29 June 2014 Team Microbe (Part 2)

Meet the Team

Introducing Sarah Nalven of Team Microbe. Sarah has been so busy these days that she is frankly hard to find with a spare minute, but nevertheless, here's Sarah!

Species Journal

Sunday is everyone's day off. It was another beautifully sunny and warm day which made everyone anxious to get out on hikes and further explore some of the mountains in this area. I ended up on the hike to Atigun Falls. It was very Lord of the Rings like in terms of green valleys with craggy mountain peaks. There aren't really any trails in the Arctic, simply not enough visitors to make any. If you happen upon a slight resemblance of a trail it is most likely due to some animal repeatedly using that same path.

We traveled about 2.5 miles across the tundra, sticking to the higher ground to try and minimize the wet soggy tussocks, and hoping for fewer mosquitos. We were somewhat successful, we resorted to bug shirts and bug spray to help keep from being eaten alive. The group consisted of myself, Hannah of team Land-Water/team Microbe, Mike of team Land-Water, Arianna of team Photo, and Sally the PI of team Limnology (the study of physical characteristics of inland bodies of water aka lakes in her case).

While we didn't see any animals on the hike we did see this amazing waterfall at our destination. The day was even nice enough for a lunchtime tundra nap.