View this on my website

Previous Post: 2026-08-17 to 2026-08-28 - Final Overnight Fieldwork! The Wind Strikes Again! Next Post: WIP

Change of Plans Hike

Originally, we were aiming to walk out to the newly open (to pedestrians and bikes) Pretty Rocks Bridge, but the bears have been active recently, and said activity meant the route was closed.

Sidenote: the bears are kinda bullies, wolves will take down a caribou or other large animal, then the bears will just move in and chase them off the carcass after letting the wolves do the dirty work. This makes for an interesting dynamic between our apex predators (I assume they don't love running into each other).

Anyways, due to the bear closure, we backtracked a bit and chose a different area to hike. We went up a drainage, saw some cool rocks, got thoroughly rained on, and met the sickest lil' squad of gnar-shredding juvenile Harlequin ducks.

Caribou on the bus ride out! They've started to shed their velvet (protective, nutrient-delivering layer) off the antlers now that they've finished growing, which gives them this bloody, kinda spooky look.

Fall colors were starting to change - and they've rapidly continued!

Looking up the drainage, right around when we saw our duck friends on their quest!

We got to see the ducks swimming up the steep, cascading creek. Then, we saw them rip downstream, whitewater rafting style! We might've accidentally spooked them a little, but there aren't many alternative routes to give them space in a steep-walled drainage. Check out the videos here - the first one is them going up, the second is them going down.

Geology Hike in the Snow!

I made the last minute decision to join for a hike led by our park geologists. It was raining and just above freezing at park headquarters, but we made the call to go ahead with the hike and experienced beautiful fresh snow (snow and below freezing >>> rain and just above freezing) once we got a bit further up the road.

I've never frolicked in inches of fresh snow in August before (this was August 31st), so that was a fun new experience! We did have a dusting of snow higher up in July as well (although no frolicking was done in that snowfall), so I think this year will mark my first time seeing snow all of the summer months! Question for the class - if it could snow at any point of the year, where do you draw the line between the last snow of spring and the first snow of fall?

Snow snow snow!

There's something magical about the first proper snow of the season. Normally I've experienced it as some flurries falling while I'm sitting in the office or at home and still gotten excited, so it was extra majestic to get out there and properly traipse through some snow in the mountains!

Some colors are changing along the banks of the Teklanika River, and the ridgeline is returning to its snowy state.

Looking up through some snowy brush and slopes at the start of the hike!

We reached our highpoint and got a super cool view of the braids of the Teklanika River (the same river from my first pic looking across from ground level).

The sun decided to pop out briefly in the afternoon, so we saw some glorious views of freshly snowcapped peaks on the way down! It was interesting to see how rapidly our inch or two of snow at lower elevations melted out.

I found the combination of colors in this image really satisfying. I was inspired to take the picture after seeing the red fireweed with snow on it. The changing colors of flora combine with the crisp white of new snow to create a beautiful amalgamation of seasons that only exists ephemerally.

Less poetically, I thought that these weird little bits of snow falling off the roof of the outhouses looked kinda like toilet paper!

As you can see from these pics, the snow isn't quite sticking around at lower elevations. But the snowline is surely going to be creeping down.

Geology stuff!

Of course, part of the point of the hike was also to learn some about the park's geology. Among various tidbits, we learned that rhyolite (which I chronically mispronounce for some reason) is more incompetent (that's the technical term for weaker!) than basalt. This directly informed construction decisions around the bridge we were trying to see the other day. One side is built on firmer basalt, but the other side is built on less competent rhyolite. To shore up the weaker side, they're using thermosyphons that help keep the permafrost firm and frozen. That's a pretty cool (ha) piece of engineering!

Another fun geology item we saw was the sand gauge! It's a little plastic card to help field ID rocks that has different types of material glued onto it. I also learned that we draw nice boxes to classify rocks and give them distinct names, but in reality there's a continuum of their chemical composition that different types of rock could fall along. You can get different flavors of diorite that may be closer to a granite or a gabbro.

The end of the season is coming!

The snow has made an appearance! Temps are getting cooler, colors are changing, and folks are starting to wrap their seasons up. It feels like summer is well on its way out up in Alaska, which is an interesting juxtaposition against the warmth that we still have back down in the lower 48. Everything is condensed down into a rapid-fire few months of summer up in the land of the midnight sun!

So what's next for me?!

I have an exciting personal update this week as well. I received an offer to join as an intern (it's kinda fun to be an intern again haha) doing interpretive (not translating language, but interpreting the history and ecology) and visitor services work at Mount Rainier National Park for the fall, so I'll be living in Longmire for at least 3 months from October through the end of the year and chatting lots with park visitors!