Year two at the Kremmling field office has been good. I started this year a bit earlier (March 31st) due to the dry winter and early spring. A warm winter and hot April lead to a wet and cold May – June. It has been a weird season here in Colorado so far. In Steamboat Springs it rained every single day of May and Arapahoe Basin Ski Area received nearly 60 inches of snow in May. This dry winter leading to a wet and prolonged spring has created some weird work conditions for Colorado. The vegetation has really greened up and the wet roads have made scheduling work interesting. The Dry winter and lesser melt-off have allowed us to float the river throughout May and June, whereas last year we were limited to late July and August to float the river. This allowed us to get some good spraying in on the river, which really needed it. However, now that July is upon us we will be switching over to vegetation monitoring and put the spray rigs away.

Other than that, I am in the process of developing a Master’s thesis out here in conjunction with the BLM on assisted succession of slash pile burn scars. I am putting in 100 or so plots using some of the 1,000 freshly burned piles up on Independence Mountain. I will be using Quadrats to monitor several different treatment methods and to get species richness using percent cover of each plot. The Fuels/Foresters are very interested in this project to see what management strategies will work best to restore burned piles to a native stand and limit noxious weed invasions.

I have two months left in this internship and it feels like summer has just begun. The snow is just starting to melt off in the backcountry, so I have some backpacking to catch up on in these coming months.

With only two weeks left in Kremmling, my internship is winding down. It has been an incredible time here and I am quite grateful to have had the opportunity to work here in Colorado.

Since my last post, temperatures have been dropping and the defrost button has become a morning routine. The trees are changing here to a beautiful golden yellow. I do miss the spectacular colors of upstate New York and the Adirondack Mountains, but I’ll give Colorado credit; the golden Aspen contrast with the evergreen is quite the sight as well. Fall here in Colorado meant it was time for a road trip to Moab to see Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. It was still quite hot, but totally worth the trip. Besides that, I travelled down to Montrose to work with Carol Dawson and her CLM intern for a week doing more rare plant monitoring on Eriogonum pelinophilum.

As this internship winds down, I have had time to reflect on the summer and my life trajectory. Coming into this summer I had experience in the NPS and thought I wanted to work as an Ecologist for the NPS. This summer I gained some more perspective on what it might be like to work for the Feds. After seeing how things are run and the amount of science that is done in the BLM, I’m not so sure it is what I want to end up doing. That’s not to say that I didn’t have an amazing internship though. I learned a whole lot about western plants, got to explore beautiful Colorado, and gained tons of valuable experience in several different fields. I recieved valuable training as well which will only help with other jobs in the future. I ended up gaining experience monitoring riparian areas, grasslands, and rare plants. I also spent a lot of time working the GPS and mapping out noxious weeds sites and spring/wells for grazing. One of the best parts of the internship was the fact that I was given so much freedom by my mentor. He really allowed me to take control and go out by myself most days. It’s nice to be given responsibility and be trusted to get things done. Another great part of the internship was the fact that I was able to tag along with state botanist Carol Dawson and her CLM interns to conduct rare plant surveys. The work they were doing was more of what I was looking to get experience in, and something I could see myself doing in the future.

With that said, I don’t think I could have had a better place to work. Kremmling may be small, but it is surrounded by ski towns and wilderness areas in all directions. The staff here at the office is relatively young, so we’re always having a good time in and out of the office. It also helps having 11 seasonals living at the bunkhouse. Not only are the people and the location a plus, but my job entailed riding UTV/ATVs up mountain sides and camping/rafting on the Colorado River. I had great co-workers, a cool mentor, and beautiful scenery – I think I got pretty lucky this summer.

I am heading back to New York for 2 months just in time for the Fall foliage to see my family and talk to some professors about graduate school. From there I will be heading back to Colorado to work at Keystone resort as a ski instructor and hopefully come back to Kremmling for a few months next summer before I head to graduate school. We will see what the future brings, but I am positive that this internship will play a big role in what my future holds.

Trip to Canyonlands NP

Canyonlands

Canyonlands

Spring Creek MIMS hit hard by cattle

Grassland Utilization Surveys (line transect)

MIMS at Govt Creek

Well inventory

Spraying Black Henbane(Hyoscyamus niger)

With only a month and few weeks left in my internship, I am making the most of my time here in Colorado. This past month has been a rainy one, which has made scheduling a bit hard. We got a late start on spraying along the river this year because of the high flows. This put us behind schedule already and the rain has made it hard to get down the river. However we have had five or six good days on floating the river so far, including a two day camp out. Luckily our section of the river is looking pretty good compared to other sections of the river in other BLM districts. We mainly have to worry about Musk, Bull, Canada, and Russian Thistle along the river. We don’t have any Tamarisk in our section, which is something to be thankful for.

