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.
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