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Welcome to the June 2026 2YC Faculty STEMSEAS Expedition! We’ve had an eventful and educational couple of days, and we haven’t even set out to sea yet. We all began our first full day of the trip in Anchorage Alaska on June 5, waking to a clear and surprisingly warm day (for Alaska, not for my New Mexico home!). We began learning almost immediately by taking a tour of Earthquake Park, seeing evidence of the landslide that occurred as a result of the massive 1964 Good Friday earthquake. We then started our journey to Seward, stopping to see metaconglomerates of the McHugh Complex and turbidite sequences of the Valdez Group, both examples of terranes accreted during the Mesozoic assembly of Alaska. Our last official stop before arriving in Seward was at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in Portage. This non-profit sanctuary provides homes for animals that can’t survive in the wild while allowing visitors to get an up close and personal encounter. I was quite comforted watching the brown bears play with rocks in the pond, knowing they were well cared for!
Our next day took us on a hike at Exit Glacier draining from the Harding Icefield in Kenai Fjords National Park. The landscape was absolutely incredible, and the glacial features were textbook…glacial grooves and striations, chatter marks, moraines, erratics, kettle lakes, and a massive outwash plain with glacial milk, all the while seeing more great rocks and structures (mud-chip rip-up clasts!) of the Valdez Group. What I found sobering, though, were the signs showing the date and location of the terminus of the Exit Glacier, and how much the retreat has accelerated in recent decades.
After lunch, we finally got our chance to board the R/V Sally Ride and began preparation for departure the next day! Meeting the crew and taking the tour of the ship that would be our home for the next 8 days were a blast, and really drove home the reality that I would be setting sail on my first-ever ocean voyage. A great first dinner on the ship and a group activity ended this second day. The whole group has really begun to gel, and there’s a positive, excited energy shared by all. I can’t wait to see what’s coming next! Thank you to STEMSEAS and our fabulous mentors for making this possible!
