Tolovana Hot Springs

The weekend after New Year's we headed out on another cabin trip, but this one involved a sauna and colder temperatures. Most people left on Friday and came back on Sunday. I wasn't feeling too good on Thursday, so I decided not to go. (Admittedly, I wasn't all that excited about skiing 11 miles at -20 to -30 F (-30 to -35 C).) I felt better all day Friday, and I wasn't too happy about people having fun without me, so I packed up my things and got ready to head out on Saturday. I got an early start, started skiing at 10:00 am (before the sunrise) and made it into the cabin by 1:00 pm, just as they were finishing breakfast/brunch/lunch - it was a lazy morning for them.

The "group" consisted of 1 snowmobiler ("snowmachiner" in the Alaskan dialect), 4 skiiers (1 on tele-skis, 1 on randonee, and 2 on cross-country), 4 snowshoers, and 4 walkers/sledders, and 2 dogs. I'm usually not too keen on having snowmobiles around, but in this case it was a good thing. It was nice to have the security of knowing that if somebody got dangerously cold skiing/snowshoeing/hiking, that we could get them to the cabin quite quickly. We also got to bring with some things that you wouldn't bring without a snowmobile, like milk, juice, and a keg of beer.

Saturday afternoon was spent chatting and eating, in the evening we went for a dip in the hot springs. All 13 of us.

We got up relatively early Sunday morning and headed back to the trailhead - staggering everybody's start time so that we would all finish the journey at about the same time. We arrived in the early afternoon and started up the cars - or tried to. Three of them started no problem, one needed to be jumped and heated up with camping stove, and the fifth car just wouldn't start. We left it there and returned the next day with a generator and heater and a new battery - that did the trick.


Self-portrait after skiing 11 miles in frigid temperatures.


Inari after snowshoeing 11 miles.

It turned out that Saturday was the nicest day of the weekend, and so I felt glad that I chose to wait until then to ski in. The light was beautiful and there was no wind, a rare thing on that trail. It took me three hours to ski to the cabin, but it probably would've been quicker if I hadn't stopped to take so many photos.


Dr. Seuss's inspiration?


Spectacular light on Saturday morning.

New Year's Eve

Inari and I greeted the new year with three friends, seven dogs, some spiced wine, and firecrackers at a cabin in the Chena Recreation Area about 40 miles from town. It was my first time skiing this winter due to my trip to New Zealand and a general lack of snow in Alaska. It must've been a good time because for once I wasn't preoccupied with the thought that yet another year was slipping by. The dogs were also a lot of fun, running laps around the cabin, jumping, playing. Made me want to get one of my own. Maybe someday, when we have a better idea of where we'll be living in the longterm. I'd hate to get a husky and then end up living in a city. I don't think I could part with the dog, but it also wouldn't be fair to the dog.


Here's the New Year's group, from left to right: myself, Siren, Inari, Mica, Sandy, Safira, Tico, Anja, Bailey, Eamon, Elvis, and Scout.


The mulled wine, a German tradition. You pour wine into a pot, put a sugar cone over the top, pour rum over it, light it on fire, and add more rum.

Brian and Lynley

One last New Zealand post, then I'll almost be caught up...

One of the researchers that I worked with is an interesting character and deserves a post of his own. Brian has a Ph.D. in glaciology and now works half-time doing glaciology research. The other half of his time he spends being a good citizen: protesting, writing letters to the newspaper, and taking mining companies to court. At the moment he is working on a campaign to prevent a mining company from working in an area (the only area) where an endangered species of snail lives. The mining company wants to simply relocate the snails, but then, why do the snails only live in this one area? Maybe the snails wouldn't be too happy about being relocated.

Brian and his partner Lynley were living in a bus for several years (they're now working on a building a house), the bath is outside and is heated by fire, and their outhouse consists of a hole in the ground - no roof or seat! Brian built a small hydropower system out of an old washing machine and protected from the elements by covering it with a real estate sign. He also built a wind turbine, but that fell down during the first storm. The car runs on veggie oil, which he picks up from various hotels and restaurants in town. I got to go with him to pick up a load (1000 L) of veggie oil. See photo below - containers of veggie oil pictured with the bus.


Here's a view of the shed where Brian processes the veggie oil before using it in his car. He's still trying to figure out to do with the all of the crud that he's filtered out. He said that he's leaning towards building a flame thrower (why?!?) but that he might also give it to the fat man who ships it to China to be made into lipstick...


It was a little bit funny being in the field with him and Tom (master's student). Tom works at a gear shop and has very fancy clothing and equipment; Brian uses gear that might be older than I am.

New Zealand plant life

Besides birds, the next most interesting thing in New Zealand is the native vegetation. As with the birds, much of the vegetation is extinct or nearly extinct, thanks to introduced plant and animal species. It seems that immigrants were more interested in building a "better Britain" than in adapting to a new, unique ecosystem. Here are some of the unique plants that I stumbled across.


The aptly named "vegetable sheep".



Poroporo, a plant traditionally used by the Maori for medicinal purposes. The berries are poisonous until they become ripe. (In Finnish, poroporo would mean "reindeer reindeer".)



New Zealand Edelweiss - just a little bit different than the real thing.


The flower of kotukutuka (tree fuchsia), one of the only native deciduous trees in New Zealand.



