Yesterday, I hiked to Rocky’s only remaining glacier, Andrews. We began our day by meandering around a few neighboring lakes: Nymph, Dream, Emerald, and Haiyaha. Then, we headed south towards the Loch, and started the climb up to Andrews. The trail wound its way through forests...
Last Friday I shadowed the Fire Effects crew to write an article about their work. The focus of their work is monitoring the effects of prescribed burns on vegetation, yet, they also respond to fires, amongst other things. With this dual role comes a need to be ready for...
Last Tuesday, I hiked up Eagle Cliff to photograph the U-shaped valley and lateral moraines that are Moraine Park. As glaciers moved through Moraine Park, they produced the distinctive U-shaped valley by eroding rock. As glaciers melted, they left behind rock piles, called lateral moraines. Rivers...
Rocky’s glaciers were once incredibly massive. A mere glance at Moraine Park will tell you that. They’re small now; so small that only one, Andrews Glacier, is still technically a glacier. To be considered a glacier, an ice mass needs to be large enough to...
Trails are largely experienced from two approaches: forward and reverse. Sure, differences in height can result in slight differences in how they are experienced, but those differences are minimal. Hiking around Fern Lake. Yet, these perspectives are complicated by each viewer’s past. Every sight they’ve seen, every...
They’re everywhere. They’re crowding the Safeway, the local cafes, and the streets of downtown. They’re screeching to halts in the middle of the road to catch glimpses of elk and to snap a few photographs. Yet...
A few weeks back, I thought of national parks as static. I thought of the world around them as developing at an ever increasing pace while they stayed the same.Yet this couldn’t be further from the truth. National parks, specifically Rocky Mountain National Park, is the...
This summer, in addition to assisting with citizen science projects, my focus will be on glaciers in Rocky Mountain National Park. This will take the form of an institutional memory project (a collection of scientific papers, a timeline of scientific research, a brief, and a...
This past Tuesday I found myself at McGraw Ranch, a complex nestled into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Here gentle, forested hills converge at a stream that traces the front periphery of the complex and feeds into a small, tranquil pond. McGraw Ranch The pond at...
Friends and dogs at Scarborough Beach, Maine. Corn and soybean fields in Grinnell, Iowa. I’m Vishva Nalamalapu, a rising fourth year Biology major and Environmental Studies minor at Grinnell College. I was born and raised in the lovely suburbs of Portland, Maine, but my mother recently moved...