Guest Blogger: Abby VanLeuven

June 26^th: Marble Mountain

Our arrival at the southern end of Marble Mountain begun with the sighting of 3 orcas that as Dr. Wiles explained were a sign of good luck. Thus began the assent into the bug-infested shrubbery complete with thickets of devils club and raspberry bushes. We were trying to climb to 2000 ft. elevation set up camp and then climb 400 more ft., in order to reach the Mountain Hemlocks that we were going to core. We were trying to core these particular hemlocks -because they are part of a Nunatak forest. A nunatak forest is an island of forest that survived the ice sheet moving over the area because of its high elevation. These trees would have been great for my thesis because of their age and high elevation.

About an hour into our hike the sun was bearing down on us, it was 85 degrees out and we were out of water with no streams or snow melt in sight. As the elevation and incline rose so did our levels of dehydration, frustration and exhaustion and around hour 5 we made the executive decision to turn around. Although it was pretty disappointing not to be able to reach the trees we ultimately made the right decision because of the lack of snow melt. Two hours later after sliding, stumbling, and falling down the mountain all while dreaming about water we heard the sound of the river and stumbled into it chugging as much as we could.

It was quite the adventure and although we looked it in the eye, Marble Mountain still holds its mysteries.

Marble Mountain is the peak on the far left.

Andy and Dr. Wiles trying to climb up the limestone rock face with 30 pound backpacks (our only break from dense Devils club and other shrubbery).

Distressed after descending Marble Mountain (10PM).

June 28th-30th: days after Marble Mountain

We were rescued from Marble a day early and decided to take some cores from excursion ridge. We cored Western Hemlock, Mountain Hemlock and lots of Shore Pine. Although Shore Pines can sometimes be hard to correlate well, they have recently been in decline for a variety of biotic reasons and we are going to see if there is any climate signal that can be related to their stress.

The first day back (28th) we went up to Yellowleg trail, a lower site on excursion ridge, and started coring Western Hemlock and some Shore Pine. The lower elevation part of the trail started out dominantly a Western Hemlock forest opening up to more Mountain Hemlock and then ending with a bog full of Shore Pine. At the end of the day we were hiking along the road and saw a quartz vein that had been folded ductilely, which was really cool to see after learning about in structure.

View at the base of the Yellowlegs trail overlooking Bartlett cove bay and Pleasant Island.

Western Hemlock

Quartz Vein.

Our next two days we started coring more Shore Pines in the valley below Excursion Ridge and finished coring the Yellowlegs Trail. While coring the trees in the valley we encountered our first rainy day but we survived. These Shore Pines are younger than the ones we sampled the day before but hopefully they will still yield valuable data.

Bog at the top of the Yellowlegs trail.

Coring a Shore Pine at the Yellowlegs trail bog.

To end our time in Gustavus we were invited by the foresters to aid them in their rivalry softball game against the lodge. We were acting as cheerleaders to the game, until the 5th inning where, in only 2 innings Andy got a run, Jesse made a diving catch at shortstop, and then Andy, as catcher, proceeded to drop the throw to home plate that would have prevented the lodge from winning. We met some great people and were sad to leave but at the end of the game with Andy’s huge mistake it was probably for the best that we were leaving on the ferry the next day.

On Saturday we took the ferry back to Juneau and there our adventure ended with a flight back to the lower 48 the next morning. We looked it in the eye and what an adventure Alaska has been.

Team Alaska on a rainy day at the gateway to Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.

Team Alaska on a sunny day riding the ferry from Gustavus to Juneau.

Guest Blogger: Andy Nash

Gustavus, AK. June 25, 2013 – As our research trip to Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve winds down we have some time to reconnect with the world and share some stories from our trip. The first half of our trip in the park was spent in Wachusett Inlet sampling logs and stumps that were killed during the advance of glaciers. Our group of Dr. Wiles, Jesse Wiles, Abby Vanlueven, and myself set up camp on June 19^th on the south side of the inlet as close to Carroll Glacier as we could get. Our camp was next to an alluvial fan, which had a stream fed by snow melt running through it. This camp made the perfect home for our 5 day stay. We were lucky to get great weather our entire stay in Wachusett Inlet. The temperature ranged from 70-80° F and it only rained once at night while we were in Wachusett.

