{"id":761,"date":"2014-01-31T16:48:49","date_gmt":"2014-01-31T21:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=761"},"modified":"2014-02-01T11:19:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-01T16:19:00","slug":"an-expedition-to-tafelberg-moving-up-the-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/01\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-moving-up-the-mountain\/","title":{"rendered":"An Expedition to Tafelberg: Moving Up The Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fabian A. Michelangeli, Ph.D.<\/a>, is an Associate Curator of the Institute of Systematic Botany at The New York Botanical Garden<\/a>. His research focuses in part on the evolution, identification, and classification of neotropical plants. This is the second of four posts<\/a> about an expedition last year to Suriname in northeastern South America.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\"The<\/a>
The helicopter leaves Rudi Kappel airstrip with a sling full of cargo for the summit camp<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As I recounted in last week’s post<\/a>, it took Basset Maguire, a famous New York Botanical Garden scientist of the mid-20th Century, more than six weeks to travel to the base of Tafelberg, a “table mountain” in central Suriname.\u00a0It took our team of six scientists\u00a0and five support staff just over an hour to fly from Paramaribo, Suriname’s capital. Yet we still faced the same problem that Maguire had of getting our equipment and team to the summit, nearly 3,400 feet above our base camp.<\/p>\n

In our case, the cargo included all of our\u00a0food and camp essentials for two weeks, plus\u00a0all the\u00a0equipment to collect, study, and document\u00a0the many different groups of organisms targeted by the expedition: plants, aquatic insects, frogs, lizards, snakes, and fish. Altogether, we needed to move about 1,200 pounds and 11 people to the summit. Once again, we had\u00a0a faster method that wasn’t available to Maguire: a helicopter.
\n
\nThe first order of business was to locate the best place for our main camp on the summit. Based on the accounts of previous expeditions and hoping to capitalize on an existing network of trails, we chose to camp at the top of Augustus Falls on the northern rim of the mountain. Three people went up on the first trip: University of Kansas entomologist Andrew Short, who led the expedition; Paul Obouter, the director of the National Zoological Collection of Suriname; and Mani, one of our guides.\u00a0After locating the site, they\u00a0had to be literally dropped off the helicopter so they could\u00a0open a clearing where\u00a0the helicopter could\u00a0land later with the rest of the crew and the equipment.<\/p>\n

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In total we needed three trips for the cargo and four trips for the people. After a few hours of logistics and weighing every bag, box, and person as they went into the helicopter, we had relocated everything to the top of Tafelberg.\u00a0Work on the summit was about to begin.<\/p>\n

Our guides and cook quickly got to work\u00a0building our camp, where we would hang our hammocks. Since we still had\u00a0daylight, myself and Julian Aguirre, an NYBG\u00a0graduate student I am advising, took off through the forest to start collecting. It turned out that the existing\u00a0“trails” were more wishful thinking than reality, so we did not venture far the first afternoon. Given the amazing variety of plants, we still were able to collect a fair amount, including a couple of\u00a0species of bromeliads\u00a0that we were targeting\u00a0that grow only on top of the mountain.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, we all gathered at the edge of the waterfall, the tallest in Suriname, to enjoy the sunset over the forest and plan the days ahead. As beautiful and imposing as the sunset was, we could see storm clouds rolling in, and we knew that if that rain came our way it could present some interesting challenges in the days ahead.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The sun sets over the forest and storms roll in towards our camp<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The expedition to Tafelberg was funded by a grant to Andrew Short from the National Geographic Society.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fabian Michelangeli and the team ascend Tafelberg by helicopter, finding quite the sight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[116],"tags":[225,228,241,226],"yoast_head":"\nAn Expedition to Tafelberg: Moving Up The Mountain - Science Talk Archive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/01\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-moving-up-the-mountain\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Expedition to Tafelberg: Moving Up The Mountain - Science Talk Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fabian Michelangeli and the team ascend Tafelberg by helicopter, finding quite the sight.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/01\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-moving-up-the-mountain\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Science Talk Archive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-01-31T21:48:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-02-01T16:19:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Tafelberg-B2-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"806\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fabian Michelangeli\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/\",\"name\":\"Science Talk Archive\",\"description\":\"Exploring the science of plants, from the field to the lab\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/01\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-moving-up-the-mountain\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Tafelberg-B2-1.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Tafelberg-B2-1.jpg\",\"width\":800,\"height\":806,\"caption\":\"The helicopter leaves Ruddi Kappel airstrip with a sling full of cargo for the summit camp\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/01\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-moving-up-the-mountain\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2014\/01\/an-expedition-to-tafelberg-moving-up-the-mountain\/\",\"name\":\"An Expedition to Tafelberg: Moving Up The Mountain - 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