On the road to Landmark: Theodore Roosevelt National Park

So I recently made the move from Guelph, ON to the American Prairie Reserve near Malta, Montana to volunteer for the Landmark Project. It's a volunteer-based wildlife monitoring project run by Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, where volunteers get to live on a ranch in the prairies and hike transects to spot wildlife, maintain and analyse trap cameras, and count certain species of interest such as sage grouse and prairie dogs on APR land. But that isn't what this blog post is about. This post is about Theodore Roosevelt National Park! 

I drove from Guelph to Montana, driving by day and sleeping in my car in McDonald's and Wal-mart parking lots by night. Typical road trip lifestyle. On the third night I slept over at Theodore Roosevelt National Park on the western border of North Dakota. I arrived fairly late so I only saw the badlands in the dim evening light before I tucked in for the night. But I woke up bright and early to the prairie sunrise bursting in my car's frosted-up windows, casting a gorgeous glow on the fractal ice. Unfortunately my camera was too cold to function for a shot of this :( Oh well! I hit the road further into the park, only to stumble upon a herd of wild bison, which I eagerly photographed, a herd of wild pronghorn, which I eagerly photographed, and a small herd of wild horses, which I eagerly photographed. Here, of course, are the results of the sunrise safari:

The bison were still covered in frost from the night.

This one's probably my favourite bison shot of the day. Something about the frost on both the bison and the grass, and the way they're positioned so linearly, and the contrast of the dark fur and white frost...

I really loved the way the sun caught in her eye here.

The pronghorn did not stick around for long.

I'd never seen wild horses before so these were a great find!! There were only four altogether but they were very majestic. 

They actually seemed pretty accustomed to people; they allowed me to get very close :)

Sooo majestic. 

I definitely don't remember exactly where I found this great-looked abandoned farmhouse; somewhere along a highway in Montana. But I loved the combination of red roof, blue sky and golden grass.

And later that day I made it to the American Prairie Reserve, and the start of a whole new adventure in Great Plains of Montana!

And as always,  check out my photography web site at www.elainekennedyphotography.com :)

I am the worst at blogging!

Wow so it's actually been like 4 or 5 months since I last posted anything here. Ummm in that timespan I hitch-hiked around the states a bunch, backpacked around Mexico for a bit, spent Christmas with my family and got re-established in Guelph even though I'll probably only live here for a few months at most. It's been a crazy time of travelling and catching up with friends and family, but I've lately been starting to sort through photos and update the social media and website and junk, so blog is the next of the list.

To come: a brief outline and photos from around the states!

And hopefully I'll stop being a wimp about the cold and actually go out and shoot some stuff soon.

The lovely view from Highway 12 or 24 in Utah! 

Two weeks as a Rocky Mountain Nomad

This is a very rushed, last minute post because I'm in the middle of packing for a 6 week trip to the states but I figured I should do a quick update before I go off the grid for a while...

For the past two weeks or so, I've been living in the Rocky Mountains with my Norwegian pen pal Jorn. He came to visit and since I was already living in Edmonton, conveniently beside some mountains, and the mountains are one of the best parts of Canada, we decided to spend the visit there, backpacking around and such. We mostly wanted to do two min trips: the Brazeau Loop and the Skyline Trail. I don't have much time so I will cut right to the chase. 

The Brazeau Loop! 

It's a five day, 81km loop through the southern part of Jasper National Park. 

Day one was semi-decent weather, only overcast half the time, lots of up and down and different ecosystems - forest, rock field, alpine meadow, pretty rivers. Only 14km, went by pretty quickly (we also rushed since we didn't even get on the trail until 3pm). 

Day two was 18km of forest and mostly flat - pretty boring. It also rained all day and the damn trails were all lined with scrubby wet willow so we got thoroughly drenched . Gross. 

Day three went up above the tree line though! Many kilometers of beautiful mountain views and alpine meadows. Alpine meadows are actually even better in fall than in summer; they turn all golden and red and it's just stunning. There were a few late bloomers too, some sedges and aster species were still in flower. Over a pass and down to the campground! This was an especially cold night at a high elevation, probably around 2100m. Brrrrrrr. 

