A week or so ago we attempted a trip that we have been talking about for a few years, West Fork. West Fork is the river that drains Mt. Veniaminof, our closest volcano, but has not been visited by and FRI students in recent history. It is very silty and notoriously braided, but it harbors a large amount of the watershed that I have no genetic samples from. So, while the water was still high we decided to take both our jets up the river and give it a try. As predicted. the lower stretch is a silty mess. Both boats ended up getting stuck and a bit of cooling system repair and pushing was needed (here Conrad and Lindsy are working on the duck boat).
Once we got past the delta area the going was easier, although its is still a flat braided mess, and some on the fly decisions are required about direction.
We got very close to the volcano and it afforded some spectacular views between the clouds.
In the end we made it about 25 km up the West Fork. We could have gone further, but the gradient got pretty steep and we were more worried about getting back down, so we decided to call it a day. In the end I got 300 Dolly Varden samples from three streams, so the mission was a success
4 comments:
Sounds like it was a hard but successful trip. 300 samples sounds great.
why is it called the duck boat?
Well, actually we call it Duckie. I think its because it is a camouflage flat bottom boat. Maybe that's what duck hunters use. We have another boat that had a Yamaha motor on it that we just call Yamaha. However, it recently got a new motor and we moved the Yamaha to Duckie, so now its Yuckie.
I thought maybe it could go on land too and carry people around with music blaring. I was *kind of* looking forward to that.
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