August 26th: Mt. Margaret and Primrose Ridge

Today finally saw the hiking of Mt. Margaret. Myself along with my friends Mark, Lucy, and Jesse set out at about 1:30pm. It was another rainy day and the drive to Savage River, where our path began, was through some pretty low clouds, but the rain was holding off.

As we began hiking up Mt. Margaret we began climbing through clouds. The clouds were a little misty and did nothing more than slightly dampen our clothing, which for me was a 100% cotton hoody (a poor choice!). After getting to the top of Mt. Margaret we had some snacks, donned rain jackets, and continued along the Primrose Ridge line. The ridgeline was big and wide, and marshy in spots. “Termination dust” was melting throughout various spots on the ridge line (termination dust gets its name from its presence meaning the end of summer). The Dall sheep have begun herding up (something they do for their winter migration to increase security of the group) and we saw two large groups of them on different areas of the hike.

This hike was a lot of fun, because though we were in clouds much of the time, breaks would occur in the clouds providing us tremendous views of the autumn tundra. The changing of colors in the tundra is incredibly pronounced due to the fact that much of the ground cover turns shades of red, while the cotton woods, willows, and spruce turn shades of yellow and gold. Interspersed with these is the black spruce, which remains green throughout the year. The effect is out of this world, producing vivid fall colors that immediately reminded me of those seen annually in the Pacific Northwest (arguably the best place for viewing autumn color changes. That’s right New England I said it).

On the drive home we saw two big moose a cow and bull. The bull had a big ol’ set of antlers that were naked of their velvet. The drive from Savage River (Milepost 15) to the entrance of the park takes visitors right through moose rutting country (rut: noun, a period of increased sexual activity during which the males fight each other for access to the females, commonly known as ‘the rut’). Unfortunately, we saw no agro bull moose bashing their antlers into each other, but I am heading out to Eielson this weekend and am optimistic