Lazy Days at Coal Creek and on Assignment at Washington Creek

Before heading off to our latest stint, I had a few days to catch some rest at Coal Creek Camp. One of the boaters that I mentioned in the previous post told me that he was up at 2am and saw a wonderful "sunset". I decided I would make the effort, and boy was it worth it. The sky and river seemed to be aflame. An absolutely tremendous scene.

Rachel and I decided to check out the massive Coal Creek Dredge just over a mile upstream from Slaven's Roadhouse. The dredge was most recently active in the 1970's, but has been around for almost 100 years.

You are free to walk around inside. All the shelves are still full of supplies, and it seems as if you could just flick a switch and get the whole thing started again. Randy, a very helpful and friendly ranger, who was working at the camp, stopped by and gave us a tour, explaining how the gigantic machine actually worked to pull out thousands of pounds of gold and silver.

I struggle to maintain control of the machine.

In the afternoons when the temperature crept to its highest point of the day, I found the silty waters of the Yukon refreshing.

My last day at Coal Creek I meandered down an old mining road and ended up on an unofficial birding trip. Above, violet-blue swallows swoop, dive and chase each other around like crazy. When they sat still (which was not often) you could snatch a glimpse of their emerald backs shimmering in the sunlight.

The hillsides came alive with the wind. The tree above, Latin name Populus tremuloides, known as Quaking Aspens, have leaves attached to the branches by flat petioles which allow the leaves to quickly flutter in the wind. I was told the "tremul" portion of the Latin name refers to this "trembling" movement.

This massive bird glided smoothly overhead. I spent a lot of time with a bird book back at the roadhouse attempting to deduce what species it could be. Alas, no bird in the book perfectly matched the coloration and demarcations of this individual, and I decided that it seemed most similar to a rough-legged hawk.

This bird alighted on a nearby branch. However my basic ornithological knowledge stops at robin, eagle, and crow...so I do not know what bird this is. Feel free to let me know!

The rest of the crew arrived from Fairbanks on Monday morning and we began the helicopter shuttling process to get both teams' personnel and gear to their respective locations. As always, we had a good laugh at the sight of Fleur in an XXL flightsuit.

An old-school edit of a landscape we flew over on the way to our work site.

Well, this picture about sums up the past ten days. Mosquitoes 24/7. It was a bummer as the location was pretty, and despite a few rough weather days and some grueling hiking, the trip could have been awesome if these guys hadn't been around. Swarms of thousands followed us from the instant we left our tents in the morning to the moment we jumped back in at night. The photo above was taken the second night. I kept killing them by the hundreds and by the end of the stint, an estimated 4,000 had accumulated between the rain fly and screen roof of my tent.

These fellas don't seem to mind some DEET.

Apart from the mosquitoes the trip was excellent. Our campsite was on a gravel bar in a big bend in Washington Creek. Thousands of moose prints were in the immediate area, and on two separate occasions we awoke to a massive animal crashing through camp.

The first day of work, we crossed the stream right next to camp, scaled the steep bank and were greeted with a wonderful sight...blueberries! As I was to quickly find out, this was no isolated patch of berries. Everywhere we hiked there were berries by the hundreds. In some locations small areas of land appeared blue due to their density and size. And, they were delicious.

I collected a few handfuls on the way back from our last plot one night and we dined on them for dessert. The bright orange berries you see are one of my personal highlights from the trip. They are called cloudberries. I had never heard of them before, and I don't know how this was possible. They grow individually making it hard to collect multitudes easily, but they taste like a mango citrus smoothie...absolutely delectable.

Can't forget the raspberries! These were growing just feet from our tent, and were also perfectly ripe and tasty.

Who says you can't eat well in the Alaskan wilderness?! Above, one of the dinners I prepared for the team. On the menu for the night, penne alfredo with sundried tomatoes and peppered salami.

This photo is a fairly good representation of the hiking we faced each day. Either we were bushwhacking through extremely thick stands of spruce and birch, or we were crossing vast fields of tussocks. Now, tussock hiking was a new experience for me. Certain grasses and shrubs grow on top of what is called permafrost (soil that is inundated with water and frozen year-round), and these plants grow on top of themselves to create endless landscapes of these tussocks. They are often as tall as 3 feet, and hiking among them is hellacious. With every step you struggle to balance, we were falling left and right, and I am sure our heavy packs weren't helping at all.

