Our next stop was Atlin Lake, in the extreme northern part of BC. It's an old gold rush community that used to be home to about 3 000 people; today, it's shrunk to about 500 residents. Atlin is so far north that folks there tend to feel more like Yukoners than British Columbians. Proof of this is found in the fact that the Atlin summer music festival, which was going on during our visit, was sponsored by the Yukon government.

Atlin is the research location of the graduate student, Andrea, for whom I work in the lab. She needed some long cores from the bottom of this lake, but since it is so deep (a whopping 180 m!), we couldn't drag up mud using our tiny Zodiac. Therefore we rented a 40' houseboat, Popeye, for four days. Despite the interior decoration being a throwback to a former era, the houseboat was very luxurious compared to camping. Because of our limited time at Atlin we worked hard, usually beginning around 6AM. We were rewarded with some excellent cores including one that stood 157cm high - and yes, if anyone is keeping track, that's my height exactly.