One Month

Today, it's been exactly one month since I arrived here in Juneau! It's pretty amazing.. it seems like the time just flew by. But I suppose that I have been pretty busy.

I finally completed my boat crew training. Soon I'll be giving whale watching tours by myself, so it's important to be a certified deck hand in the case that something happens to the captain while out at sea. If something happens, I have to know how to drive the boat to a safe location and radio the Coast Guard. I also have to know how to rescue people from the water, what to do in the event of a fire, and how to handle a ship that is taking on water. Hopefully none of these scenarios ever actually occur!

These are some of our whale watching vessels. The first boat is the Sounder. It's a much larger boat than the second one- the Voyager. These are the two that we practiced on for our training.

Captain Steve tells us about safety on board the boats.

This is a water-proof body suit that we filled with heavy bottles of water in order to simulate the Man Overboard drill. One of our guides chucked him off the bow of the boat and then we had to go through all the necessary steps to rescue him. It's really important to do this quickly; 5 min in the cold Alaskan waters can lead to hypothermia, and just 20 min is enough to cause death.

When we hear the splash and cry out "Man Overboard," we have to grab a red cushion and throw it into the water as close to the person as possible. This is a marker that will tell the boat captain which direction he needs to steer the ship in order to reach the person. Next, we have to grab a life preserver and try to toss it to the victim. The rope on the preserver is short and a normal person cannot throw it very far, so you have to be pretty close to the victim for it to be effective. If the preserver doesn't work, or the victim has lost consciousness, you have to grab a hook and try to move them toward the boat with it. Eventually, you can get the fallen passenger to the side of the vessel, where you have to physically pull them up. It's important to do this effectively, or you could become a victim yourself by falling in. Throw on a life vest, make a loop with a yellow cord and place it around your right shoulder, and have someone else hold on to the back of your pants. Next, you lower yourself out the side as closely to the victim as you can. Then you grab their arm with yours, transfer the loop onto their body, under both their arms, and yank them aboard.

Here's Emily, grabbing the heavy dummy and transferring the yellow cord around it.

Man overboard! I'm tossing the life preserver to the dummy.

I've looped the dummy! Now it's time to reel him in.

We also all took turns driving the boats. We practiced shifting gears, making turns, and steering toward objects.

Here I am taking the boat out for a spin before docking it in the harbor at Auke Bay.

See you out on the water!

Coco Update

So Coco is doing much better now. It's good that we brought her to the vet when we did because she was hurt much more severely than we had realized. It turns out that it WAS a brown bear that attacked her because the gash was much too deep to have been a black bear (which are smaller). The wound went deep into her snout, punctured her sinus cavity, and left a hole in the roof of her mouth! Poor Coco!

She got stitched up and is on antibiotics now. She is such a trooper! The only thing that she acts upset about is that her head has a cone on it to keep her from scratching at the stitches. Other than that, Coco shows no pain. She's had encounters with bears like this before, and pain makes her angry. If she gets hurt, it only riles her up more and makes her want to keep attacking! Coco's owner says that usually twice a year, Coco will attack the porcupines in the area. This typically results in someone prying her mouth open and reaching down her throat with pliers to yank out all the quills. And the amount of quills down Coco's throat are so great in number that you KNOW they couldn't have been from just one bite- she goes back for more!

It turns out that the bear Coco was chasing has been living in our yard, sleeping in the bushes! There is a bear trail behind the trash burning area where the vegetation has been trampled, and behind that, a bear bed. It's a depression in the grass where the bear has been sleeping.. and it's pretty close to the house! Coco's owner says that this happens a lot, so she's going to have to get a trap for the bear so that it can be relocated. This bear will be back, no question about it.

Coco's owner is standing in the bear trail, right where the battle between Coco and the bear took place the night before. The burnt grassy area in the foreground is where the bear was looking for food.

There is a trodden down path through the grass where the bear has been walking through the yard.

And this is where the bear has been sleeping behind the bushes.

Usually the trap will be baited with dead salmon, which is supposed to attract the bear right away. Coco's owner says that this doesn't work well, because bears prefer sweet things. After several days of unsuccessful luring, a slice of birthday cake usually does the trick.

