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| Richardson's Brookfoam |
In the Alaska Range the plants and animals are totally different than what I am used to on Kodiak. Just on the walk in from the road we walked through tall pencil thin spruce trees, and the alders had the weirdest leaves. Definitely not Kodiak alders or spruce! And everywhere HUGE Labrador Tea plants. The Labrador Tea plants were bush sized - they looked more like bog laurel than the tiny swamp plant I am used to seeing on Kodiak (weirdly enough in the alpine the plants shrunk back to their normal size). Even the rose plants were different with elongated and pink rose hips instead of the usual round and red ones that I am used to on Kodiak.
And then we got to the alpine - weird gentians, beautiful Brookfoam (a plant I had never seen before and which seems to totally dominate the wet areas by streams in the Alaska Range), and all the rodents! Ground squirrels, pikas, voles, and marmots. Whenever we entered a boulder field we would be greated by the load whistle of a marmot. When I finally spotted one it was so big I thought it was a fox. It looked like the groundhogs of my youth in the fields of Virginia. And all the raptors - I saw rough legged hawks, merlins, golden eagles, and gyrfalcons. They were probably all there to prey on the rodents and ptarmigan. And even the ptarmigan were different with white tails - white tailed ptarmigan a new species for me!
Then of course there were the sheep and caribou - you don't see those on Kodiak! You do see reindeer on Kodiak but they are white and look totally different from the dark brown caribou of the Alaska Range. I really wanted to see a black bear - I still have never seen a black bear except in a zoo.
Finally, the photo just below portrays a melting snow patch. Due to global warming these snow patches are disappearing for the first time in thousands of years. You can tell that the snow has never melted out in summer because the newly exposed rocks are white and not covered by lichens - the lichens have never had a chance to grow on the rocks! At archaeology conferences I have listened to talks about these snow patches. In the past people would hunt sleeping caribou trying to cool down and avoid bugs on the snow and would often lose arrows and other artifacts. The cold snow preserves the organic artifacts perfectly.
I was excited to see if I could find anything melting out of the snow patches I encountered. But nothing - I did find the leaves, grasses and other organics that had been deposited in the snow over the last couple thousand years. But no artifacts. Nor did I find much caribou poo - I gather the productive snow patches are like poorly cleaned stables. Just full of caribou poo. So I guess I did not find or check on the best snow patches. Patrick
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| A melting snow patch - the organics may have been preserved in the snow here for thousands of years |
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| Weirdly colored Gentian |
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| A herd of Caribou |
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| Can you see the ptarmigan? |
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| Pika |
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