AlCan Highway, July 3

We have been driving since June 28^th. We started collecting south of Nanton and have been working our way north with driving days and collecting days. Today we left Grand Cache, Alberta and drove north on 40 to Grand Prairie.

In route along the highway we saw a young grizzly bear, probably about two years old. He was rather thin so he would have fairly recently left his mama and is having to find food on his own. From Grand Prairie we took 2 to Dawson Creek and along the road we saw a young black bear. Again about 2 and newly on his own. At Dawson Creek we picked up the AlCan Highway.

It was begun in 1942 by the U.S. Army to bring supplies to Alaska.

We drove to St. John, British Columbia where we are spending the night.

This afternoon we headed west along highway 29 into the Peace River valley to Hudson’s Hope. There we drove up Bull Head Mountain. Part way up was a gravel pit cut into the side of the mountain. The till strata was clearly visible at the top. We checked out the top where there were outcrops of weathered bedrock. We had thought it would be promising for boulders, but really found none. It did not deposit any, possibly because a small peak or position relative to ice flow. It is perpendicular to ice flow. You have to get pretty lucky to deposit any. If parallel to ice flow the chances of deposition of boulders is greater.The road up and down was again a fun one with a steep grade, wash outs and bedrock exposures.

We say good bye to one of our crew. Jorie Clark, a geologist with Oregon State University who must now return to work. Our crew includes four others continuing on for the second week. Quaternary geologist Alberto Reyes is a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Anders Carlson is a glacial geologist focused on ice sheets at Oregon State University. Heather Bervid works for USGS as geomorphologist and is a PhD student in glacial geology at Oregon State University. And Betsy Carlson is an outreach educator at Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois.