Goodbye from the Byers Intern!

Hey everyone, this will be my last blog post for the summer! I’m heading back to Boise State University in a couple of days.

Since my last blog post, I’ve been checking the fences regularly and electro-fishing a lot. The fences have been doing well, although I had a couple of instances where those pesky calves were getting under Last Chance’s fence. I actually watched one tauntingly nudge itself through the barbed wire onto the right side of the fence! To fix this problem, I started lowering the distance between the barbed wire in the area they were hanging out at. I also tied wire perpendicular to the barbed wire so that it couldn’t be raised as much when the calves push themselves through.

Electro-fishing has continued to be the highlight of my summer, especially one day, I got an amazing view of the Tetons on our way to an alpine lake outlet. We barely got any fish from the creek exiting the lake, but the views made the whole trip worth it. The hike was around 19 miles for the entire day, so I was dead tired after that! A lot of my remaining electro-fishing sites have been on Bitch Creek, and these require lots of bushwhacking to get to. Going down these steep, dense cliff sides, you feel like you’re one of the few people who have ever been to that section of the creek.

Another highlight this summer was working with “Youth on the Fly”. I didn’t expect this event to be so fun! I had to help teach kids how to fly fish for the day, and it was a great experience. Those kids are hilarious! They will say the most random stuff. I also got to talk to my sponsor, Evan Byers. It was good getting to know him a little bit more, and why he cares so much about this internship program. 

While I may be working throughout the week, I make sure to stay busy on the weekends as well! Probably the coolest thing I did this summer was summit the Middle Teton. Last weekend, I wanted to do something epic before I left for Boise, so I decided to summit the Middle Teton with a friend from high school. The Middle Teton looked menacing, as I observed the mountain from a distance, it looked huge. We parked at around 10 PM and slept in the car until 2 AM. Then we started on our journey. Hiking through the night was a little nerve-racking. We saw lots of eyes on the trail: a moose and two deer. Once we got into Lupine Meadows, we climbed a lot of boulder fields to get up to the “saddle”. This is where we scrambled up the steep couloir of Middle Teton. It was truly outstanding once we got to the top; amazing views surrounded us everywhere we looked. On our way down, we decided to take a detour and visit Delta Lake as well. Delta Lake was basically the cherry on top of our long, all-day adventure, and we even jumped into the freezing cold water. 

This has been an amazing summer and I’m so glad I got the opportunity to work for Henry’s Fork Foundation!