Day four began with a big old mountain pass at 2450m. Just hike up and up and up through the alpine until you find a towering pile of scree with some switchbacks heading to the top. Huff and puff and finally over the top aaaaand WOW that's a really breathtaking bottom half of a mountain starting me in the face. Seriously, it looked great. Climb up onto the pass and you're standing level with a huge mountain range of typical jasper colours - warm reddish and rusty tones. The top half was becoming increasingly shrouded in cloud, and then it started snowing. Excellent. Such typical mountain weather, snowing on the first day of September. It looked like Christmas in the mountains, a nice soft friendly snow. Although it was definitely blowing sideways when the wind picked up. Anyways, the view was okay, the next 10km+ was hiking in a valley of alpine meadow between two huge mountain ranges and it was super spectacular albeit very very cold. At the end, hike down a whole bunch into the forest and back to the camp from the first night where two friendly and somewhat drunk hikers have already started a campfire which makes you want to kiss them because you happened to slip in a glacial stream earlier that day and your feet are soaked. Or maybe that's just me. 

Day five: develop a bad cold and hike the heck out. There may or may not be a mouse living in your trunk by this point, eating your oats and raisins. 

The Tonquin Valley Loop! 

We didn't have a ton of time so we just did 20km in to Amethyst Lake and then back out the next day. 

Caribou. All I really want to say about this is that we saw caribou. three of them. It's pretty much like seeing a unicorn, but better. Also the mountains are phenomenal (the Ramparts Range, if you were wondering), the campground is the nicest and most scenic I've ever been to, it's a huge alpine valley meadow thing in the middle of these mountains with a giant lake and god damn caribou. If you ever get the chance, go to Amethyst Lake and you will never ever regret it. 

 No time to process pictures argh!

Ummm after that we went to Banff, it doesn't hold a candle to Jasper, but we bummed around there and saw Moraine and Louise and I have to go finish packing. Next stops: Colorado, Zion, Arches, Red Rock, Grand Canyon, Sequioa, Yosemite, Yellowstone, etc etc etc. XO!

Oh and funny story, on the first day back in real civilization (Calgary) there was a freak snowstorm during rush hour that resulted my car getting seriously crunched. This is why I should live in the wilderness forever. City life is too much. 

Bison rut at Elk Island National Park and how much I miss the real prairies.

So our 2014 field season is over, all the pressed plants have been sent in to the experts, all the field guides and hand lenses have been returned, and we've all moved out of Red Deer and into Edmonton for a month of lichen ID and sorting. As fun as it is to live in a real city with lots of restaurants and festivals and museums and indoor climbing, I still sorely miss working every day in the rolling grasslands of Southern Alberta. The Hesperostipas are probably just losing the last of their dart-seeds, the Astragaluses probably all have pods now, and it's probably all starting to get that really lovely golden glow of the very beginning of autumn (even better when the Rumex turns a rich deep burgundy). And I'm stuck way up here in Edmonton surrounded by roads and buildings and beyond that, farmland and parkland and so many god damn trees. Prairie withdrawal is a serious issue...

On the bright side, Elk Island National Park is sort of nearby, only 45 minutes east of the city, and as it turns out, August is rutting season for the bison! The bison rut is when the males bellow, wallow, and fight each other to establish dominance and mating rights. So I got myself over to Elk Island for a day with the goal of finding and photographing some rutting bison.

Elk Island has two population of bison: the plains bison in the north and the wood bison in the south. As much as I would have loved to see wood bison (since I've seen plenty of plains bison at Grasslands National Park), the north section of the park has way more trails to offer, so I set off on the popular Hayburger Trail. As soon as you hop onto the trailhead, it's pretty clear that the area is a hotspot for bison. There was just as much bison poop on and around the trail as there was cow poop in most of the ranchland I worked in, and bison fur and hoofprints everywhere. I definitely stepped in more than a few bison pies... However, in the whole 11km trail I didn't see a single bison. Although I did happen across some dried up quicksand.

I don't think this was actually a danger; it was all dried up.

Oh well, no bison there, that just means they're hiding out at another part of the park, right? Time for another hike! Maybe a nice hike around a lake this time, maybe the bison were all just thirsty. To the Tawayik Lake Trail! Oh wait.... where is this trail? Where is the lake? All I see is a bunch of wet meadow... Oh. Okay. Turns out the lake was more of less dried up to a large wetland. But I did get a nice hour-long nap at the birding platform and a quick 5km loop near the lake. Found a friendly beaver, lots of baby American Coots, several handfuls of raspberries and a thousand mosquitoes. But still no bison!

