KatmaiNP

KatmaiNP

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katmai01MtIliamna (June 11, 2003) The Katmai National Park volcanology trip was the first of the 2003 summer for me. It started on June 11th and ended on June 20th. The group of 16 students, faculty, and interns left from Fairbanks and headed to Anchorage. Later that day we were all on our way to King Salmon, Alaska. On this leg we passed by a couple of volcanoes like Mt. St. Augustine and Mt. Iliamna.

katmai01MtIliamna

katmai02Bears1 From King Salmon we divided up into two groups to fly to Brooks Lodge at Katmai National Park via float plane. The first night in Brooks Lodge we all got some bear training from the park rangers that ended up coming in handy later that day. After heading to Brooks Falls, where the bears usually sit and wait for salmon to jump up river to spawn, we saw a mother brown bear and her three cubs on a sand bar. It was pretty cool to see!

katmai03Bears2 They eventually realized that they were being watched by us, so headed down the beach...

katmai04FlagFloatPlane ...to where the float planes dock.

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katmai05Eagles1 Another cool wildlife thing we saw that night was two fledgling Bald Eagles by Brooks Falls.

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katmai06P6110110 The group of us then headed to the lodge to hang out and answer trivia questions, for the next day was the beginning of the 7 days in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

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katmai07P6120111 (June 12, 2003) The next day we weighed all of our gear to see how much it might change when we get back.

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katmai08P6120125 The gear was then loaded onto the bus that takes some tourists to an observation point for the Valley. On the way the park rangers had three stops to tell us about.

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katmai09Moose2 At one of them we actually saw some moose feeding. The pictures I took with the digital camera (the first real test of its field capabilities for me) of this moose were with full digital zoom on. The zoom was 3 times the 10X optical zoom that the camera has. The moose was actually a good mile and a half to two miles away, but came out very nicely.

katmai10P6120142 We finally got to the trailhead where we started the 9 km (always as the crow flew) hike to the Baked Mountain Huts.

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katmai11P6120145 During the hike we had two river crossings where we had to take off our boots and trek through the glacial river water.

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katmai12P6120154 We eventually came across some old fumarole fields that gave the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes its name. The Valley is a large area of pyroclastic surge and flow deposits from the 1912 cataclysmic eruption of Mt. Katmai and Novarupta, the largest eruption in the world during the 20th Century.

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katmai13P6120155 At the same sight as the fumaroles we saw great examples of banded pumice from the eruption.

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katmai14P6120156 The second banded pumice example from the area.

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katmai15P6120181 Right before we got to the second river crossing the group stopped for a short break. I took the chance to snap a photo of Ben (left) and Abdiel (right) with Baked Mountain in the background.

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katmai16P6120185 The second river/stream crossing during the hike on the way to Baked Mountain Huts.

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katmai17Huts After another 2 hours or so we finally reached our accommodations at the Baked Mountain Huts.

katmai18P6180380 From here we got a great view looking to the west-northwest at the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, though this photo is actually from a couple days later when there was better weather.

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katmai19Pan2MartinMageik (June 13, 2003) The next morning was beautiful to start out. I took a short stroll to the west-southwest where I got an awesome panoramic photo of Mt. Mageik (left) and Mt. Martin (right with some steam escaping from the summit).

katmai19Pan2MartinMageik

katmai20OurLeader This day we were taking the hike to the actual vent source of the 1912 eruption called Novarupta. Mt. Katmai was also part of the eruption, but it was where a caldera collapse took place. Our leader for this entire expedition was John Eichelberger, a research professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Coordinating Scientist at the Fairbanks part of the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

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katmai21P6130226 Before heading out on the trail we all were shown the effects of the wind-blown pumice abrasion (on our huts) that occurs in the valley.

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katmai22P6130228 While on the trail...

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katmai23P6130230 ...I got a cool naturally cloud framed photo of Mt. Mageik.

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katmai24Novarupta We finally made it to Novarupta. At the end of the eruption the last bit of magma that came to the surface extruded as a roughly 200 foot lava dome that plugged the vent.

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katmai25P6130275 There are still some fumaroles on the dome that we saw when we climbed up on top by way of the snow that was on the sides of the dome.

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katmai26P6140312 We got back that night and had a decent sunset before calling it a night.

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katmai27MtGriggsandI (June 15th was an off day; this photo is from June 16, 2003) On the 16th was a hike for all of us to Knife Creek. During this hike the wind was blowing at a decent speed (about 30-40 mph) to pick up the pumice to a couple hundred feet in height. Since we were walking into the wind at the outset we got a face-full of pumice many times. I did get Lilly to snap a photo of me in front of Mt. Griggs Volcano.

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katmai28P6170364 (June 17, 2003) The last day of hiking for me was the 17th of June. The group all went to Mageik Lakes for about an 18 km round-trip hike. It was a rainy and chilly day to start out, but eventually stopped raining later in the day. When we got to the two lakes that make up Mageik Lakes we saw a couple of waterfalls coming from the glaciers on Mt. Mageik.

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katmai29P6170366 Since there are glaciers on these volcanoes we also got to see some glaciated terrain. On the way back from this trip I ended up twisting the other knee that was not hurting from two days before. This prevented me from going on the last hike of the trip to Trident Volcano, which was the next day. Instead, I rested me knee for the hike out on the 19th of June.

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katmai30calderapanJackie (From June 14, 2003) This day was one where most of the group trekked about 18 km to Katmai Caldera. I didn't make this trip since I was nursing a knee that took a beating the previous day. I did get a photo from Jackie Caplin-Auerbach (even though it may be marked by the watermark on the photo as being from me - it is from her) that shows the entire caldera in a panoramic view. The caldera had filled up with water from melting snow that fell into the caldera after the eruption. We all rested the next day.

katmai30calderapanJackie

katmai31P6190389 (June 19, 2003) After the hike out on the 19th we all had a great dinner of steak. All were glad to have real non-camping cooked food as can be seen in this photo (in the photo from Left to Right are Lucia, Ben, Lindsay, and Lilly).

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katmai32SalmonJumping After showering some of us went back to Brooks Falls, braving the mosquitos, to see if there were any bears eating some salmon. When we got to the falls there were no bears, but the salmon were jumping up stream. Only about one fish made it up stream while we were there for the 30 minutes.

katmai32SalmonJumping

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