Day 14

Tomorrow is a travel day and I am quite happy about it. I'm worn out. Too many long days of work in a row have worn me down. Today I almost passed out during lunch. One minute I was eating a sandwich and discussing the relative differences between midgets and dwarfs, and the next minute everything was blurry; I got dizzy and the world started to spin. I sat down, hard. After a few minutes I felt ok, but I think I just got used to the world spinning around me. I knew at that point that I needed a break, and as it turns out we get to drive down to Galbraith Lake (about 4 hours south) tomorrow for a whopping one day of field work before returning the following day to unload our gear and fly home for a week. My break is in sight and I am getting excited. Well, as excited as a zombie can get, I suppose. I am looking forward to my next deployment in August, where we will make our way south through the mountains. But more importantly, I am ready to go home for a while.

Other than my little event, today was pretty uneventful. We took the chopper out to a site, did some hydrology, got picked up by the chopper and went to another site, did some more hydrology, then flew home. While the north slope is beautiful and wild, I am ready to see something different. We tend to make the best of things as demonstrated in this photo, as Paul attempts to jump the creek (he made it).

I also had my first bear sighting. It wasn't quite as exciting as I thought it wold be and I am not sure if it was a brown bear (grizzly) or a polar bear. Maybe you can figure it out:

I mentioned in an earlier post these things called beaded streams. It's where a stream forms these weird, bead shaped pools where ice forms with narrow channels between. They are really weird and I took a couple of good shots of them today.

Well that's it for today. I don't think I have internet access at Galbraith Lake, so I'll be out of touch for a couple of days. Hopefully I'll have something cool to report on the 30th. Until then, I am taking off.