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.