Alaskan Wilderness
Day 2: July 6th
The morning is foggy and a little rainy as we set about assembling the Ally Pack canoes. It takes the whole team to do this. The canoes consist of a waterproof fabric stretched tightly around a metal pole frame, and there’s no room for mistakes as they each need to carry supplies for ten days and a two person crew. When our three canoes are successfully assembled, the team hikes to one of the taller ridges. Looking out across the tundra you can see for miles. It is very hard to adequately describe the vastness of a land with no standing trees. But it is a land brimming full of life, and you only have to look at your feet to see a vast variety of different plants: arctic poppies, lupine, campion, willows, sandwort, cottongrass, louseworts, buckwheat, wintergreen, heather, dryas, and several varieties of saxifrages, and even more. The animals we encountered by our first camp included a ground squirrel, swans, plovers, dowitcher, gulls, jaegers, loons, longspur, and mosquitoes, plenty of mosquitoes. We watch a ground squirrel gather plant material in her mouth and take it back to her den. Tracks of caribou are everywhere.
Day 2: July 6th
The morning is foggy and a little rainy as we set about assembling the Ally Pack canoes. It takes the whole team to do this. The canoes consist of a waterproof fabric stretched tightly around a metal pole frame, and there’s no room for mistakes as they each need to carry supplies for ten days and a two person crew. When our three canoes are successfully assembled, the team hikes to one of the taller ridges. Looking out across the tundra you can see for miles. It is very hard to adequately describe the vastness of a land with no standing trees. But it is a land brimming full of life, and you only have to look at your feet to see a vast variety of different plants: arctic poppies, lupine, campion, willows, sandwort, cottongrass, louseworts, buckwheat, wintergreen, heather, dryas, and several varieties of saxifrages, and even more. The animals we encountered by our first camp included a ground squirrel, swans, plovers, dowitcher, gulls, jaegers, loons, longspur, and mosquitoes, plenty of mosquitoes. We watch a ground squirrel gather plant material in her mouth and take it back to her den. Tracks of caribou are everywhere.
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