloaded, the Australians showed up, an older-middle-aged couple whose first question was, "What day is it?"

Turns out they had been at Serpentine for 3-4 days. They travel around wherever and whenever they want, exploring AK and the US in their plane. Must be nice! They had been to Serpentine 3 years earlier and had come back for some hiking, unsure of how long they would stay.


I spent the rest of the evening taking pictures, since the forecast was that it would be rainy all week. Naturally, the most striking part of the landscape were the great tors that pushed up through the hills as far as the eye could see. Tors are basically huge, free-standing rock formations formed by a combination of erosion and I think volcanic activity underground.

The Bathhouse

Wildflowers, the stream, and the tors

Wind sock off the airstrip

The bunkhouse and bathhouse

Incredible views all around


Every tor cluster is different

Shadows and light

In the middle of nowhere
We cooked up dinners of dehydrated soup and pasta on the Coleman camp stove in the bunkhouse and settled in for a surprisingly comfortable night. I'll post pictures of the inside later, but the bunkhouse rooms are lined with little cots with thin mattresses on which we put our sleeping bags.

The next day was only partly sunny, and I spent until about 2pm cleaning and painting the floors with one of the other interpretive rangers. Although my back and arms were aching by the end of it, I was too excited to explore Serpentine, so the two of us decided to spend the rest of the afternoon hiking as far as we could.

Prime bear territory
There are two main things you need to know about hiking in the tundra.

1) Avoid willows as much as possible. Willows are prime bear (and other large, dangerous mammal) habitat, so when you absolutely have to pass through them, you have to make a lot of noise so as not to surprise anything you stumble upon.

2) Stay up on the rocks -- not just to avoid the willows, but also the avoid the tussocks that make up the tundra. I didn't know what these were before, but you quickly learn what they are after twisting your ankles on them a few times. Tussocks are weird, round little clumps of grass and moss that make up the tundra ground, ranging in size from 1-2 feet in diameter; if you step on them, they roll you off, if you step between them your feet sink deep into the wet squishy moss between, so no matter what, you end up having to step higher and father than you normally do. It's a pretty miserable, painful experience after about 3 hours of hiking.

Knowing these two facts, we quickly made it up to the ridges with minimal willow- and tussock-crossings.

Old skull


Small antler


Good sized caribou rack
There were treasures to be found on every ridge. Each tor cluster was different from the last; some were tall and smooth, others short and rough, some had deep divots and holes, and others formed inverted shapes and strange cracks.

One of the coolest things we found was a rough-legged hawk nest that had been partially built with antlers!

We hiked for over two hours out before I finally caved in to the exhaustion that had been nagging at me for the last hour after going up and down mountains and across tussocks. I felt kind of bad for asking to cut our hike short, but in the end it was a good choice since the hike back was just as difficult as it had been getting out there.

Fortunately, we came across tons of fresh, ripe blueberry patches, and stopped often to gorge ourselves on the fruit and take some back to the bunkhouse.

Not long after we got back, finished dinner, and I had soaked my sore muscles in the hot tub for a bit, our crew leader came running inside yelling, "WE GOT A GRIZZLY!"

Grizzly foraging
Instantly, all four of us, plus the Australians, were at the window, peering up the slope behind the bunkhouse. Sure enough, a little blonde spot stood out on the tundra, moving quickly downhill towards us.

This is about what it looked like to the naked eye
The bear was right where we had hiked that day, eating the same blueberries from the patch we discovered. It was pretty exciting, and a beautiful animal, but a striking reminder of the wildness of this place and the fact that we are totally alone out here and defenseless except for a couple cans of bear spray and a shotgun. We watched the bear until it disappeared back over the ridge.

Green-winged teal
So our first two days went well. Got a lot of work done, some good hiking in, and enjoyed the natural hot springs and the solitude of being literally out in the middle of nowhere.

I'll post part 2 later on!

Sunday, July 22, 2012

First night in the backcountry

Made it back from my first two-day-one-night stay in the backcountry. Headed out again tomorrow morning so I will attempt to be brief with the highlights from my 530 photos I took. 

Solid wall of fog on our drive to the pickup location

Short-Eared Owl on roadside

L to R: Myself, Jen, and Neal (both from Canyonlands NP)
The weather cleared up just long enough for us to get out of Quartz Creek on Friday and we headed northwest for the hour and a half ride to Wales.

