The name Eagle River has real meaning: this morning, Tuesday 13 December, we saw five Bald eagles sitting in the trees just across the road from the Eagle River fire station on Eagle River Road. Later in the day we saw a porcupine in a tree at Camp Birchwood. This caused great excitement among the 5th grade class we were about to take out on Psalm Lake to make ice and snow measurements.

We set up the study site and made a full set of measurements on Psalm Lake in the morning with the help of Dave Kobersmith, who manages Camp Birchwood, and Joanna Hubbard, who works in Elementary Education at the Anchorage School District office. Joanna helped to recruit Craig Kasemodel (Central Middle School for Science, Anchorage) and Kim Bautista (Ravenwood Elementary School, Eagle River), whose study site we were setting up.

Porcupine in a tree at Birchwood Camp, Tuesday 13 December 2005.

We set up the study site and made a full set of measurements on Psalm Lake in the morning with the help of Dave Kobersmith, who manages Camp Birchwood, and Joanna Hubbard, who works in Elementary Education at the Anchorage School District office. Joanna helped to recruit Craig Kasemodel (Central Middle School for Science, Anchorage) and Kim Bautista (Ravenwood Elementary School, Eagle River), whose study site we were setting up.

It was a beautiful morning to be on the ice: clear sky, no wind, a snow surface temperature of -18.3°C, and great views of the nearby mountains. The weather was a huge improvement over what it has been like since we arrived in the Mat-Su Valley/Anchorage region on Thursday last week. The ice thickness was 0.327 m at the location where we installed the ice thickness gauge, the mean snow depth was 0.046 m, and the mean conductive heat flow was
-13 W m^-2.

Kim (left) and Dave Kobersmith chatting on Psalm Lake after the study site had been set up and a full set of measurements had been made.

As you enter the parking lot at Ravenwood Elementary School, Eagle River, you see this sign with Tlingit raven symbols.

After coffee at the Sleeping Dog we went to Ravenwood Elementary School and had lunch before returning to Psalm Lake with 27 of Kim’s students. We were joined by Crystal Wrabetz who, like Joanna Hubbard, also works at the Anchorage School District Office, and Amy Armstrong of the Eagle River Star newspaper.

Along with Joanna, Crystal has been very supportive of ALISON but had yet to see measurements being made. Amy was also there to see the students making measurements, and learn more about ALISON, in order to write an article for the newspaper. Perhaps the Anchorage Daily News will wake up soon and show some interest in Kim and Craig’s extra effort to make science interesting for their students.

We returned to school to show Kim how to weigh the snow samples, and then enter the data into the Excel spreadsheet. By 4:30 pm we were back on the Glenn Highway heading just as far as Wasilla for the night. Tomorrow we will continue on to Fairbanks, with a stop in Willow to set up the study site on Willow Lake.

See Amy Armstrong's article about the Ravenwood Elementary School children's trip to Psalm Lake to see their new ALISON site.