Week 4: Float Plane, Sound Stations, and the EVC

Mountain Azalea.

Sunrise: 3:51am
Sunset: 11:57pm

Week 4 was filled with lots of new opportunities and new adventures, which is a nice change from my previous weeks!

HOG3 site.  :)

Monday and Tuesday were spent re-testing my two sound stations to make sure they were field-ready.  Which was a good thing, since I discovered some things that weren't working!  But bugs were fixed and I was mostly ready!

Wednesday I had Operational Leadership Training (OLT) in the afternoon, so all of Wed morning was spent gathering all my field supplied to be ready to deploy my 2 sound stations (HOG3 and IGL1), do maintenance on SAN3, and set up 3 camera traps at these locations.  It wasn't a whole lot to do, really, but it sure took awhile!  I then went to OLT and hoped I was ready for my field day on Thursday!

Thursday started early (about 6:45am).  I did maintenance on SAN3 first.  The station was still running, which was a relief!  I switched out the thumb drive and the flash card, and went back to the vehicle with my fresh set of data.  :D  Set up my camera on the road to catch vehicle types, and went on my way.

Flying over Northern Denali

IGL1 was my next stop.  It's about 37 miles into the road and in a beautiful location!  Right on the outskirts of Igloo Canyon. :)  Vegetation wasn't really still growing at this point, but there were some new flowers I was able to take pictures of!  I had some problems with the sound quality at this station, but hopefully we'll still get some good data!

I headed back east towards the entrance of the park where I set up my site at Hogan Creek.  This was a gorgeous flat tundra area with lots of game trails.  I have my fingers crossed that we are able to catch some Caribou tendons clicking at this station.  :)

In the float plane

Thursday ending as successful as I can tell.  We'll find out in 2 weeks when I move stations and retrieve data!

Friday I got to fly!  I've been in contact with an NPS Ecologist who does some wood frog monitoring.  I'm doing some literature research for her and in return, I got to volunteer with setting up one of the SM2s for wood frog monitoring and assist with some water quality work.  All involving flying to different lakes via float plane.  Beyond stoked.  It was a really amazing and awesome opportunity.  and now I can say I flew in Alaska!  Such a tiny plane!

Denali poking out a little bit

Friday was my first day riding the bus for work to perform wildlife observations.  It was also the furthest I had been into the park - Eielson Visitor Center (EVC)!  the EVC is at about mile 66.  And has one of the best views of Denali.... if the mountain isn't engulfed with clouds!  Which is it is about 80% of the time.  I didn't see much of Denali this day, which is fine.  I'll be riding the bus like this about once a week, so I'll get plenty of opportunities!

We did see lots of wildlife, which was great.  The day had started rainy and I was tired, so I didn't expect much, but it turned out great.  :)

All in all it was a great week with lots of great pictures!  This are finally starting to green up this week, but still quite quite slowly!