New Zealand flax...


and a flax flower, which grows on a stem that is much longer than the rest of the leaves.


Lancewood (I'm having trouble finding the Maori name), a plant that looks different during its juvenile stage than during its adult stage. During the juvenile stage, the sharp leaves point upwards; as the tree gets taller the leaves start to point downward and become fleshier. It is thought that this was to discourage browsing by moa. When the plant is short, its leaves are to sharp for a bird to eat, and when the plant becomes taller to it is too high off the ground for the moa to reach.



Very few native plants in New Zealand are edible; this is one of them. The leaves are very spicy and would probably be nice on a salad or soup, but apparently nobody uses them.


The Mt. Cook Lily, high alpine flower found on the south island..

The friendly birds

If there is anything worth knowing about New Zealand, its that the bird life is amazing. Prior to the Maori arrival around 1200 A.D., the only mammals living in New Zealand were bats. This allowed the bird life to flourish and evolve into some very unique species. The largest bird was the moa, which could grow to 3 m in heigh and was flightless - it didn't even have stubs for wings. Maybe more extraordinarily was the Haast eagle, the largest eagle to have ever lived. They weighed 10 kg and had a wingspan of 2.6 to 3 m. They survived by preying on moa!

Unfortunately, the Maori and later the Europeans killed off much of the native bird life through hunting, habitat destruction, and the introduction of exotic species. Some interesting birds have managed to survive, such as the endangered kiwi, the kea (a mountain parrot), the weka, and the tui and the bellbird or korimako.



I didn't manage to see any kiwi, but we were visited by two kea at our hut, and I saw several weka begging for food at tourist sites. The kea were really cheeky and fun to watch. The clearly weren't concerned by our presence - they were more concerned about trying to rip the roof off the hut.


This weka I spotted searching for food in a little shed.

I also saw and heard several tui and bellbirds, but they are quite small and difficult to photograph. They are songbirds in the truest sense of the word, and hearing them greet the morning sun is a real pleasure. The tui are especially fun because they have two voice boxes and can therefore produce a wide range of sounds (some that humans are unable to register) and have they ability to mimic other sounds, such as bellbirds.

Tasman Glacier and De la Beche Hut: Home for a Fortnight

Our field site was Tasman Glacier, which is New Zealand's longest glacier with a total length of 25 km. Its upper accumulation area has an elevation of over 3000 m and is thought to receive something like 12 m of precipitation a year. The glacier is within Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park and is popular tourist destination for climbers, especially those wishing to climb Aoraki, the highest peak in Australasia. I prefer the Maori name "Aoraki" because it was the first name given to peak and it is a beatiful and appropriate name - meaning "cloud piercer". We had a nice view of the summit of Aoraki from our hut and often observed it piercing the clouds.


Only rarely does field work involve staying in a hut, and it was a real treat, especially during periods of rainy, windy weather. The huts in Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park are all equipped with radios, and this allowed us to get weather reports and to arrange for a helicopter to pick us up when we finished our work.

Here's a view of the inside of the hut.


The field work was greatly complicated by the fact that the Tasman Glacier has thinned significantly over the past 100 years. The hut is now located some 100 m above the glacier, and the only way to access it is to scramble up a steep, unstable moraine. It wasn't quite steep enough to require the use of a rope, but if you picked the wrong route (as I did on two occasions) you would find yourself wishing that you had one. The photo below shows the moraine that we could to scramble up and down everyday, sometimes carrying heavy equipment, food, or our toilet.

Wellington

In total I spent about one week in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. In the last few years I've spent a lot of time in the wilderness on hiking trips and during field work, and so trips to cities are becoming more and more novel. I really enjoyed my time in Wellington, probably in part because the weather was really nice while I was there. The city reminds me of San Francisco, though smaller and less diverse. It has a large natural harbor, sits on a major fault and is sure to be decimated by a major earthquake at some point in the not-too-distant future, has a small island where they used to put inmates, has steep windy roads, lots of old wood houses, numerous cafes, and it has a climate similar to San Francisco. Both Wellington and San Francisco were built in a haphazard way - San Francisco by miners, Wellington by a city planner living in England who didn't consider topography in his design.


The view from Tom's apartment.

Wellington has many "secret staircases" that cut up and down the hills that make great shortcuts, as long as you know where you are going. Many houses don't have direct access to the road - some have little trams that you take you from the road to the house, others just have very long staircases. My favorite thing about Wellington was that it was very urban yet also very peaceful. In about 15 minutes you can walk from the city center to a heavily vegetated suburb. The houses sit close to each other, but you hardly notice your neighbors. The area is so lush that I got the impression that if you left town for a couple of months you might need a machete in order to "reclaim" your house.

The last day that I was in Wellington I went to the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary with the hope of spotting a tuatara, a very special reptile that has remained relatively unchanged over the past 200 million years. The tuatara, which is endangered, was once found throughout New Zealand but now only lives on remote islands with few predators. It has recently been brought to Karori Wildlife Sanctuary in an attempt to reintroduce it to the north island. I've been told that they reproduction rates are very low and that they grow slowly, making reintroduction a difficult task. However, they can live to be 100 years old. Check out the description of tuatara on wikipedia - they are really fascinating creatures.

Anyway, I got lucky and I was able to snap a few photos of a tuatara.