Health Education: flowers

Descending the Tundra: Day Nine on the Alaska Road Trip

Today we took a disco hike.

No, not a disco like that! Short for “discovery hike,” it’s a Denali National Park thing that's bookable only one day in advance, in person, at the Visitor Center to ensure the hikers have seen the terrain and are still up for it. A ranger takes up to eleven hikers off-trail for the day, always on an original route. Of the two options – “moderate” and “strenuous” – we chose moderate, meaning we would have an elevation change of less than a thousand feet.

As we got dressed this morning, we kept in mind the 90% chance of rain and decided to put our rain-pants and rain-coats on first thing. As we waited for the notorious green school bus to pick us up, we made friends with some other disco-hikers and realized we would need all the layers we’d brought from Seattle: two shirts, leggings, fleece jackets and pants, parkas, hats, mittens, scarves, and rain gear.

By chance, our leader, Ranger Jakara, had planned our hike through the tundra near the center of the park, so we ended up taking the bus for three-and-a-half hours – just eight miles shy of yesterday’s destination of Eielson Visitor Center. Unlike yesterday’s wildlife bonanza, today we saw nothing but streaks of mud on the windowpanes, even though we squeegeed them clean at each rest stop.

Ranger Jakara asked our bus driver, Paul, to let us off at the next gravel turnout to hike up the riverbed. As Paul pulled over, we noticed two other buses on the shoulder.

“Let’s see what they’re looking at,” said Ranger Jak casually.

“Want to make sure there’s no grizzlies?” joked Paul.

“Well, it would be nice…” she replied.

Indeed, a big brown grizzly was nibbling blue berries right off the road!

Wet grizzly!

We decided to drive a little farther down the road before leaving the safety of our bus. Ranger Jak’s safety talk went like this:

“If you are confronted by a bear, DO NOT RUN! They are predators and will instinctively chase. Stand tall, be big and loud, group together. If you are confronted by a moose, RUN! They are not predators, and they just want you out of there. So get out fast!”

Of course, most animal encounters will not be confrontations, but distant, peaceful sightings.

Almost immediately, we spotted four white-butted caribou with short velvety antlers on the ridge, all females or juveniles. I thought they would bolt when they caught sight of us, but they pranced closer with their magical reindeer gait. They seemed to be caught between curiosity and wariness. They would prance closer, then startle themselves at how close they’d gotten, standing alert with pricked ears and nervous shuffling. Then they’d get bold, prance closer, and repeat the process. It was very cute, and a little unsettling, but Ranger Jak said they weren’t dangerous. After a bit they went on their way, as did we.

Ranger Jak explains bear safety.

Our goal was to discover our surroundings and play like children. I found a pile of old bear scat full of grass, the bears’ diet in July. Ranger Jak said fresh scat would be pure berries. Then, another hiker found a pile of berry scat! From then on, we went around the corners yelling, “Hey bear! Hi big bear!” to make ourselves especially obvious. We also encountered a spongy scapula (shoulder blade) from some long-deceased mammal, and a femur (thigh bone) from another.

A spongy scapula.

A tiny snail was living on it.

A femur.

The next treasures we came upon were tracks.

“Do you know how to tell a caribou footprint from a moose?” asked Ranger Jak. The caribou print is C-shaped due to the animals’ flexible, ice-gripping toes, while the moose print is heart-shaped.

The best part about the hike was that we had no trail. Denali prides itself as “the park with no trails,” which isn’t completely true, but the rangers did encourage us to walk anywhere, anytime – the green buses will drop off hikers or pick them up anywhere they ask. The key is to spread out over the vast land so that no one area is overly impacted. We picked our way along the rocks of a dry creek bed, then veered to the right to climb a mossy ridge between our drainage and the adjacent one. There, I tucked into a grassy cove to protect myself from the wind and ate my lunch of leftover pad thai.

Then came the excitement of getting down the other side. The grade was so steep, I easily could have rolled down with accelerating speed, but the thick mat of lichens, club mosses, sphagnum, grass tussocks, and wildflowers gave us good traction to dig our boots into.

Descending the tundra!

I could admire a single square foot of tundra groundcover for hours. The diversity of shapes, textures, and colors is mesmerizing.

Please pardon me as I get a little lichen-crazy. It's just the coolest darn plant-fungus around! Also be aware that my identifications are probably wrong. I'm basing them on this pamphlet: Lichens of the National Forests in Alaska.

Orange crustose lichen.

Maybe a Cladonia sp.

British soldiers, Cladonia bellidiflora.

More (lumpier) British soldiers.

Cup lichen, Cladonia sp.

Moss mixed with Peltigera sp.

Three baby plants playing nice together.

Purple gentian.

White and purple gentian.

Little white wildflower.

Cute succulent.

Tiny hen-and-chick.

Itty bitty plant.

Snow or foam lichen, Stereocaulon sp.

A close-up of a cushion plant, like the ones I saw in the Ecuadorian Andes!

Lungwort, Lobaria pulmonaria (or a relative that grows in tundra).

The way back was lengthened by blustering winds and slanted drizzle. A pair of hikers approached us with news of a grizzly in the area. We found fresh berry scat among the rocks, and soon spotted its originator about 250 yards away up the next hill over. Although he could certainly smell and hear us, he was more interested in the blueberries he was eating, and he paid us no mind. We all watched him for a few minutes before increasing our distance and heading back to the road.

The rocks, moss, and fog make an austere landscape.

Lots of layers.

A warm, dry hiker is a happy hiker!