Along with river spraying, we have been doing some line transects monitoring for rangeland utilizations and post fire monitoring. It is good to get away from spraying for a bit and get back to more science based work. Next week it looks like we will be meeting up with State Botonist, Carol Dawson, and her CLM interns to do some more rare plant monitoring. It looks like we will be gathering data on Phacelia spp. Working with Carol is a great opportunity to learn my western plants, as well as gain some valuable field research experience.

Work is great, but the weekends here in Colorado are amazing. There is so much to do here and it seems as though wilderness is everywhere you look. Not only that, but the music scene is unmatched (great free concerts). I love it so much that I have decided to stay here over the winter to work at Keystone resort as a ski instructor. If you haven’t been to Colorado, start planning a trip.

Railroad Earth at Red Rocks

Never Summer Wilderness

Eagles Nest Wilderness

Never Summer Wilderness

Over night work float down the Colorado

Devils Causeway Hike (500ft drops on each side. 4ft wide)

Life in Colorado has been great since my last entry. Work has picked up and I am learning a lot. I went down to Boulder for (PFC) Riparian Assesment training which was very cool. We are done spraying invasives until the fall, so we are now starting monitoring and managment. We just got new GPS units that are very slick and fun to use. I have been going out to back roads on BLM land and collecting data point with the GPS to mark down invasive weed sites. Last week my mentor and I went up to Yarmony Mountain (which we sprayed several times earlier on) to put in some photo plots and to do some grazing utilization. We also met with some permitees up in North Park, CO who we work closesly with to manage grazing land and watershed rights. They were great and had a really respectful relationship with our BLM office, as they had been working with us for a very long time. It was nice to see the BLM and ranchers working well together, especially when all you hear about are the Bundy type situations. The older ranchers really seemed to understand our motive and said they manage the land as if it was their own. It was refreshing to hear and see. If we help them out, they help us out.

Soon we will be floating the Colorado to do some invasive monitoring/spraying with water friendly herbicide. I also contacted a professor out of CSU about possibly working with my mentor and I to combat cheatgrass becasue he and his graduate students are working on some research that would help establish native seeds to best outcompete cheatgrass. I am learning a lot here and am making good contacts. The weekends are pretty spectacular too. Kremmling is a small town, but it is surrounded by wilderness. Froma natural resource point of view it is a great field office to work in.

Some pictures from the past few weeks:

Pearl Lake, Steamboat

Zirkell Wilderness

State Flower

Spraying

Eagles Nest Wilderness

Hahn Peak

Work in North Park

Never Summer Wilderness At Work

Moose Sighting #1

Kremmling, CO Field office

BLM

-Ben

Work at the Kremmling field office has been pretty slow the past few weeks since my last post, due to seasonal training. The seasonals and I had a week of training consisting of ATV, HazMat, Trailer towing, Radio use, and more. After that I went to Chicago for CLM training at the Chicago Botanic Garden.  Even though the training didn’t relate all that much to my specific job (Weed spraying) it was still useful information, and a good time. I met some good people and got in touch with a few people from the Lakewood district that said I could help out with some rare plant monitoring.

It is good to be back to work though, and we have a big week ahead of us. We will be spraying invasives at a burn site on Yarmony mountain and doing a campout on Thursday to make the most of our time. Once the water level goes down we will be floating the CO river with our raft sprayer and possibly camping again. I am really looking forward to getting some work done.

Kremmling BLM Office

I started my first week in Colorado on May 13th. It was a hectic week before work, as I had to finish up my final semester at school and drive across country from NY to Colorado in 2 days. Two thirteen hour days of driving got me to Denver a few days before work. I was greeted with an odd May snowstorm which delayed my start date a day due to road closings in the mountains. As I was settled into the bunkhouse in Kremmling, CO I got to know my coworkers. The first week was great. We drove around the BLM land and I started to learn some of the Invasive plant species I will be eradicating this summer. The area is beautiful-surrounded by mountains.

The first day of field work consisted of spraying Thistle (Carduus spp.), and Cheat Grass (Bromus tectorum)  with the herbicide boom sprayer off of our UTV/ATV. In patches that had previously been sprayed and killed, we laid native seeds down and raked in the patches.

The next day we went to Yarmony Mountain and sprayed Mullein, and Thistle that had taken over an old burn site. The whole burn area was covered in invasives.

The next day we went to an old grazing pasture that the BLM had been spraying for years to see how it was doing. It had very few invasives and we sprayed the little that we did find. Today we went up Wolford mountain and surveyed for invasive species. We covered quite a bit of land in our 10 hour day.

The wildlife is great out here. I have already seen Prairie Dogs, a Jack-Rabbit, Big-Horned Sheep, Mule Deer, a herd of Elk, and many Falcons. Looking forward to more adventures in the mountains of Colorado.