I'll make sure to keep you all updated about our bear problem! Stay safe out there!

Coco vs. the Bear

Coco, the household dog,  is pretty brave and would do anything to protect her home. She frequently chases bears away from the yard and warns us of any oncoming danger. Unfortunately, there was a bit of an incident with a bear in the yard this evening.

Tonight, Coco wanted out badly. Once she got outside, she bolted toward the trash pile in the yard. (Many people here have an area in their yard to burn trash in order to reduce the amount they have take to the dump. Our pile was recently burned.) It was twilight, so it was difficult to actually see what was going on, but I could make out a large brown lump near the trash pile. I assume that this was the bear. Coco started barking and going crazy, which made the bear flee instantly into the nearby bushes. Coco bounded after it into the bushes, leading to a lot of commotion. I kept calling Coco, trying to get her to come back inside, but she wouldn't come. All I could hear were the sounds of breaking tree branches and Coco's barking.

I called and called until finally she jumped back out from the bushes and ran at full force back into the house. I chased after her and closed the door behind us. She was riled up and panting pretty heavily. Coco seemed okay and was acting normally otherwise. Then I got a good look at her face. There was a large gash on her muzzle, which looked pretty deep, and she had a narrow strip of fur sticking up out of it at an odd angle. The bear must've swiped her right across the face with its claws. She didn't seem to be in any pain, so we calmed her down and put some ointment on it for now.  She's going to have to see the vet in the morning.. might need stitches this time.

Ice Cave Videos

Thought you might like to see some videos I took when we were walking near the glacier! The really good caves had just recently collapsed, so there were really just a bunch of ledges and arches. Still really interesting to see though! Just click the videos below to view!


Video 1

Video 2

The second video is just us girls acting silly. In our song, we use the word "moraine." This simply means a glacial deposit of rock.

See you next time!

The Ice Caves

Remember how I said that lately, I've been obsessed with getting good pictures of the glacier? Well, this time, I REALLY got good pictures! My friend B and I decided to hike down to the ice caves the other day. It was quite an adventure!

When hiking to the ice caves, you want to make sure you go with someone who knows the way, otherwise you might get lost. The trail is a little unclear in places, and it can be quite dangerous. Unfortunately, B and I had both never been there before, so I made sure to ask someone with experience for some good directions. I was told to follow the West Glacier Trail, which I have taken several times before. Once you reach the first lookout point with a wooden covering, you take an unmarked trail to the left and follow it alongside a pond dammed up by beavers. The trail is not well-maintained, so it may be hard to locate through the shrubs. You end up walking across the peninsula in Mendenhall Lake, keeping to the left. Eventually, you reach a rocky area and must follow cairns, which are piles of stones left by other hikers that tell you where to go. After scrambling over some rocks, you should reach the glacier.

Sounded easy enough!

So this is the sign that I saw marking the small trail leading off from the main path. I just had to take a picture of it!

After following the trail for a bit, it became increasingly difficult to find. It was really overgrown with shrubs and we kept having to backtrack every time we reached a dead end. Eventually we got to an area that looked like this:

This is how the terrain looked from the peninsula in the lake. B and I noticed that the closer we got to the glacier, the younger and younger the vegetation became. The large spruce trees became very small until we stopped seeing them altogether. Even the alders and deciduous plants became scarce. We kept going further and saw this:

Our entire surroundings became nothing but bare rock. Most of it didn't even have any lichens or moss growing on it. This land is in the beginning stages of succession. It was a tough climb, but it was definitely worth it! At first, we had trouble spotting the cairns. Most of them had been knocked over and were a pretty good distance apart. Plus, with all that bare gray rock, they blended right into the mountainside!

This was a cairn we found right in front of the glacier. At this point, we didn't need them to tell us which way to go. You can't really miss the glacier! It's huge!

