By Talia Loiter of the University of Vermont
The first two-ish weeks here have absolutely flown by. It seems like the program is about a 3rd of the way over before having even really started. Life in Atlin is pretty sweet. Our base camp is a little cabin that’s rather luxurious for a Round River program (or so we’ve been told). There’s running water and a bathroom, a full kitchen, and a gravel lot where we have all set up our tents with a beautiful view of Atlin Mountain and the surrounding area.
We have finally started to settle into the day-to-day groove here, including learning how to fall asleep in the daylight since we are so far North that the sun never truly sets. Our days consist of classes or lectures in the cabin, nature walks or hikes to ID plants, animals and birds, cooking and cleaning together, working on our natural history journals, and walking into town to explore the waterfront, the few small shops, or for fun town events like the Canada Day parade this past weekend! Aside from those small things, the majority of our time is taken up by field work. So far the project we have been working in the most is ungulate (Stone sheep, mountain goat, and caribou) surveying in the Ruby Mountain region.
Ruby Mountain is about a 40 minute – hour long drive from camp (depending on how many cool things we spot along the way) and is named for the reddish hue of the volcanic rocks that cover the top of the mountain. Fun fact: Ruby was once an active volcano, and there is a large crater at the top! More on that later…
The general way an ungulate survey is conducted is as follows: We arrive at the parking spot near the base of Ruby mtn, then follow GPS coordinates for anywhere from 0.5-1.5 hours. Along the way we stop to look at interesting plants and animal tracks and discuss the best way to reach our survey point. The area is crisscrossed with old mining “roads” that are chunky rock and gravel. The landscape found there can be anything from soft moss and lichen patches to scrub birch groves, to loose and sketchy scree fields (loose rock). As you can imagine, this makes some of our survey points a bit of an expedition to reach! This past week we saw caribou and marmots on our hike to the survey points.
Once we make it to the survey point, we divide the surrounding landscape into sections and spend a half hour silently scanning the landscape with our binoculars for ungulates. The half hour passes very quickly when in such a pretty place. Not every survey results in us seeing something of interest, but no data at all counts as data!
We also took a day to summit Ruby Mountain. The hike started off with bushwhacking through scrub birch, and crossing a few wetter mossy and snow covered patches. We hike single file across areas with lichen in order to minimize our impact. Then we spent the rest of the hike scrambling up slippery scree fields. It was a little scary at times on the sharp ridge lines and with the loose footing, but almost everyone made it all the way to the top and were rewarded with spectacular views. The top of Ruby is an old volcanic crater, and is covered with grass, moss, and wildflowers. There is also a small alpine/snowmelt lake in the crater. After a little more hiking we reached the top of the crater, and the 360 views were more than worth it.
Until next time!