BCN: Steamboat July 7

Steamboat Mountain is in the distance.  To the right is Tepee Mountain.

We woke to rain.  Last night the rain had stopped before we fell into bed.  The heavy clouds provided somewhat of the feeling of darkness.  This far north it is not getting dark at night.  We had tried to see the northern lights when along Lake Williston, but the sky was not dark enough, and we are now even farther north.  I awoke about 3AM and my tent seemed so light.  The sun was already up; however, shortly after, rain commenced again.  With it raining, we took the morning slowly hoping for it to stop and it did.

Today's destination was to be Tepee Mountain, a long shot.  We had no idea to the extent that there would be boulders; however, where there is bedrock, we have found boulders.  It is a mountain and in the right spot and the map shows a trail leading to near the top.  Steamboat Mountain is far less accessible.  Off we go.

As we drove out of the camp ground we saw a coyote.  Back at Morbly we had seen a cute little coyote pup.  We found the logging road we needed at a truck pull off on the Alan.  The topographic map showed that it would eventually climb the ridge to Tepee Mountain.  The road was about 3.5 kilometers with and additional a 0.7 kilometer assent through the forest with a 100 meter climb in elevation.   The road's initial assent was very steep but it leveled off and we thought this would be the best approach we had yet had.  Surprise, it was just to the cell tower  near the highway.  We turned around and there was the road we needed.  Immediately we knew it was impassible.  We will have to walk.  We drove back down to the Alcan and parked on the other side at a lookout stop, loaded up on water and food.  Off we hiked with our shotgun and bear spray, not knowing how long this would take.

We must have been the first to go down the road this season.  The road was narrow with alders growing up in the center.  It had ruts filled with water and in places there were actual bogs. The biggest obstacle were the trees that were down.  Nearly every 20 to 30 yards there were one to three trees down.  We had to scramble over or under or around.  Hurdling all the way.  In places the bed rock was exposed in the "road" bed and with it wet, it was like ice.  We kept looking off into the forest for boulders or outcrops.  Berto took to the forest much of the time.  Our going was slow.  

As we started walking Anders said we would check the map on the iPad after walking 45 minutes to see our progress.  Finally, we spotted a bedrock outcrop off in the forest.  We piled some sticks and logs to mark the spot for collecting on our return if necessary.  On we trudged.  We checked the iPad.  We had only gone about 2 kilometers.  For a road it was really slow going.  Eventually a call came from Berto.  On the other side of the “road” he had found an outcrop of bedrock.  There we took 3 samples.  Our spirits were buoyed.  

Keep trudging, climbing over the downed trees.  Anders spotted a boulder. 

The good news was it was far enough from the road that it was not near the berm where boulders had been bulldozed years back when the road was graded.  We climbed into the forest to again a surface that was even spongier than yesterday’s forest.  The moss was so thick.  One seemed to sink forever.  The floor is thick with a variety of mosses and lichens.  With them is an evergreen ground cover thick and rich.  I finally found a few berries on them.  I believe they possibly are lingon berries or partridge berries.

As Heather and Anders worked on the first boulder Berto and I scouted around.  We eventually sampled five boulders.  Tepee was proving to be most productive.  Fortunately, we were not going to have to go all the way to the top.  We could now turn around and not have to slodge on further up the mountain.  Off we return  stopping at the two points we had marked on the trail.  We collected three more bedrock samples.

2:30 back to the Explorer.  We were soaked.  Remember it had rained hard in the night and in the morning.  All the trees were soaking wet.  We had to scramble through them.  Our hair was soaked, our boots were soaked, our packs were soaked, and our pants.  I had rain pants and a rain shell on, but with the exertion of climbing over the downed trees they were as wet inside from sweat as outside.  We loaded up our gear and headed back to Fort Nelson to get some supplies for the night at the campground. 

Again tonight we have had drenching deluge of rain.  The Tetsa River is higher than last night.  It is raging.  We saw a log racing past.  The waves are clear across the river tonight.  Fortunately, the rain held off until all the samples from this week were organized and packed in their Roughneck plastic boxes, labeled and ready for shipping from Edmonton back to Corvallis.  Mission accomplished.  11 samples off Mount Tepee for British Columbia North.  We just completed the longest ever contiguous transect in one direction for cosmogenic dating.

