{"id":1731,"date":"2011-07-19T16:37:05","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T23:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ups.edu\/studentlife\/?p=1731"},"modified":"2011-07-19T16:37:05","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T23:37:05","slug":"research-out-of-a-backpack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studentlife\/2011\/07\/19\/research-out-of-a-backpack\/","title":{"rendered":"Research out of a backpack."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ice worms in Paradise.<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u2019m doing now.<\/p>\n

Some days aren\u2019t as fun as others\u2026 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\u2026<\/p>\n

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Fox!<\/p><\/div>\n

We heard and saw lots of small rockfalls from\u00a0the Nisqually Cleaver, but\u00a0nothing quite as crazy as the\u00a0ones a few days before our\u00a0trip.\u00a0Somebody captured one of the series of multiple\u00a0rockfalls on\u00a0video,\u00a0you can see it here: http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fzRhLs5GkYs<\/a>.\u00a0Kristen got to go up to see Camp Muir, but I stayed down to run transects. Later on we had a visitor come\u00a0straight through our site. We were surprised, because foxes aren\u2019t normally seen up this high!<\/p>\n

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Remember that trip to Oregon that I kept complaining about because it was postponed multiple times? Well, we finally got to go!! Karina wasn\u2019t collecting bacteria on this trip, but she came anyway to keep me company. Our goal was to collect on Broken Top\u2019s Bend Glacier and South Sister\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019t find any worms. So, we made dinner, and checked again at 8:30. Still no luck.<\/p>\n

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Home for the night.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Collecting worms on the Prouty Glacier<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u00a0were pretty sparse. Karina had the great idea to stay at the Prouty Glacier an extra day in order to collect ecological data.<\/p>\n

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Ahhhhh...<\/p><\/div>\n

The next morning we went out for a fun exploratory hike. Our favorite discovery was a\u00a0windbreak 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\u2019-9,000\u2019 on the Prouty Glacier and only found four worms. But there was a rainbow when we got back to our campsite!<\/p>\n

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Broken Top, Mt. Washington, and Mt. Jefferson at sunset<\/p><\/div>\n

Our third\u00a0day we hiked back to the Bend Glacier to double-check\u00a0that\u00a0there weren\u2019t any worms there. We\u00a0scoured the glacier from\u00a03:30-4:30PM, 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)\u00a0in the\u00a0Cascade Range! We camped that night at the top of the rim to avoid\u00a0mosquitoes 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.<\/p>\n

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Sunrise over Central OR. <\/p><\/div>\n

We had to hike out at 5AM the next morning to make it back to\u00a0Tacoma 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.<\/p>\n

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!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019m … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rachael-mallon-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/studentlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}