Eradicating Weeds in Wrangell-St. Elias
This past week has been a blast as we continued our fight eradicating invasive species! This week we pulled clover, dandelions and timothy grass in Kennecott the old mining town and root glacier in Alaska. So not only did we pull weeds but we had an awesome view of the glacier in our sights.
We started out in the small town of Glenallen working with our project sponsor Peter frank for the first day pulling Crepis Tactorum in the maintenance yard at the Wrangle Elias headquarters where we also met his intern the awesome and wonderful Megan from Michigan. After we ended our day and headed back to dry creek (aka mosquito creek) we prepared ourselves for the rest of the week out in Kennecott mining town. About 4 hours away,
The next morning we began our semi half day at the visitor center pulling weeds till 9:30 filled up on water and headed the 4 hours towards Kennecott mining town with a little bit of construction delays along the way. But regardless the drive there was as beautiful as we hoped it would be, with the river on our left and right one minute and lakes and more lakes following the next. We neared the end of our drive towards Kennecott we came across a foot bridge with a volunteer paramedic from New Mexico waiting for us on the other side ready to take us the 5 un-paved miles into Kennecott.
As we pulled into Kennecott we traveled back into time to the 1900’s were the mining town was first built. We spent our first moments taking in the scenery that surrounded us, from the old buildings to the waterfall running through the middle of the town and the old machinery that filled some of the buildings that stand till this day.
We begin our 2 mile hike to our camp site with gear, food and adventurous hearts in tow ready to start. When we arrived we set up tents ate dinner and begin to explore our backyard for that day, some taking a relaxing hike while others hiked up on the glacier for a better view.
All in all, this week has been more than just work for us,it was a week we got to see the history that Alaska holds, History that not many people have ventured out to see, we were one of the few who did and I can say it opened our minds and our curiosity to explore Alaska and there culture, even more so than before .