the art & adventures of tracy durnell

blog

March 30, 2009

 

Snowtracking with the Cascades Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project

snowy hike
As part of a citizen science initiative, I volunteered to snowshoe track animals along I-90 two days this winter.

snowy river
It's nice to get out in the winter sometimes. Snoeshoeing ftw!

Snowy forest trail
Each transect was 1k long. This route followed an established cross-country ski track, but the others were through unbroken snow.

Tricky flagging
We followed orange flagging on the unmaintained routes, but some of it was tricky to spot, like this, right at ground level, and required blindly choosing a direction and traipsing around for fifteen minutes until we could spot the next flag. They hung the flagging in summer, so some was covered with snow.

Investigating a coyote trail
Each team had a more experienced leader who could help us identify tracks. Here he's investigating a coyote trail just off the transect.

pond in the forest

stream crossing
The tracks headed up towards the stream are from a pair of coyotes. We later attempted to track them through this riverbed.

Labels: , ,