1998 Caltech GPS Student Expedition to

Katmai National Park, Alaska

Graduate students Liz Holt, Nathan Niemi, Rob Brady and Antonin Bouchez (l to r standing) talk with Professor Ken Farley (seated) in front of the cabins at Brooks Lodge.

In June of 1998 nine students from Caltech flew to Alaska to participate in a trip to Katmai National Park . After meeting Professor John Eichelberger from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Anchorage we travelled to Brooks Camp within Katmai National Park. Having spent a night in the cabins at Brooks Camp, the group boarded a modified four wheel drive school bus for the 28 mile bus ride (including three river fords) on the way to the entrance of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

Waiting to take the Katmai bus to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

Where the road to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes approaches its end at the Overlook Cabin, the thick vegetation of the Alaskan Peninsula suddenly gives way to a barren landscape where vegetation killed by the eruption of 1912 has not yet grown back on the largely unconsolidated and porous ash fall.





At the approach to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes the green of southwestern Alaska gives way to the brown of the ignimbrite from the 1912 eruption.

The trail into the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes begins just off the Overlook Cabin road. From there, the group backpacked nine miles across the Valley to Baked Mountain, where 3 wooden huts have been erected by the USGS and Alaska Volcano Observatory for geologic research. The trail involves two river crossings, and runs in a narrow expanse between the gorge of the River Lethe and the Buttress Range, where it becomes a trail also for grizzlies heading for the Brooks River and the salmon run.

Hiking down the road from the Overlook Cabin at the entrance to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.