Here I am, a little delirious after a 13 hour work day filled with rain and mosquitoes. Apparently these mosquitoes don't mind heavy rain or sweltering heat as I have been told are their kryptonite.

Cool mist flowing through the valley one early morning.

The only haven from mosquitoes (apart from sleeping at night after slaughtering all the ones that managed to get into your tent) was by taking a nice, cool swim in the stream near camp. The water was perfect, and you really didn't want to come out knowing what was waiting for you on shore.

Waiting for our ride out. Top Gun style.

A view from the helicopter as we rise straight upwards from our campsite.

On the way back to the Coal Creek airstrip we flew over the Charley River which is both part of the preserve's name, and the location where the other crew was stationed.

A little blurry due to my last second attempt to snap the photo, but you can see a big ol' moose hanging out in a boggy area we flew over.

No other feeling like being in a helicopter flying low over the trees.

At Coal Creek, we unloaded all of our gear and then began the final leg of our trip back to Fairbanks. And for Rachel and I, our first time out of the preserve in six weeks.

The plane ride was equally as enjoyable. From Coal Creek, we had to fly over much of the park. The views of the Yukon River and surrounding mountain landscapes were humbling.

Ridges, peaks, valleys, and streams galore. We even spotted caribou and a grizzly. I was continually impressed with the sheer vastness of untouched land.

Everyone loves a good rainbow.

Large swaths of sphagnum moss splash some striking red coloration across the landscape.

Clearly visible from above (and annoyingly hard to find when on the ground), paths worn into the slopes by animals create natural highways. We were always pleased to find a good moose path through the tundra. Too bad they never seem to go exactly where we needed to!

 Curtis, our pilot, cruised just below the fairly low clouds. Here and there the majestic mountains disappeared above us.

Woodchopper Creek & an Island in the Sky

The last ten days were spent right in the heart of the Yukon Charley Rivers National Preserve. Instead of separating out into two crews of three members each, as usual, all six of us worked together during this stint as there was a high concentration of vegetation plots to be studied in one area. Launching out of a place called Slaven's Roadhouse, we boated several miles downstream to setup camp for the following 10 days.

Set along the banks of the Yukon, Slaven's Roadhouse was built in the early 1900's as a place where miners working at Coal Creek Camp could land their boats, offload/onload their goods, or stay for the night. I read that over 93,000 ounces of gold were taken from the Coal Creek drainage, at a current rate of ~$1,500 per ounce it means hundreds of millions. Now, the building functions as a rustic public use cabin. Anyone boating the Yukon can stop and stay for free at the roadhouse...meals, however, are no longer included.

The interior of the building is still much as it was almost 100 years ago. Everything is wood, and the back portion of the building was built using siding taken from the abandoned Fort Egbert in Eagle. As insulation, there are still countless animal pelts crammed between planks of wood.

A view of the Yukon from Slaven's.

The team leaders (Fleur, Eric, and Carl), who had gone back to Fairbanks for their time off, boated the 60 or so miles upstream from Circle and landed at Slaven's to pick us up. Boating on the Yukon was out of this world. Lush ridges, mountains, and bluffs rose high above the massive waterway in every direction. The river is so large that at some points the main channel is over a mile wide, and in certain places rocky bluffs dive straight into the river over 100 feet deep.

We found that the best place to establish a campsite was actually on a gravel bar in the middle of the river. Innumerable islands are scattered throughout the Yukon; many are merely temporary sand bars which appear and disappear with the rising and falling water level; others, are mile long islands with flora as old and prominent as the forested banks across the water. The majority of photos from this trip were taken on the island due to the particular harshness of our work environment. The bluffs surrounding Woodchopper Creek, where our work was centered, had recently (2007) burnt in a large wildfire and was now composed of the most intensely thick barrage of fallen trees, bent saplings, thick brush, thorny undergrowth, and swarms of mosquitoes, that bringing my new camera along didn't seem like such a good idea. I will explain more about our actual work in a minute.

