21 June 2021 Sunday Hike

Sunday Funday

After a six-day workweek, you may be wondering what scientists do on Sunday. To be honest, it varies from Sunday to Sunday and person to person: some folks use the time to finish up a few work items or get ahead, some use the time to watch their favorite TV shows or catch up with their friends and families away from camp, but the most common use of time around here is to go on various hikes near and far around camp.

So yesterday, the crew piled up into vans and drove 15 minutes down the road to just beyond Galbraith Lake, and the beginning of our hike along Atigun North Ridge – an area that was rumored to be filled with cool rocks and fossils.

The beginning of our hike along the Atigun River.

Hiking in the tundra is not for the faint of heart because the landscape is a mix of mosses (nice on the way down a hill because they’re squishy, hard on the way up for the same reason, and occasionally annoying because they hide rocks that you can’t see), sluggyish swampiness (I’m not even sure how to describe these areas), fields and fields of tussocks (hard chunky grasses with holes in between – a choice of twisting ankles on top or twisting ankles in the holes below), with random areas of lovely dry heath (actual dry flat areas). But after 2 miles, we found the rocky area and had a lovely time walking around exploring the space and looking for fossils and interesting rocks.

Our small rock collection at "base camp". Photo taken by Jeremy May. "Base camp"!

After an hour and a half of exploring, we decided it was time to head back. Of course, as a geologist, I loaded up my backpack with rocks, which made the walk back that much more sluggish, but I was determined to have some good samples. The long hike back was mostly done in a zombie-like state, but we made it back to our trucks and then headed back up to camp for the most restful night’s sleep of the season thus far.

I was enthralled by the stratigraphy across the river. Photo taken by Jeremy May.

Vegetable, Animal, Mineral

This time, I'm going to keep this section fairly short and mostly picture focused.

First up, vegetable. The tundra is finally greening up, and with that comes some beautiful flowers! Sarah was our expert photographer when it came to taking pictures of all the beautiful flowers we saw.

A batch of small blue forget-me-nots. Photo taken by Sarah Ansbro. My favorite species that we study at the phenology plots, Cassiope, was in full bloom on our hike! Photo by Sarah Ansbro. These pretty purple flowers called Little Weaslesnout. Photo by Sarah Ansbro.

Next up, animals. We didn't see too many animals (Jeremy briefly saw a fox that retreated immediately to her den, and a couple of other humans on a hike had a dog), but we did see traces of animals around.

Some caribou tracks! Even more exciting: bear tracks!

Last, Minerals. The focus of this trip was the rocks, and there were plenty to be found. But I think the coolest part was looking across from our location and seeing the stratigraphy across the way.

The smaller bit on the right is known as "molar" to those at Toolik because of its shape.

Molar, or Guardhouse Rock, is a member of the Lisburne Limestone which overlays permian shales and siltstones underneath. The limestone itself is known to be fossiliferous, but we didn't explore on that side of the river. Still, the layering is pretty distinct and is nice to see.

We didn't find any particularly unique fossils on our trip today, but since this is my last week we are going to be going fossil hunting a few more times before I leave. Stay tuned to see if I find anything particularly interesting!

Edit

Originally, I said this hike was 2 miles one way (4 miles round trip). Since being back, we re-evaluated and found that the trip was more likely around 7 miles total, or 3.5 miles one way.