The Semester in the Wild crew has officially arrived at the Taylor Wilderness Research Station (also known as Taylor Ranch), which is located in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. I'm very happy to be here because it was quite a long and confusing journey!
The original plan was to hike into Taylor Ranch from the Big Creek trailhead. This is about 35 miles, and we planned to spend several days camping along the trail while working on our River Ecology curriculum. We spent three nights at the trailhead working on data collection on upper Big Creek, and we also studied salmon ecology. The Forest Service told us about a fire that was about 20 miles down the trail, and asked us to hike in 15 miles so that we could meet two wilderness rangers who would then escort us through the portion of the trail that was closest to the fire. The 15-mile hike followed Big Creek the whole way, and the group did well working together to plan breaks and set a pace that everyone could follow. When we met the wilderness rangers, they told us that they had just heard on the radio from University of Idaho that it was too dangerous to try to be escorted through the burn area, and that we should turn around. This was a bit discouraging, but the. If there is anything I learned this summer, it is the importance of flexibility, especially when working or traveling in the wilderness.
We spent two days hiking back to the trailhead so that we could cover more River Ecology material. Since the Big Creek trip also includes an airstrip (the wilderness area is so vast that many people use their own planes to access various areas), we thought that the mail plane that goes to Taylor every Wednesday might fly us to Cabin Creek, which is six miles from Taylor. Then we would spend a couple of days doing more data collection and hiking to Taylor. However, we actually ended up getting picked up in two huge Suburbans and we headed back to the McCall Outdoor Science School (MOSS), where we had started our program. After two days of doing some River Ecology work, we ended up driving to Cascade, Idaho to fly out to Taylor. I immediately saw the airplane that would take us there, and I got extremely nervous. Standing next to the plane, I was taller than the wing! It held four people including the pilot, and it was not too terribly turbulent, although I did take some motion sickness medicine. Once I got over the fact that we were in such a tiny plane, I started looking out the window and enjoying the views. We could see so much of the wilderness areas, and we were actually able to see a fire burning on the mountain top. In order to land at Taylor Ranch, the pilot flew past it, turned completely around, flew back, turn around again, and landed on a grass airstrip that is adjacent to Big Creek.
We've been at Taylor for four days now, and it's been a flurry of settling in (some of our stuff is still arriving on the mail plane), doing river ecology work, and trying to finish up assignments for other classes. The setting is absolutely spectacular, and I will have to describe it more in another post.
I can feel the cool air moving through the valley that Taylor Ranch is nestled on, and the onset of autumn is approaching. Pete and Meg, the caretakers at Taylor Ranch, said that as it gets cooler, we won't have to worry about rattlesnakes quite as much.
The internet is too spotty for adding photos to the blog, but I will do my best to describe it with words!
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