Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Marmot quest

A couple Sundays ago there were rainclouds to the north and rainclouds to the south, but a beautiful sunny sky over Toolik. A couple of the science techs and I loaded bikes into the back of a camp truck and drove some miles south on the Dalton to one of the access roads to the pipeline and biked along the pipeline trail a mile or so, up to a known marmot den in search of its inhabitant(s).


There was a gorgeous view across the tundra of camp, perched there on the edge of Toolik Lake:


And the marmot den was fairly obvious and remarkably stinky and fly/mosquito infested. 


The mosquitos have gotten officially very nasty, and my trusty mosquito net really came in handy for this quest. Which was successful!  Not a great picture, but a marmot is standing straight up at attention, staring at us, in  the center of this frame. See?


And as always, the tundra scored knock-out punches of beauty on ground level as well.



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