This is our third full day in Lander, and we’ve made some great progress getting the camp in place. Every day we’ve been able to put an important piece into place. Monday, we headed over to Lander to get the RV and small trailer up to camp. There was no snow on the road, which was a big surprise for us. Our first trek up the road is almost always preceded by putting on tire chains. Tuesday was actually a bit snowy, but luckily not windy, and we managed to get the office trailer delivered from Casper. Last year we waited several days for favorable conditions for the delivery. Gail got most things working in the RV, and we spent our first night up at Chicken Camp. Today we got the port-a-potty delivered (another very important part of camp life!), and got our mobile wireless device activated. We’ve still got a few things like fixing the hot water heater and hooking up the electricity in the office trailer, but we feel like progress towards a working camp has been good so far.
This was also the first morning we had a chance to try to do something with the grouse as well. We headed out towards Chugwater Lek, which is past camp along the access road. No birds yet, and any tracks older than a day would have been covered up by the new snow. We did see some nice fresh fox tracks, and could chart it’s path as it marked it’s territory at several bushes on the lek. We did see a couple of groups of sage grouse along the road, so we know they are out there!

Another long day in the car has brought us to Lander! Hooray!  It must have been a fairly dry winter so far out here- as we crested South Pass over the Wind River Range, the road was dry and free from blowing snow, and the lower elevations around Farson showed more sagebrush than snowdrifts. While I know the winter precipitation is important for water levels later in the year, I’ve got to admit that I’m excited not to have a lot of snow to contend with, and it certainly made the last leg of the journey easier- that part of the drive can cause some white knuckles on the steering wheel. The rest of the trip was under clear, bright skies, and not really all that windy. We were all admiring the scenery on the way through. This rest stop in northeastern Utah was pretty spectacular.

Another treat today was finding a flock of Common Redpolls (a small boreal finch) at a rest stop in Wyoming. I hadn’t seen this species in Wyoming before, and had only seen them a handful of times in my life. They are pushing southward this winter- in fact, one was recently in reported in Woodland just north of Davis (and another down in Southern California). Tomorrow we should be venturing up to the field site for the first time. I’ll have my fingers crossed for lots more bird sightings. Of course we want to see big flocks of sage-grouse, but I’ll also be on the lookout for other winter birds. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to see a Snowy Owl!

Of course, my biggest thrill is always pulling into Lander, dropping some bags into my room at the Pronghorn Lodge, and making that first chilly walk down the street to the Lander Bar for some good food and drink. Great to be back!

Our lab looks like a hurricane it it right now...

The Patricelli lab is now gripped in the swirling tide that takes months of “field prep” and magically transforms it into “field season”. We are in the process of parceling out our gear so that the people remaining here have what they need to start up local projects and the grouse project has everything they they might need. Lab meeting in an hour- and we may have to get creative to find places for everyone to sit! Needless to say there is still quite a bit of packing that needs to happen before we are ready to head out. Anna, Alejandro and I picked up the vehicles from Fleet Services this morning. Every year the vehicles seem to get more high-tech- this year the Snow Chief (Dodge pick-up) has an after-market addition to control trailer brakes, and the Durango has a talking GPS now. We’ll definitely have to figure out how to disable that. Gail has the inner parts for a new robot, so we’ll definitely be doing some sort of robot experiment this spring.