Ice worms in Paradise.
I LOVE MY RESEARCH!!! I keep on thinking that if I go on to do research after I graduate from UPS, it might take some time to get used to doing something a little less exciting as the research I’m doing now.
Some days aren’t as fun as others… as Karina and I found out on one of our trips to the Paradise field site. We experienced 30mph winds along with alternating rain, freezing rain, andhail. The next trip, Karina was gone so I needed to have another buddy to go up to my study site with. Luckily, I got Kristen Delwiche to take a day off from her research and help me. It takes some arm-twisting to get people to go up and see views like this…
Fox!
We heard and saw lots of small rockfalls from the Nisqually Cleaver, but nothing quite as crazy as the ones a few days before our trip. Somebody captured one of the series of multiple rockfalls on video, you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzRhLs5GkYs. Kristen got to go up to see Camp Muir, but I stayed down to run transects. Later on we had a visitor come straight through our site. We were surprised, because foxes aren’t normally seen up this high!
Remember that trip to Oregon that I kept complaining about because it was postponed multiple times? Well, we finally got to go!! Karina wasn’t collecting bacteria on this trip, but she came anyway to keep me company. Our goal was to collect on Broken Top’s Bend Glacier and South Sister’s Prouty Glacier. I think we surprised the rangers at the Sisters, Oregon Ranger Station when we told them our route. Most of the trails are still covered in snow, and lots of the trailheads haven’t been opened yet. Our first day, we hiked along the Tam McArthur Rim from Three Creek Meadow to the Bend Glacier. We hit the Bend Glacier at prime worm time, about 6:30 PM, and traversed the glacier diagonally to see if we could find any worms. Even though the snow was soft, we didn’t find any worms. So, we made dinner, and checked again at 8:30. Still no luck.
Home for the night.
Collecting worms on the Prouty Glacier
We woke up the next day to rain and wind (that the previous night had blown our tent away even with gear in it to weigh it down!!). We realized we were in a cloud, but once we hiked lower, the weather got a little better. Day two took us from the Bend Glacier to the Prouty Glacier. We got to the Prouty (which was also inside a cloud) around 3:30PM and spent an hour collecting worms. It took us quite a while because they were pretty sparse. Karina had the great idea to stay at the Prouty Glacier an extra day in order to collect ecological data.
Ahhhhh...
The next morning we went out for a fun exploratory hike. Our favorite discovery was a windbreak and chairs made from rock that previous hikers had left us. Our seats had a beautiful view of the Central Oregon high desert. That afternoon we hiked from about 8,000’-9,000’ on the Prouty Glacier and only found four worms. But there was a rainbow when we got back to our campsite!
Broken Top, Mt. Washington, and Mt. Jefferson at sunset
Our third day we hiked back to the Bend Glacier to double-check that there weren’t any worms there. We scoured the glacier from 3:30-4:30PM, but still found nothing. We hiked the Tam McArthur Rim back out that evening, and at one point were able to see 10 peaks (Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Washington, Three Fingered Jack, the Three Sisters, Broken Top, and Mt. Bachelor) in the Cascade Range! We camped that night at the top of the rim to avoid mosquitoes at the lake below. Fortunately, the top of the hill gave us the perfect vantage point to watch the sunset over most of the peaks we had seen earlier in the day.
Sunrise over Central OR.
We had to hike out at 5AM the next morning to make it back to Tacoma in time for me to grab my sister and make it to a concert in Seattle. However, the perk to getting up that early was seeing the sunrise and alpine glow on North and Middle Sister.
It was hard for me to not find ice worms on Broken Top, it’s always so exciting to find these little guys poking their heads out of the firn. But that’s what keeps me going back… there’s always more glaciers to explore. Which means we’ll be back in August! YAY!!!