The archaeology camp
Unfortunately, the north coast was totally fogged in with high winds -- impossible to land in -- so we had to turn around partway to Wales and follow our contingency plan, which was to camp with a team of archaeologists stationed on a beach just south of Ikpek Lagoon.
The archaeologists were apparently out in the field when we landed on the beach, so we spent most of the afternoon walking around and taking photos, video, and sound recordings. It was really hard to know what exactly we should be doing, since our backup plan wasn't exactly clear; now that we weren't interviewing the Inupiat elder in Wales, we had to come up with some other way to make our time in the field worthwhile.

Hoof prints in the mud

Roseroot
Not long after we arrived, a second bush plane landed and dropped off a couple more archaeologists. (As a side note, just as they landed a whale surfaced briefly out in the sea! My first whale!) The new arrivals told us we could set up camp anywhere and we were welcome to share their cooking area. After that, we spent the rest of the day setting up and taking more photos.
Jen and Neal recording the bush plane

Unidentified wildflower

Gorgeous colors

Whale vertebra
That night, we had our oh-so-delicious dried backpacker dinners in the kitchen tent. After washing out my mess kit in the freezing cold ocean I decided to huddle in my tent for the rest of the evening (also by then the weather had gotten really bad with strong gusts and fog threatening to blow over my damp little one-man tent).

I had planned on doing some reading and writing that night, but I was so cold I fell dead asleep still bundled up in my jacket, gloves, hat, and two layers of pants with all my backpacks and camera equipment piled on top of me. I woke up groggily in the middle of the night with the sun glaring into my tent, feeling as if I'd gone into hibernation. It was only 1am. I debated changing into more comfortable clothes, but the icy wind beating through my thin tent walls begged otherwise.

I woke up again briefly a few hours later before falling back to sleep and having a very random dream that I was directing a children's play in Cuba. It was in the middle of this dream that I sat bolt upright at the sound of my name. "Andrea? We're getting ready to go in 20-30 minutes," said Jen gently from outside.

With a steady stream of curses flowing under my foggy breath for sleeping in, I scrambled up, grabbed my gear and to the kitchen tent I trudged with numb feet and my eyes still feeling like they were half-closed or crossed. The archaeologists were already packing up to head to their site.
There was no time to worry about how god-awful cold I felt and the fact that I had no feeling in my feet as we followed them out for their morning routine. Fortunately, the clouds were beginning to burn off and the sun was peeking through the gloom.

Morning sunlight

Archaeologists surveying
The archaeologists had agreed to let us follow and interview them for the morning. They showed us some of the sites they were surveying, which were small, grass-covered dwellings dating from about 800 years ago to the present (people used and reused the same houses for hundreds of years).

Whale mandible that once stood upright as a marker
Unfortunately I can't give too much information since their work is still unpublished, but basically their current work is focused on what sites are still preserved along the beach, and how erosion is affecting them.

Small, recently found blade attachment artifact 

Seward Peninsula pottery

The driftwood wind block we built for my tent
 By noon the sky was devoid of all clouds, the wind had died down somewhat, and the temperature was beginning to warm up.
camp
After breaking down camp, we spent our remaining couple hours taking more photos and footage. One of the most interesting things we found were a set of fresh bear tracks about 70m from our camp that hadn't been there the day before.

Fresh bear forepaw 
Around 3pm our plane arrived, and we got to work making the required check-in calls on the satellite phone and loading our gear.
Our ride
I was on the phone going through the go/no-go procedure with the Fairbanks flight manager when a dark mass appeared through the heat mirage down the beach. "There's a bunch of reindeer down there," said our pilot casually. I quickly finished up the call and tossed the phone to Jen so I could go grab my camera.

Reindeer herd
As they came closer, we realized there was not 100 or even 200 animals, but probably close to 300 head of reindeer in the herd, lumbering along in a dense pack and making weird mooing/grunting noises.

They took over the entire beach



The herd, with the Russian island in the background

The herd came almost up to our plane but then chickened out and ran away a few yards, before coming back to check us out and running away again. They did this a couple times, and then eventually they all turned around and headed back to the direction from which they originally came.

With our beach runway finally clear, we were able to take off and take the two hour flight to Kotzebue as planned. The weather was perfect and we made it back just in time. The pilot even gave me a ride to the Alaskan Air terminal so I could check in for my commercial flight back to Nome.

And now here I am a day later, packed up for a week in the backcountry.  This job sure isn't easy, dealing with weather, logistics, your own physical limitations, working with various people, etc. But the payoff in experience is more than worth it.

Hopefully back by Friday night!