Greetings from mount Rainier!

17 Jun Greetings from mount Rainier!

The forecast in Western Washington shows gloomy and rainy weather for my trip to Mount Rainier National Park, nonetheless I am still as excited as can be driving into the park. As a Mosaics Biological Resource Assistant for the North Coast and Cascades Monitoring Network, I have the incredible opportunity to visit the several national parks unit that encompass the network. The project I am working on has me analyzing the climate and ecological forcings that are threatening Whitebark pine throughout the Pacific Northwest. The last few weeks of my internship has had me analyzing factors such as blister rust and annual precipitation and their correlation with Whitebark pine occurrence, but this week brings me to Mount Rainier to get familiar with the park environment and hopefully (barring any weather) to snowshoe to a White Bark pine site that I have been analyzing on the computer. So far this park visit has been hectic and also amazing, I’ll upload more photos and updates when I get some down time, but for now here’s a cool picture of Mount Rainier appearing through the clouds. Thanks for coming along!