Once there, the real drudgery began. My soaked gloves seemed to gnaw at my soggy fingers, my scarf dripped water down my shirt, and my toes went numb. My rain pants had done nothing to protect against the damp: I could tell my leggings were wet as a sponge. We stamped our feet and huddled in a culvert, waiting for a green bus to save us, but the next one to pass had room for only two people. Jane and I started hiking up the road to keep warm. Eventually we all got on a bus going in the wrong direction, and the driver let us transfer when he passed a bus heading back to the entrance. It was a long, wet, muddy four hours back!

I ran, barefoot and shivering, into the main visitor center’s bookshop for a book of Alaskan postcards, and we thawed back at our hotel with a microwaved tupper of chicken noodle soup and some Fred Meyer dumplings. Yummmmm…

Two mountain goats?!

End of day summary:

Day of road trip: 9
Start: Healy, Alaska, United States
Miles traveled: 25 (Prius) + 116 (green school bus)
Hours driven: 7.5
Favorite bird sighting: willow ptarmigan
End: Healy, Alaska, United States

The Journey of a Water Droplet

WOW. My first semester at Whitman is already over. My year began in Brazil and took me all over the place, from Ecuador and Peru to the San Juan Islands and the great state of Idaho. It's hard to believe I started this blog just one year ago!

One of my greatest adventures has been starting at a new school, Whitman College, as a super-sophomore transfer student. In the two-and-a-half years since I graduated from high school I've attended five different colleges! I feel lucky to have finally settled into Walla Walla as my home for the next three years.

Many of my recent blog entries have been based on the weekly excursions I took with my Introduction to Environmental Studies class, which acquainted me with my new surroundings in eastern Washington.

For my last blog of 2014, I would like to take you on a journey of a water droplet, from the headwaters of Mill Creek in the Umatilla National Forest all the way to the Walla Walla sewage treatment plant. After all, there isn't much that is more central to our lives or our connection with place than water.

My Whitman adventure began in the sweltering sunshine of September, during Walla Walla's hottest autumn on record. I knew my Environmental Studies class was going to be a great one when we had to climb over a No Trespassing sign for our hike. (Not to worry, the government official in charge hopped over right next to us.)

As a water droplet, you fall onto the trees of the Umatilla National Forest as rain or snow and trickle your way downhill into Mill Creek. Then you may be siphoned off into the drinking-water pipe at this low diversion dam.

The diversion dam is equipped with a mossy concrete fish ladder for returning steelhead (anadromous rainbow trout) and salmon.

Our professor Bob got up on a stump pedestal to demonstrate the aesthetic value of this native white wildflower with the poetic name, pearly everlasting.

We hiked through lithosol meadows and huckleberry patches on the 36 city-owned square miles of the Mill Creek watershed.

A ranger from the United States Forest Service explained the extreme care taken by the city of Walla Walla to prevent forest fires, from removing fuel (downed wood and dead grass) to thinning out the less fire-resistant tree species.

These fire-resistant tamaracks are allowed to remain in sparse stands that don't touch one another. Walla Walla takes such strict precautions because the ash from a forest fire would be disastrous for the city's unfiltered water supply.

Here's the Environmental Studies gang enjoying a sunshiny meadow at the top of our hike.

I found one small gray bird! Maybe its body contains a droplet of water that will end up in some Whitman student's water bottle next week.

Flash forward a couple weeks and here we are in the Water Treatment Plant. Here's the end of that pipe that began all the way up in the mountains at the Mill Creek diversion dam. Because the altitude drops 300 meters from the dam to the treatment plant, the city is able to produce electricity from a "micro-hydro" operation pictured here.

The water is sterilized with ozone produced from regular oxygen in these machines I call Lightning Tanks. They are possibly the most awesome thing ever.

After treatment the water must pass rigorous tests for low microbial content and low turbidity (cloudiness). Here's a colony of bacteria growing on an agar in the treatment plant's on-site microbiology lab.

We were shivering in 20 degree Fahrenheit weather as we toured the city's reservoirs, water towers, and deep-basalt well.

The rest of our day was spent exploring the portion of Mill Creek which is not diverted for drinking-water treatment. Here, Mill Creek flows through a series of little red homes for elves. (Our professor told us these elf homes are actually debris-capture devices, but you and I know better.)

Mill Creek then reaches another fork in the river. Based on decisions made by the Army Corps of Engineers, water can flow through this concrete gravity dam and through the city of Walla Walla, or it can be diverted to flow into the man-made reservoir (and birding sanctuary) known as Bennington Lake.

Here is Bennington Lake in all its frozen glory. The water level was looking quite low, which is good for flood control but not great for recreational uses like hiking and boating. The water levels aren't always low, though. Our professor told us about a time several years ago when the water rose to within feet of the top of the earth-rock dam from which this photo was taken; the parking lot and bathroom were all submerged!

Walking on that earth-rock dam in the freezing wind was not fun.

The water that isn't diverted to Bennington Lake continues on through downtown Walla Walla in the "concrete box" portion of Mill Creek, pictured here. The channelized creek looks more like a public park wading pool (with a fast current) than a river.

Flash forward again and we arrive here, the Wastewater Treatment Plant. The droplet of water that rained upon the Mill Creek Watershed, produced microhydro electricity, and underwent ozone sterilization has been soiled by the city in any number of ways -- in a toilet bowel, shower or sink, through a human body or that of a cat or dog, perhaps for an experiment in a Whitman College organic chemistry lab. Finally it ends up here, where it goes through settling tanks, microbial digestion, aeration and filtration.

The wastewater is disinfected with UV radiation and chlorine. Depending on the time of year, it's released back into Mill Creek (downstream of the city) or used for irrigation of regional crops. The solid portions of the wastewater, known as biosolids, are used as fertilizer.