It sure was amazing to get up so close to it! Most of the really good caves had just recently collapsed, so we couldn't really enter into any long tunnels. There were some interesting archways, however, which we did manage to crawl through. If you're very quiet, you can actually hear the glacier creaking and cracking as it slowly moves toward you. It slides forward between a 1 ft and 1.5 ft a day!

Ice caves form from glacial runoff water. The water runs underneath the glacier, but can also flow through holes or cracks in the ice that have formed over time. This melts and erodes the ice away, forming tunnels and other chambers large enough to walk through. This is dangerous, however, for the ice can collapse without warning. One must take extreme caution when entering these caves.

The deep blue coloration in the ice is breath-taking. Water incessantly drips from the ceiling and walls of the caves into the pools below.

Here I am enjoying a particularly blue cave!

These walls of ice are gigantic and powerful! It was certainly humbling to be near them!

Just ducking into this cave for a moment got me all wet with dripping glacial water!

After we were done exploring the caves, B and I decided it was time to head back. I was forewarned about venturing onto ledges that were too narrow on the rock cliffs. "These tiny ledges are for mountain goats, not for people," I was told. Unfortunately, B and I lost sight of the cairns while scrambling back up the rocky mountainside and we started to descend in the wrong area. It was difficult to find footholds, and we were getting tired as it neared 8 PM. Luckily for us, the sun doesn't start to set until almost 10 PM, so we still had some time.

We tried as hard as we could to lower ourselves cautiously from these jagged cliffs, but it was no use. There was no safe way to descend here. It was then that we saw it- mountain goat scat right on the ledge! We shouldn't have been anywhere near there.

With aching muscles and tired feet, we slowly climbed our way back up the cliffs and walked until we caught sight of the cairns once more. We were finally able to begin a safe descent back onto the peninsula and head for home as the daylight grew dim.

I can't wait to revisit the caves again soon! They change every week, so you never know what you're going to see. I'll let you know next time!

Kayaking by the Glacier

I've been up to no good! No really.. I've been obsessed with getting good pictures of the glacier lately, and some of the things I've been doing can be quite dangerous. It's recommended that you don't venture too close to the glacier in the summer because it can calve at any time without warning. When this occurs, gigantic chunks of ice break off and plunge into the lake below. It's quite spectacular really.. that is, unless you're underneath it at the time. But don't worry! I'm using common sense and treading carefully! I'm not trying to get myself killed here!

With that being said, here are some of the pictures! (I've had requests to make the pictures larger. We'll see how this goes!)

Check out the awesome texturing of the glacial ice. You can also see all of the silt and rock that the glacier has carved away from the mountains and is now carrying.

In this picture, you can see how blue the ice is as the light streams between the floating chunks in the lake.



These pieces of ice have all broken off from the glacier and floated out into the lake. If you're very still and very quiet, you can hear the pieces gently clinking together on the surface of the water. It sounds like broken glass.

I'm so tiny compared to this ice ledge that I'm paddling past! And compared to the rest of the glacier, this is just a small piece.

These gulls don't seem to mind the cold as they rest on some floating pieces of ice.

I'll close this post with a goofy picture I took in front of the glacier. What can I say.. I was excited! There's still so much more to come, so keep stopping by for more!

Technical Difficulties!!

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I'm currently experiencing some technical difficulties with my computer. I'm posting this entry from my phone, so unfortunately I can't upload any new pictures at the moment. Not to fear! The problem will soon be fixed and then I'll be able to get back to blogging.

Hang tight for now!

Alaska is a Pretty Cool Place!

That Brazilian dinner was AH-MAZING! I met so many nice people! They lived up in a house that was literally located on TOP of the forest. We had to climb a huge staircase into the sky to get to it. The view was incredible.

 We spent the evening playing games, including some pretty extreme Jenga!

On our way back to the house, I asked to be dropped off at Fred Meyer so I could purchase a belt since my pants kept falling down. They waited in the car and I ran inside. While in line, there was a nice man named Charlie behind me who was putting all sorts of beautiful exotic flowers onto the conveyer belt. He said he used to grow them in Hawaii, so he knew how to take really good care of them. Since he already had so many, he insisted on giving me one. He wouldn't take no for an answer, so now I am the proud owner of a Phalaenopsis! Hope I don't kill it!

