McCarthy and Kennicott field trip

Katrina Moran
McCarthy Trail
First day arriving in McCarthy
7/10/12
Today was over cast and the weather was bad. It was raining all day long and cloudy. It took us 6.5 hours to drive from Valdez because the road conditions were so bad. We finally arrived in McCarthy at 3:45 pm.

The first place we walked and started identifying was the trail right outside of McCarthy, off the side of the road. There was many different flowers and plants we identified this trip.

List identified on first day:

Yellow Dryas- Dryas Drummondii
Soap Berry-Shepherdia canadensis
Yellow Oxytrope- Astragalus umbellatus
Trembling Aspen-Populus tremuloides
Pink Pyrola- Pyrola asarifolia
Northern Yarrow- Archillea borealis
Coastal Paintbrush- Casttilleja unalaschensis
There was a skunk shelf fungus mushroom that was growing on the side of a willow. It was not in our mushroom book we brought with us.
Orange cup fungi
Common Scouring-Rush- Equisetum hyemale
Alpine Bearberry-Arctostaphylos alpina




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List identified on second day in Kennicott, Alaska!!
This was our second day on our field trip and the day was completely different than the first day. It was gorgeous out! The sun was shining and blue skies everywhere. It was the best day to have the field trip to identify plants and flowers.

Blue Bells- Mertensia paniculata
Wild Sweet Pea- Hedysarum Mackenzii
Large-Flowered Wintergreen- Pyrola grandiflora
Northern Goldenrod- Solidago lepida
Twin Flower- Linnaea borealis
Labrador Tea- Ledum palustris ssp groenlandicum
Crowberry- Empetrum nigrum
Common Blueberry- Vaccinium myrtilloides
Monkshood- Aconitum delphinifolium, ssp. delphinifolium
Common Juniper- Juniperus communis
Paper Birch- Betula papyrifera var. papyrifera
Wild Red Currant- Ribes triste





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The third and last day in McCarthy. We ate breakfast and packed our bags to get ready to hit the road. Before we started back home we stopped into another trail along side of the McCarthy road, called West Kennicott Glacier Trail. Here we identified more. The day was gloomy out and sprinkling some what, and the bugs were horrible. I thought that was one of the major differences between the Kennicot trail the day before and the forest in the West Kennicott Glacier Trail. The forests were different also because of the height difference too, the forest in Kennicot was alot more open and on the side of the mountains while the forest in the WKGT that we identified on the last day was more closer to the ground and water, it was also more compacted with trees and plants, it almost seemed like we were walking in more of a rainforest.

Dwarf Dogwood- Cornus canadensis
Prickly Rose-Rosa acicularis
Stiff Club Moss- Lycopodium annotinum
Bluebells- Mertensia paniculata
Paper Birch- Betula papyrifera var. papyrifera
Western Columbine- Aquilegia formosa
Wild Red Currant- Ribes triste
Lapland Rosebay- Rhododendron lapponicum
Northern Red Currant- Ribes triste
Monks hood- Aconitum delphinifolium, ssp. delphinifolium
Beautiful Jacobs Ladder- Polemonium pulcherrimum


That was the list of all three places where our class identified plants for our Natural History class. It was a great trip to McCarthy and Kennicott, we identified a more variety of plants and flowers in the Western Boreal Forest in the National Park. Along with doing that we got to learn of the history behind McCarthy and Kennicott, which I found to be pretty amazing information. This trip was great and I am very glad I went.