Beaver!

16km down, I'm getting hungry and tired and ready to head back to Edmonton, and still not a single bison. But there is a 1km driving loop called the Bison Loop, I mean that's not nearly as glamourous as finding them while hiking, and if I didn't find them in that 16km there probably won't be any in this teeny area, but what the heck it'll only take a few minutes, might as well check it out. And of course, as soon as I get in there, there are a bunch of bison right at the beginning. They are bellowing. And wallowing. And being bison. UGHHH. So a couple hours later, I've finally gotten my fill of bison rut. These things happened within that couple hours:

• Beautiful sunset
• Incredible amount of bellowing
• Lots of wallowing
• Met a gentleman named Steve who was doing contract bison photography for Elk Island who taught me a bit about bison behaviour, such as when to run away (tail is raised and bison is not pooping = RUN)
• One very agitated male bison started bellowing and trotting towards us very intimidatingly. As we turned to hop back into our cars for relative safety, we then realized another male had snuck up behind us on the road, and the two were getting ready to face off. 
• Places I would HIGHLY recommend avoiding: the space between two angry male bison in rutting season. 
• Some really (REALLY) stupid young teenager actually approached the dominant male bison and his mate within ~30 meters while holding out a fistful of grass. This makes me wonder about whether letting tourists hang out with free-ranging bison during the rut is really a good idea after all...
• I got really scared when a bison passed by a couple meters from my car. I don't think a little Toyota Echo would stand up too well to an angry 1.6tonne charging horned beast. 

This bison was just itching for a fight, but was too scared to actually fight the dominant male. He sure did make a racket though! 

Two male bison facing off for a fight (eventually one charged and the other backed down). 

Overall, there were lots of false charges and bellowing, and plenty of bison being bison, but no actual fights broke out. The only logical conclusion is to return to Elk Island again and again until I see a real bison fight.

Botanizing at last!

The summer shifts at ABMI are mostly focused on plants, since most prairie plants go into flower later in summer (July-ish?). As a plant technologist, my job is to identify and/or collect as many plants as I can at each of our sites! It’s been an amazing learning experience, and I’ve definitely become a much much much better botanist than I was before summer. Although I had a bunch of help with the boreal plants from my wonderful supervisor, most of the prairie work has been independent, so I’ve gotten very intimate with all my plant books (the Common Plants of the Western Rangelands series, put out by the Government of Alberta, is my favourite go-to field guide, although the paper covers and first few pages have long since fallen off...).

The first few days of shift were in the Rocky Mountain House area, which I hadn’t really worked in before, so there were lots of new and exciting plants to learn! I definitely liked the shrubs the most. Fun species I found in the boreal:

• ·         Raspberry (Rubus idaeus)
• ·         Lowbush cranberry (Viburnum edule)
• ·         Spreading dogbane (Apocynum androsaemifolium)
• ·         Baneberry (Actaea rubra)
• ·         Blueberry (Vaccinium myrtilloides)
• ·         Saskatoon berry (Amelanchier alnifolia)
• ·         Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana AND vesca)
• ·         Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana)
• ·         Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea)
• ·         Lots of gooseberries (Ribes hudsonianum, lacustre and oxyacanthoides)
• ·         Twinflower (Linnaea borealis)
• ·         Spotted coral-root (Corallorhiza maculata)

As you can probably tell, I really like berries… 

But as lovely and buggy as forest sites, are, it’s the prairie sites that I was really gunning for. We had a bunch of sites on the Suffield military base which I probably can’t say much about, except that there were a very concerning amount of weeds and disturbance species around. All of the tank and truck trails were just covered in crested wheatgrass and yellow sweet clover, yuck! But one site there was just amazing, it was super sandy and apparently very undervisited because there were barely any disturbance species or invasives. Just lots of fun fun sandy species! Here are some that I have only found at that site and one or two other sandy-soil sites:

• ·         Indian rice grass (Oryzopsis hymenoides)
• ·         Dropseed (Sporobulus heterolepis)
• ·         Sand reedgrass (Calamovilfa longifolia)
• ·         White evening primrose (Oenothera pallida)
• ·         Chamaerhodos (Chamaerhodos erecta)
• ·         Scurf pea (Psoralea esculenta)
• ·         Indian bread-root (Psoralidium lanceolatum)
• ·         Ground plum (Astragalus crassicarpa)
• ·         Purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea)
• ·         White prairie clover (Dalea candida)
• ·         Drummond’s milkvetch (Astragalus drummondii)
• ·         White beardtongue (Penstemon albidus)

Sandy species are a bucket of fun :) We had another interesting site only a few kilometers from the Montana border, and also within easy view of the Canadian rocky mountains. More fun plants to be found there:

• ·         Shortawn foxtail (Alopecurus aequalis)
• ·         So many astragaluses! Agrestis, crassicarpus, drummondii, flexuosus, pectinatus, and one that I couldn’t ID
• ·         One-spike AND California oatgrasses (Danthonia unispicata and californica)
• ·         Alum root (Heuchera parvifolia)
• ·         Fernleaf biscuitroot (Lomatium dissectum)
• ·         False gromwell (Onosmodium molle)
• ·         Owl-clover (Orthocarpus luteus)
• ·         Sticky locoweed (Oxytropis borealis)
• ·         Woolly groundsel (Packera cana)
• ·         Scouler’s popcornflower (Plagiobothrys scouleri)

That one was probably my most diverse prairie site so far with 80 species J So it's been a fantastic two shifts of botanizing around the boreal and the prairies, keying out milkvetches and grasses to my heart's content. Kind of bummed that there are only two more days of surveying left... And I don't even have any good photos to show for it except for a cool elk skull that my partner found:

Elk!

Sport climbing, back-country camping and bighorn sheep stand-offs at Banff National Park!

I actually wrote this about a month ago but never had the time to post it apparently... field work really picked up and subsequent breaks have been very busy and very mountainy. But here's what I did at some point in June?? A Banff trip!

So on my last break (which was the longest one at a whopping 6 days!!) we made the trek out to Banff and Lake Louise. Initially the plan was to sport climb at Lake Louise for a couple days and then head down to Waterton National Park for some good old back-country camping, but a slough of road closures, floods and avalanche warnings seriously hindered that plan. And since front-country camping is just getting old and is totally not as adventurous or rewarding as back-country, and Waterton is far away anyways, my climbing partner and I (aka Team Lulu) hung out in and around Banff and just sport-climbed for several days and worked in a little back-country trip as well. So this post is all about Banff National Park and the sport climbing around the area.

Lulu (official spokesferret of Team Lulu) and squirrel-friend.

First off, climbing, because that’s obviously high priority.  The sport climbing around Banff is amazing! There are tons of crags around Banff area with a wide range of grades, and tons of campsites nearby which really facilitates multi-day climbing trips. The Lake Louise area was really good, we climbed at the Back of the Lake, which is a pretty easy hike in; you get to hike a couple km around scenic Lake Louise and up a little slope to several awesome walls. It’s a pretty popular spot so the routes we did were really well maintained, and has some good height which lead to great views over the Lake (tons of people visit Lake Louise, but very few get to see it from that angle - it’s quite spectacular!). Very interesting climbs too, a bunch of different styles. My favourite was a 5.9 (I'll dig up the name at some point), which started with normal face climbing and lead to a ton of sweet sandstonesque horizontal cracks. Super fun! Overall, Lake Louise is pretty great although not very wilderness-y. But it does have some very friendly ground squirrels and Clark's nutcrackers.

The next couple days of climbing were at Tunnel Mountain, very close to Banff. Tunnel Mountain has okay access, it's a bit easier to get lost heading in to Tunnel than Lake Louise, but you do get to climb up a fun little scramble. Lots of good climbs on the Scoop, did our first 5.10a there, it’s all well bolted and mostly 5.8 to 5.11 climbs, lots of slab. The view from there is a lot of scenic forest and mountains, and a big old classy hotel. The sunset bathed the mountains in warm gold light, and we climbed right up until it got dark (around 10:30pm at this time of year!). We were still on the wall when the hotel fully lit up, and it looked pretty damn good for being a big unnatural block of civilization in the middle of the mountains. Next day was the Industrial playground, which had a lot of missing bolt and anchors, so I definitely wouldn’t recommend it.