As far as work goes for the past few days, they have me shadowing the more experienced guides so that I can learn from them. So far, I've gone on the Moraine Ecology Trail, the East Glacier Trail, and the West Glacier Trail. I've also gotten to cruise around Auk Bay looking for whales! I've learned quite a lot about the natural history of the area. Hopefully I can give a good tour soon by myself!

Here are some stats regarding Juneau's weather.

Depending on where you are in Juneau, it can rain anywhere from 220 to almost 300 days out of the year! This, of course, depends largely on your elevation. I believe that these data were collected at the airport, which is at sea level. Juneau is located in a temperate rainforest, so there is a LOT of rain. It hasn't rained since I've been here, actually, so the weather as far as I've seen it isn't typical. It's been quite sunny, and the temperature has been in the 70's.

With that being said, here are some pictures from my hikes!

As you can see, there are TONS of mosses on EVERYTHING! When you walk on the ground, it's very spongy. There are over 700 species of moss in this forest, and I can't even begin to identify them! Moss is very important here ecologically because without it, nothing else could grow. Because the glacier used to cover the entire area, the forest is still quite new. When it receded, it left rock and silt behind. Mosses and lichens then colonized the ground, which enabled grasses and herbaceous plants to come along. Then the alders moved in, which finally allowed the hemlocks and then the spruces to grow. What a great example of succession! There is almost no dirt or soil to be found. Instead, everything uses the moss to anchor onto the ground. Large trees have extremely shallow roots that extend for miles since there is nothing but solid rock below. Because of this, when the strong winds blow (up to 90mph at times) or avalanches occur, entire sections of land are torn out when the trees fall over. This enables new plants to colonize the freshly disturbed areas and the cycle continues!

There are also many bodies of water all throughout the area, and streams rush down the mountainsides as the snow runoff melts. Above, you can see one of the many beaver dams that are scattered throughout the forest.

Here you can see the denseness of the forest. When you climb higher in elevation, the populations of trees consist almost exclusively of sitka spruce and western hemlocks.

And now, what you've all been waiting for!! THE GLACIER!!

This is the Mendenhall Glacier. It's about 12 mi long, 1.5 mi wide, and more than 100 ft high. It flows from the southern half of the Juneau Icefield, which lies in the Boundary Ranges in southeastern Alaska. A relic of the Little Ice Age (16th century to the mid-19th century), it recedes about 100 – 150 ft a year. The adjacent Mendenhall Lake began to form about 1900 and is now 1.5 mi  long and 1 mi wide. It gets its deep blue color from the extreme density of the ice from which it's formed.

As you can see, the ice crystals from these chunks of glacier are pretty large. Up in the mountains, layers upon layers of snow fall and are compacted on top of each other. Over the course of time, this dense ice forms large crystals, which the blue wavelength of light cannot penetrate. Thus, the glacier is blue because only blue light is reflected. As the glacier melts and air is reintroduced back into the ice, it turns lighter and lighter in color as all wavelengths of light can once again penetrate the crystals.

Here's a picture of me holding a piece of ice that may be well over 200 years old!

On top of all that information, I also get to learn about whales! Here's a picture of the harbor as we headed out into the bay.

You can spot a whale from its blow spout. As a whale surfaces, it blasts water up into the air before it takes in a new breath from its blowhole.

We saw quite a few whales when we went out. They were doing some shallow dives as they swam between the boats. As a whale dives, if you time it carefully, you can get a nice shot of its fluke before it fully disappears beneath the water. No two flukes are the same, and can be used like fingerprints to identify specific individuals over time. These flukes belong to some playful humpbacks.

The captain had me drive the boat on the way back into the harbor. Since I am technically a deckhand while on board the vessel, I have to know how to drive the boat back to the dock just in case anything happens to the captain while out at sea! 

Here's a picture of the harbor while heading back in.

Later today I'm going on a training hike to learn how to engage children in some fun hiking activities, such as scavenger hunts and compass use. Guess I'd better go get ready now. See you next time!