Our base map with daily tracks that show everywhere we hiked

Day 1

After camp was set up on day one the group kayaked and took a hike Northwest of the inlet and onto moraines formed recently by Carroll Glacier. This served as a way for us to get acclimated to the area and also to scout out potential sites for further investigation. On this hike we saw plenty of bear sign and moose activity but unfortunately we didn’t see either of the animals during our stay in Wachusett.

Our group: Abby Vanlueven ’14, Andy Nash ’14, Jesse Wiles (left to right) standing on Carroll Glacier’s ice-cored moraines

Day 2

On day two we sampled logs on the outwash plain to the north of Wachusett Inlet. This outwash comes from Cushing and Burroughs Glacier which are located north of Wachusett and Carroll Glacier. I described the stratigraphy of this valley cut by outwash as well as collecting core samples from detridal logs. As we hiked around this outwash plane we came across some birds that were not pleased with how close we were to their nests. They were relentless in protecting their eggs, swooping in from all angles and diving right at our heads. They only stopped when we retreated back to our kayaks. We finished off our day by running up two valleys on either side of the inlet to see if the river had eroded away any sub-fossil wood.

The valley north of Wachusett Inlet which was once the site of an ice dammed lake (1960s) and is now being cut down by glacial outwash streams

Coring a log in the valley

Our group’s typical reaction to bird attacks

Day 3

Day three of our Wachusett Inlet adventure might be the most painful day for me to recount. I don’t think I will ever forget June 21, 2013. We didn’t realize until after that our longest day also coincided with the summer solstice. One this day we hiked from Wachusett Inlet to Queen Inlet by crossing over the glacial moraines we hiked up on day one. What was different on this day was the discovery that some of these glacial features had remnant ice under their slopes. This made for some interesting scrambles up slippery sand covered ice slopes, lots of frustration, and assistance from the ice ax. We estimated that after 6 hours and about 9 miles of tough hiking, we finally reached Queen Inlet. The outwash plane was massive, about 1 mile wide and 2 miles long. For all of that work we were rewarded with cores from 4 samples. Luckily the great views and feeling of invincibility we got after completing that hike overcame the soreness and fatigue when we woke up the next day.

One of the two naps we took in Queen Inlet

Searching for logs to sample

Day 4

After our expedition the previous day we all agreed that day four would be a recovery day. We took a little paddle down the inlet to core logs brought down to alluvial fans by streams much like the one we camped at. Today ended up being our most productive day. In total we sampled over 25 trees and took more than 40 cores. We called it an early day and went back to camp to play some cards which proved difficult with the wind and the bugs.

Abby and I extracting cores from a hemlock log

Day 5

Our final full day in Wachusett Inlet was dedicating to cover the last bit of ground that we hadn’t covered in the previous four days. We hiked back up to the moraines but turned north away from Queen Inlet (Thankfully). Our attempt was to go back to the outwash plain from day two and sample from the western side which was blocked off by a river. We soon learned that out effort were all for not as another outwash river came off of Carroll Glacier creating a wedge of inaccessible land between the two rivers. This was disappointing because I had hoped to describe the stratigraphy of this valley wall which was exposed a little bit better than the other side.

Nobody was safe from the mud on our last day. Abby had a tough time not getting stuck

We decided that the only motto that was appropriate for our trip to Wachusett Inlet was, “We looked it in the eye.” We covered every area at the head of Wachusett Inlet where sub-fossil logs could have been found. Our adventure in Wachusett might have come to an end but we still have more to report on as we spend some time on Marble Mountain and in Gustavus with plans to core living trees now. Be sure to watch for the next post from Abby about our further travels in Alaska.