Kluane Lake Research Station

May 2023. While working with the University of Maine’s Sea to Sky Program our group headed to the Yukon after our time in Alaska. Our home base for nearly two weeks was Kluane Lake Research Station- a remote science outpost on the shores of Kluane Lake and beside the main airfield that accesses the Wrangell-Saint Elias Mountains. Due to bad weather we got to spend much longer than expected at the research station, which provided the incredible opportunity to learn, explore, and creatively document this part of our experience. And, it meant that I got to be an artist in residence at the station!

I will add more to this page later in the year, but I wanted to share some of my favorite moments, observations of the landscape large and small, and brief stories of how this place is connected to the larger mountain ecosystem, glaciers, and the impacts of climate change. In many ways, this lake is a canary in the coal mine; due to glacier recession the lake lost it’s primary water source, and this shift is undeniably visible when you walk the shore of the lake, talk with the researchers studying the changes, and watch dust storms obscure distant peaks.