The last few days in Kotzebue were a whirlwind of mailing about $400.00 worth of coolers and probes at the post office, a debacle with UPS, and trying to wrap up four months of loose ends that always seems to happen with field work. My body developed stress cramps. It got pretty bad. But I survived and got everything done, if only barely.
In celebration, I decided to wrap up my Kotzebue time by digging back through photos and throwing up a few ones to help recap the season. You can click on each of the photos to view in at a larger size. Thanks to Gwen for the first four photos. We finally traded pictures from the year and she gave me some goodies.
Only seems fair to start off with a photo of Bob. This is from our first "shake down" trip to the Agoshashok River Asik Watershed Sites, referred to as the gravel bar most of the time. He was most likely explaining resin bag locations to me for the 100th time (my fault). The view looks up the watershed through a large break in spruce where tundra tucks in around the river.
That man can hike with the best of them and I don't think there is any place he'd rather be than on the Aggie.
Oh hey, there's me drivin the boat. You can see our gear crammed into the flat bottom skiff there and this is only about half of it. We had way too much stuff for this poor little boat to handle. Fun fact about a flat bottom skiff, great for shallow water but any type of choppy conditions means you get spanked hard by each and every wave. I mainly drove during favorable weather. Gwen was pretty happy about that.
Sonny removing a hook from the pike that each of us caught about twice. We would let it go, cast in a completely different area and it would again be the first fish on the hook. It swallowed the hook a few times too but Sonny had a trick. He would work the hook down deeper into the fish's throught, then grab the barb that had emerged through the fishes gills. It was then just a simple snip of the line and out the hook came. Pretty niffty to watch. Sonny also caught a good two foot long Sheefish too.
Gwen and I taking a paddle near the FWS Cabin up Selawik River. The water was perfectly glassy and you could really feel the canoe just cutting through the water. There were beaver diving all around the canoe. Gwen would jump and give a little eep with each one.
With a healthy swallow population early on in the year at the FWS cabin, it only made sense we would see some baby swallows too. This was our second time checking on these little guys and they grow quickly. The week or so before they had no feathers and were about half the size. Not even two weeks later, they were gone. Oh, not a Gwen photo here. I still had a few hiding away.
From the last Aggie hike Gwen and I were able to squeeze in before she got outa town.This ridge just kept going and going, opening up to the valley hidden behind. The country changed really fast once you start heading up the Agoshashok.
A special guest photo from Ellorie. This was at the summit during our night hike out on the Aggie during August. Still one of the highlights from the summer because of the company and view. Thanks buddy.
So, the end of my summer. And technically, I am now an unemployed college graduate. Just another statistic out there trying to make it work. Hope to see you next summer Alaska
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