Imagine a game of hide and seek on top of a mountain in Northern British Columbia. This is what replacing temperature loggers is like. This past week we traveled Southeast of the town of Atlin to embark on a 3-day backpacking trip. The Round River group which included Lauren, Sara, Zinnia, Grace, Caleb, Andrew, Meghan, Gabe, and me, hiked 5.5km to a campsite nestled in a valley below two points of research. Our hike began with a river crossing, where we attempted to stay dry, which was ironic as the next few days would be far from dry. We found a nice little spot with an area for a kitchen and our tents. The first night was a little wet as it rained on us just around dinner time, but nothing we couldn’t handle. We made quinoa and lentils and called it an early night as we had a big hike the next day. We woke up in the morning and hiked to the top of a high alpine area where students had been collecting temperature data for the past few years. Round River uses this data as a part of the GLORIA project, which tracks climate change and changes in vegetation over time. This hike was along an exposed ridge and was one of the most beautiful places we been over the semester.
The process is simple; find the temperature loggers, which are small devices buried underneath rocks that track temperature data over a year and download the data onto a computer for research. Probably sounds easy to anyone who hasn’t looked for a temperature logger before. But the catch is, one of them is always nearly impossible to find. It’s like a game of hide and seek with your friends, but one of them goes into the yard and digs a hole in the ground to hide. The first day of temperature loggers at the high alpine site went relatively well, with one of them still being difficult to find.
Although the good part wasn’t until the next day at the low alpine spot. After a night of an intense thunderstorm and a full soak through of all our clothes, we woke up to once again hike a mountain to find temperature loggers. We had a beautiful hike through the fog in which we ran into an old wolf rendezvous point and saw porcupine tracks until we reached the low alpine temperature logger site.
By this point, we had done a few temperature logger searches throughout the semester, and thought we were pros. This was a horrible assumption to make. The first three came quickly after we located the four red dots, which made a rectangle that marked the locations of the loggers. Everything up until then made it seem like it was going to be a quick day trip and we would be back to the tents in no time…until we reached the last logger. We quickly identified the four points that marked the grid in which the temperature logger was placed and started to look. After the first search, we came up with nothing, which wasn’t unusual. Although, spirits started to damper after we looked for 15 minutes then 15 more until we had been looking for over an hour. After becoming slightly frustrated, we took a step back and created a grid to map out the possible locations the temperature logger could be. We searched and searched to no prevail. After almost all the group had given up, one person was left to be the last hope we had: Sara. Sara was on all fours scanning the spot for the hidden temperature logger. With dirt underneath her fingernails and the drive to find the logger, Sara continued. After a total of an hour and a half of searching and a few members on the edge of falling sleep, Sara pulls her hand out from underneath rocks and dirt to reveal the final temperature logger!
The group let out a scream, most likely scaring off any chance of seeing animals, and did a dance as we celebrated this moment. We ended up going back to camp, packing up, and hiking out. We got back to the cabin and had pasta with meat sauce and some cheesy garlic bread as a reward for a tough day.