After a extraordinarily difficult day of work (15 hours in the field) I took a "bath" in the silty waters of the Yukon. The water temperature was surprisingly tolerable, however the swift current (8-10 mph) made it difficult to stay in for too long. When I placed my head underwater all I could here was a loud hissing sound emanating from all of the silt passing over rocks on the river bottom, it was rather eerie.

From our haven in the middle of the river (mosquitoes were easily blown away by the river breezes) we basked in the amazing display of clouds and sun each night and morning. The picture above was our version of 4th of July fireworks. Certainly no need for a light as even when taking a bathroom break at 2 in the morning it could be mistaken for 5 or 6 in the evening.

A large bull moose busy munching away on some willows across the waterway.

One of my personal favorites, just another evening back at camp.

When our team leader judged that some of the plots on Woodchopper bluff were too dangerous/difficult to access with all of our gear, we spent a few days working on auxilary plots farther downstream. I decided to bring my camera out one of those days and was glad I did. Above, a peregrine falcon (once endangered) swooped in and kept a watchful eye over us as we worked.

Here I am during our lunch break one day. It might be nice to explain exactly what we are actually doing. For each ten day stint, there is a grid composed of 25 plots which is our goal to complete. The plots form a square, and are 500 meters away from each other, so the entire grid is fairly large at 2.5 kilometers per side. At each plot we do a number of different botanical studies (soil monitoring, vegetation cover survey, species composition, plot photographs, tree & sapling mapping and measurements, tree coring, and many more). With three people working quickly it still takes at least 3 hours to complete each plot, and then more time to pack up all of our gear and navigate (often the hardest part) to our next plot. Often, in order to stay on track to finish all 25 plots in our allotted time we leave at 8am and don't return to camp until after 9 or 10pm. The data we are collecting/establishing is the beginning of a botanical study which will provide scientists with data from long periods of time as the plots we setup will be revisited every 5 years.

View from our lunch spot west down the Yukon.

Botany!

Along the silt-laden bank where we tied up our boat there was a series of moose tracks...there were also some wolf tracks. I was shocked at the size of the paw prints formed by this canid. As you can see, his/her paws were as large as my hand. Unfortunately I was not lucky enough to get to see the animal that left these behind.

Upon our return from the wilderness the other intern and I prepared for a relaxing few days off at Coal Creek Camp where we had enjoyed our stay during our previous break. However, a large group of artists arrived for a painting class, and regardless of our 5 month old reservations, we were booted out. Rachel (my fellow intern) and I moved all of our gear down to Slaven's Roadhouse but were told that floaters were scheduled to come through so we couldn't stay there either. In the end, we hauled our gear up a path near Slaven's to the last remaining residence within ~75 miles. The small public use cabin fits our needs fine, just lacks some of the "amenities" found in Coal Creek Camp, such as a working stove, warm shower and electricity. Back at Coal Creek Camp it is fun to view the beautiful works of art being produced left and right by the painters.

The first group of floaters to arrive at the roadhouse were three individuals (a couple from Fairbanks, and a friend from Austria) in these amazing watercraft. Although it looks (and apparently functions) like a normal canoe, the "pakboat" above is actually constructed of what are more or less sturdy tent poles holding a waterproof fabric extra-taught. They told us they fold down to the size of a backpack, making it easy to fly with. They had started in Eagle, and through floating a hodge-podge of rivers, were ending their epic voyage at the Bering Sea, with a total of over 1,000 miles of boating. Probably all in their sixties, the trio told us they had been doing a long trip such as this every other year since 1964.

Here they are loading back up to depart this morning. I was astounded by their generosity. They invited Rachel and I to both their dinner and breakfast, feeding us some of the freshest and tastiest food we had eaten in weeks (pancakes, fried potatoes, beans, corn, eggs, chicken, ham). The one man, Dick, even left us moose jerky he had made. He told us everything they ate (for the most part) comes from their garden, or his hunting. They also left us some potatoes which I didn't feel guilty taking as they said on a bad year they come away with 600-700lbs of potatoes.

It would get dark in the public use cabin even as the light still beamed outside. For the first time I found myself actually reading by the light of an oil-lamp. My grandmother sent me off with this book, a wonderful read.