Written by: Mahinaokalani Robbins, WWU graduate student

When I began my graduate school search in the fall of 2020, I was immediately drawn to Dr. Kristina Walowski’s Augustine project. I had some field experience prior to Augustine, but I knew this expedition wouldn’t be like any other. Flashing forward to 2021, I was accepted into this program, and in June 2022, we set off to Alaska to explore Augustine.

Many questions were on our minds. Augustine has multiple explosive and voluminous events in its recent (last 2,000 year) history, in contrast to the centimeter-thick ashfall of the past 200. So, why do we see these changes in eruptive personality? What does Augustine’s magmatic reservoir system look like? How many magmas interact with one another, and how do these components effect Augustine’s eruptive behavior? To begin to answer these questions, we spent six days on Augustine Island cataloguing tephra stratigraphy and collecting bags of pumice, all while being helicoptered from A to B. We ended up leaving the island with more pumice than we could carry and more questions than we could answer.

Part of what made the trip so successful was the people: two principal investigators, two graduate students, four undergraduates, a handful Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) scientists, a helicopter pilot, a camp cook, and her baby. A busy, remote camp like this requires teamwork! We all had our own daily chores: cooking, washing dishes, and cleaning and organizing field supplies. We also performed infrastructure maintenance, like lopping at the brush at the helicopter landing site, painting and re-organizing sheds, moving barrels of jet fuel, and most critically, digging a new latrine.

In total, the days were long, the food was good, and the company was even better. I have big dreams of working at a volcano observatory one day. Getting to work with AVO scientists like Kristi Wallace and Matt Loewen made that dream feel achievable. Their guidance was critical for a successful week of sampling and describing stratigraphy, and I will forever be grateful for their time and mentorship.

A few things about Augustine to end this post: (1) in the summer in Alaska, the sun doesn’t set until about 11 pm, so be sure to watch the clock. (2) it is SO worth buying the bug net. (3) scientists are human!