- Spring, Year 2 - It took us several weeks to make it back to Greyfeather’s denning site. The rains have been heavy this Spring making the mountain and surrounding forests lush and alive with green but also making travel difficult for us. Normal paths were blocked by fallen trees, rocks, there was even evidence of a mudslide. With our equipment and supplies it was very slow going.
Thankfully our original campsite was untouched by any natural disasters, though near constant rain still made setup slow and difficult. We were all happy and relieved to finally be done and have a chance to hike out and look for the wolves.
From a distance we had a good vantage of the den and after a few hours of watching we confirmed that there are still four pups—all of them survived the last few weeks of winter. This litter, surprisingly, is not under constant watch from either parent, nor their older siblings. The entirety of the pack checks on them quite frequently, but they are unsupervised enough that they are able to wander quite freely. This did give our team a chance to observe them quite closely, but is clearly not without risk; we spotted a wound on the largest pup’s leg that looks to be only a week or two old. Only time will tell whether it risks infection or some other danger for the pup, and to its credit, the pup seems as content and mobile as his siblings.
Fjadrir, the alpha female, stills hunts with her two first sons and the unrelated female. Based on the conditions of the family, her risk in upsetting the balance of the team before winter set in was not detrimental to the pack.