The last day of climbing was at Heart Creek, just east of Canmore. This one was probably the best out of them all. There are something like 260 routes in Heart Creek and around 8 different crags. The first one, aptly named First Rock, is only a 15min hike in and the belay area is luxuriously flat and clear. All the routes are well bolted and have solid anchors, although some holds have been smoothed out over time since it’s such a popular spot. A lot of easier climbs here, 5.6-5.9, and a couple higher grades. A bit past is this incredible face called Jupiter Rock, which boasts a ton of 5.10 and 5.11 climbs that are nice and high (20-30+m) that are involved pockets, cracks, arêtes, and caves. Very cool spot! The only downside is that a lot of the climbs on the left side of the rock start out right at the edge of the creek so your belayer will get very wet. But still a great spot! Callipso (5.10a) is probably the most fun sport climb I’ve done yet.

We only really checked out three climbing spots around Banff, but there are tons more. Super-hot-spot for sport climbs!

Banff itself was another little adventure. First off, my predisposition was against Banff since it’s known as the most touristy and over-commercialized of all the mountain parks. The hotels, the trans-canada highways, the railway… it just never sounded as wild and remote as the other parks like Yoho and Jasper. After actually going there, I did find a lot of this to be true. The townsite is pretty crowded with people and shops, everything is paved (heck, even some of the trails were paved for the first km!), there are manicured lawns and dozens of picnic tables on the big lakes, which is really weird to see in the middle of a mountain range. Not to mention tour boats with loudspeakers. So initially I still kind of thought Banff sucked compared to the other parks. But once we got through the popular first few km of the Lake Minnewanka trail and into the back-country, you could easily forget about all civilization. It was just like any other back-country trail, remote and rugged. Actually it was a pretty easy trail, mostly flat and no real obstacles. Still very scenic though, and we even saw a herd bighorn sheep (babies included!). 

Little bighorn sheep on the Lake Minnewanka trail in Banff, Alberta.

There are a few different campsites on the trail at 8, 9, and 11km. We picked the 11km site since a) it involved the most hiking and b) we got the whole campground all to ourselves! The back-country campsites on Lake Minnewanka are top notch; they’ve got bear poles, a group fire pit and cooking area, a couple picnic tables, and lots of nice little tent pads that are just a cleared patch of ground. And they’ve all got a rocky beach right next to them for endless water supply and  endless swimming! We watched the sun set over the mountains, had a beach fire at night, and got a tent pad nice and close to the lake and surrounded by trees for wind protection. We were greeted in the morning by bighorn rams on the beach, and had a morning dip in the lake, which was surprisingly not ice cold - couldn’t be better!  Lake Minnewanka back-country camping, A+.

Sunset hitting the mountains over Lake Minnewanka. 

Sunset, mountains and a rock beach at Lake Minnewanka. 

Ending our hike with a triple rainbow over the lake!

We also did a little side trip on the way back  a few km up the mountains to a lookout over the lake, which gave a gorgeous 360 degree view of the mountains around the Lake (there are a lot of them and they all look kind of different). But after about 5 minutes of appreciating the view we totally got chased off the mountain by two very territorial and unimpressed bighorn rams (possibly the same two that were on the beach that morning??). To be fair, I maybe could have kept more of a distance or backed off, but the ambitous little wildlife photographer in me just couldn’t give up such a kick-ass photo op… until Mr Ram started pawing the ground and whatnot. Then we kind of skedaddled off into the trees to try and get back down the mountains without infuriating them more (tricky since one was standing in the middle of the path we needed to take down…). So yeah, two hikers hiding in the trees from a couple of bighorn sheep, bear spray in one hand and a knife in the other (or in my case, camera in one hand and knife in the other). Back-country adventures at their finest? Wouldn't trade it for anything in the world :) 

Bighorn ram #1 beside Aylmer Lookout on Lake Minnewanka.

Bighorn ram #2 at Aylmer Lookout on Lake Minnewanka.