I have made reference to beryllium-10 and to the sampling.  In essence the boulders are sunburned, and this sunburn provides an opportunity to determine the age of exposure of the rocks.  There are galactic cosmic rays formed from supernovas in outer space flying to earth that are impacting our bodies right now.  They are mainly fast protons, cosmic radiation.  They hit the atmosphere and come through it and hit things.  In the case of quartz, they hit the silica and oxygen in the quartz and split it.  One of the byproducts is beryllium-10.  So beryllium 10 is produced in quartz.  We sample boulders that are quartz-rich.  We are taking the samples back to the lab where we will isolate the quartz and measure the beryllium-10 in the quartz.  The beryllium-10 will tell us how long the rock has been exposed to this radiation.  If you know how much beryllium-10 is in the rock and we know the rate of its production we can back track and know the age or exposure of the rock.

BCS - British Columbia South July 5, 2016

Today, we finished up BCS with great success.  We are working along a planned transect.  BCS refers to the the area where we collected today, which means British Columbia South.  This project consists of six collecting areas:  ABS (Alberta South), ABC (Alberta Central),  ABN (Alberta North), BCS (British Columbia South), BCC (British Columbia Central) and BCN (British Columbia North).   These areas are roughly two degrees latitude apart.

After some complications yesterday, we  returned to the ridge from Bullhead Mountain.  Boulders have successfully been found on bedrock that is above 850 meters.  That means it would be above the glacial melt lake and has not been submerged.

The free range horses were so curious.  On our descent they followed us.

We drove back up the Bullhead road through the gate to the pasture we had gone through on our first day in Hudson’s Hope.  We had our iPad along with maps downloaded from the Canadian Backroad Mapbooks.  When we arrived in the meadow, a beautiful herd of horses were grazing.  There is a small pond sheltered under trees.  At first we were walking on cow paths. 

We are hiking into the brush up to the ridge. We walked and walked with the lovely meadow and paths slowly giving way to thick brush and thicker brush. 
We even traipsed through stinging nettles.  Cow parsnip stood shoulder high.  Alders were thick.  Spruce were down and totally decaying with moss thickly covering the logs.  Further on we had to climb over huge dead spruce trees, trees fallen like pick-up sticks. 

We knew it was going to be quite a trek, but we were surprised.

Berto is taking the sample.  At each site, Heather took notes and photographs, including the GPS position, thickness of sample, elevation, position and sketch of boulder, and any special features.

We are in bear country and must be safe.

Shortly up we found our first boulder, a good sized one.  Anders and Heather began sampling and I headed off with Berto.  We climbed and groped our way through the undergrowth.  We saw a couple more and kept working our way through the brush hoping to reach the top of the ridge.  At the top the bedrock formed the ridge, weathering round and smooth, spreading out high over the valley and lake. We were at an elevation of 1060 meters and climbed to 1150 meters.   As we worked our way back down through the brush we found a couple more boulders, marking these with red tape so as to be able to find them again.  In the end we collected samples from 10 boulders.  I got my chance to collect a sample. 

I got my chance to collect a sample, removing  approximately 20 grams of rock 2 cm thick.

Walking down the truck was a wee bit easier but still incredibly difficult cutting through the thick brush.

Our picnic lunch with the horses after collecting that morning.  

We drove back to Fort St. John to catch the Alcan following the Peace River valley.  The fields are gorgeous with buckwheat nearly in bloom.  If I look closely I can just see a tinge of white atop the rich green, making the field look frosty.

We headed for Pink Mountain to camp and prospect for boulders.  We drove through heavy rain a good share of the way north.  We were up the turnoff road and then onto the road to the mountain and had managed to drive about about 6 km with 16 km to go when we hit washouts.  With speed and keeping to the high ground we made it through the first two with water flying over the doors.  At the third lake, Berto and Anders got out and walked into the water to measure the depth.  The water was up over their calves.

Anders is off in the distance around the bend checking the road.

Walking back through the flooded road from up the road, Anders slid and fell into the water, coming out covered in silt.  As he changed clothes, the conclusion was no go.  Later he realized he had lost his sunglasses in the fall.
 
 Frogs jumped in the marsh along the road as we maneuvered a turn around. 
On our way back to the Alcan rain fell hard again.  With the village of  Pink Mountain at mile 143 we headed  to Buckinghorse River at mile 175.   We camped along Buckinghorse River tonight.  The river is rushing full and brown with silt carried from the till in the mountains. It is over its bank.  We had a great morning with 10 specimens collected on the ridge.