Kaitlin, Nick and Dr. Wiles.
GIRDWOOD, ALASKA – The College of Wooster Tree Ring team set off for Columbia Bay Glacier this past wednesday. After arriving in Anchorage with no troubles we drove down to Girdwood to hopefully catch a helicopter with a company called Alpine Air. Unfortunately for us the Alaskan weather had some other plans in mind. Due to a storm in the Prince Williams Sound area the rain and high winds made it impossible to fly to the glacier and forced us to be grounded in Girdwood. Thanks to the hospitallity of USGS glaciologist Shad O’Neel the College of Wooster Tree Ring team was able to stay in a condo owned by his family at the base of the local ski resort in town. The group is currently on standby waiting for any break in the weather to fly to Columbia Glacier.
Devils Club along the trail in Girdwood.
The storm may have prevented us from traveling to Columbia via helicopter but it did not slow us down from collecting samples. Yesterday the group hiked up in the surrounding trails around Girdwood testing out our rain gear, exploring the beautiful Alaskan area and most importantly collecting some living tree ring samples. The group plans to travel to the intertidal later today to collect some samples from the 1964 Great Alaskan Earthquake.
Kaitlin extracting a core sample from a Mountain Hemlock in Girdwood.
Girdwood, Alaska.
Glad you’re making the best of it, Team Alaska 2014b. Happy to see no bears in your photos.
Devil’s Club is arguably worse than bears…
Hadn’t heard of Devil’s Club before, Steph. “The spines are found along the upper and lower surfaces of veins of its leaves as well as the stems.” Yikes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devils_club