 As always, thanks for reading and feel free to explore my photography page at www.elainekennedyphotography.com for the best of the best wildlife shots!

xo
Elaine

One month working for ABMI in Alberta

Well it's been just over a month of living in Alberta working for the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, and what a month it's been! My current position in Alberta is all about monitoring all sorts of biodiversity: plants, moss, lichens, trees, birds, soil, water quality, water inverts, habitat habitat habitat, just about everything. Our job is to collect all of the data at a whole bunch of sites throughout Alberta during the summer field season. This data is made publically available for baseline data, research, and management purposes J It’s a really large scale monitoring project , and a really cool organization dedicated to providing high quality, unbiased, accessible biodiversity data.

We collect lots of lichen; this is a cool one I found in a forest.

So far my two-person crew has been to a good chunk of southern Alberta: sites near Hanna, Medicine Hat, Elkwater, Milk River, Drumheller and Pigeon Lake. Lots of driving, but lots of great places to see! The aspen forests of central AB are full of cool shrubs and fun birds, but I definitely like the open rangelands of the south the most. There’s nothing like open rolling prairie, clouds for miles, and sparrows flitting about the grass. Very thankful to cattle ranchers for keeping the native prairie alive (some say the only reason there is any native prairie left is cattle ranching).

The sun rises over native prairie at Onefour Research Station.

Highlights of work have involved:

• ·         A sweet little hobby farm run by the nicest couple; they introduced us to their chickens, rabbits, cats, dogs, and horses and even let us play with a month-old foal. It was pretty much the cutest little horse I’ve ever interacted with. They also tried to pawn off a baby kitten on me, which was incredibly hard to say no to since it was riding around on my shoulders for a good half hour as we toured the farm. To top it all off, they sent us away with three dozen fresh eggs of all colours and sizes. Really lovely farm! I still miss the kitten a bit.
• ·         Many early early mornings (generally waking up between 3 and 3:30am) watching sunrises and listening to birds sing. After the first couple mornings you start to get used to it, and I even started to like it. You see the best wildlife on bird schedule!
• ·         Getting about a pound of mud stuck to each boot on a rainy day in a very clayey crop field. Good workout, unpleasant life experience.
• ·         Getting barked at by a pronghorn. She actually seemed really curious, since she hung around the site for most of the morning just watching us. She was a cutie!

·        

THIS very friendly pronghorn, to be exact.

• ·         Sitting on a cactus and not realizing it until later that night when I discovered a bunch of cactus spines in my bum while showering, and subsequently spending 20 minutes picking them out. Not exactly what I imagined I’d be doing on a Friday night, but made for a funny story.

  

  Cacti. Nice to look at, but they are not my friends. 

• ·         Locking ourselves out of our hotel at 3am and trying to explain to the staff that yes, really, we just needed to get back into our room to get some stuff, and no, we weren’t trying to skip out on the hotel bill in the middle of the night. Not the best start to a morning... a morning which continued with me having to crawl through 3 tight fences and running-long-jump over a creek to get to my bird point inside a llama pen. 
• ·       Did I mention the stunning views? At our last site, which was really close to the Montana border near Milk River, listening to a plethora of birds binging as the sun rose in the east, casting a warm glow on the Rocky Mountains to the west, endless rolling lush native prairie, and a cool mist rising off of the wetlands. Probably one of the prettiest mornings I’ve ever seen. Also two Baird’s sparrows (no photos though, bummer)!!
• ·         Finally, meeting a crew of older men at the motel who were hired specifically to shoot gophers for a week, since apparently some farms have been overrun by gophers that dig up the land and ruin the crop and break cows’ legs (although I have recently been told that studies have shown the broken-cow-leg thing to be a myth) . I will admit, there were a crap ton of gophers at our site in the area, I almost stepped on a few…But curiously didn’t see very many hawks around. Not a single FEHA! L

     And that’s mostly the work I’ve been doing for the past month. Off days have all been spent in the Rockies, around Canmore and Kootenay Plains. I should probably be in bed right now since I have to be up at 2:45am for birds, but tomorrow (or sometime very soon) I'll write about ABMI's adventures during breaks, which have all involved camping, mountains and FUN (and also lots of pretty photos).

Extra photos from spring shift one:

Pronghorn are my favourite prairie animal.

Baby bird is hungry! I felt a little bad since the parents wouldn't feed it while I was shooting nearby...

Hoodoo holes at Writing on Stone Provincial Park.

Amazing hoodoo-filled landscape after a rain at Writing on Stone Provincial Park.