the climb / two days to 1550
By Matt McGee, PhD Student, University of California, Berkeley
Previously on “Matt’s Field Adventures”: I finished the first field season of my dissertation in November 2024, a five-month expedition up and down the elevational gradient of Anjanaharibe-Sud Special Reserve (ASSR). Like any pilot season, it had been full of adventures, plans that crumbled in the harsh light of reality, and the constant need to fly by the seat of my pants—which, honestly, is one of the main reasons I love fieldwork. By the end of the trip, I had finally started to wrap my head around what it would take to have a more successful field season the next time around, and after a whirlwind eight months back home in Berkeley, I was ready for my second shot at fieldwork glory.
I arrived in Andapa in August with my two Malagasy student assistants, Niaina and Aaron. Niaina had worked with me during my first season and could lead the project when I wasn’t in the field, while Aaron was a new recruit who seemingly knew every bird call in Madagascar. We rounded out the team with Lawi and Jao, my two fantastic guides from the year before, and Jocelyn, a cook from Amponaomby who had a batch of crispy banana bread ready for us each morning. Our mission was simple: survey the entire daggum mountain. We had tried and failed to reach ASSR’s high elevations in my first field season, but given that multiple of my dissertation chapters relied on completing bird surveys at 1550m and 1950m elevational sites, it was put up or shut up time.
We started at an 865m site in the southeast, a new addition Niaina and I had found at the end of year one. I quickly realized this had the makings of a special field season, that whatever essential ingredients had been missing previously had bubbled to the surface. Some of that came from me. I was no longer overwhelmed by the newness of everything, and as those feelings receded, they were replaced by clarity and confidence. My scientific voice still sounded like gobbledygook most of the time, but I was starting to make sense of it, and the research that flowed from that nascent understanding was simply more fun and engaging on a day-to-day basis than anything I had done the year before. But while that was important, most of the credit belongs to my team. We had stumbled into the right mix of personalities and experience, and my team brought joy to every day I spent in the forest, whether they were running around with me chasing birds or frying up a pan of vomanga. The data was strong, the mood was bright, and the weather was mostly cooperative.
The good times kept rolling as we climbed up the elevational gradient, first to 1075m, then to 1260m. I spent mornings surrounded by mixed flocks of vangas while Aaron and Niaina conducted point counts and vegetation surveys. The air grew sharper and the birds grew quieter as we gained elevation, and indri songs drifted up to our camp from lower down the mountain. The summit towered over us, constantly reminding me about the one minor complication in our survey efforts… we didn’t exactly know how to get there. The eastern trail to the summit had been destroyed, and we couldn’t even find a representative 1550m site that was moderately accessible. What I could find, though, was a probably accessible, theoretically beautiful 1550m site that was also along the last open route to the summit, and all we had to do was hike 14 strenuous hours to a location with no known campsite. I pointed at the circle I had drawn on Google Earth with crazed glee as my students looked on in trepidation. We would hike from the village of Befingotra on the eastern side of the reserve to the village of Anjiamazava on the western side of the reserve, spend the night, then hike 8 hours up the mountain and scramble to find a suitable campsite before dark. After we completed surveys there, we would take the southern summit trail all the way to the top. Easy. What could possibly go wrong?
It was misty when we left Andapa on the morning of October 27th, crammed into a beat-up truck with three weeks’ worth of provisions. We expected conditions to become dry and sunny once the early mist burned off, but sometimes the fickle rainforest is determined to make you earn it. The mist turned to drizzle shortly after we started our 6-hour hike from Befingotra, and the drizzle became a steady rain as we left Camp Indri two hours later with the rest of our equipment. The road to Anjiamazava was a ragged, hilly, treacherous hike on the best of days, and it deteriorated quickly in the rain. The wind rose against us. Around every turn was another mud pit, another impassable sinkhole, another steep rocky hill with streams of water cascading over our feet. At first, it was funny in a way, just another day of sheer ridiculousness in the field. After a few hours of soaking rain and squelching mud, I began to wonder if I would actually make it. What choice did I have though? There was nowhere to stop. There was nowhere to get warm. There was only the next step, the next mudhole, the next wave of bone-chilling rain. The light faded. We had one headlamp between us, the rest miles ahead in the equipment bags the porters had carried. We huddled together, inching forward in a single-file line, only able to see a few meters ahead. At 7pm, almost 12 hours after we had left Andapa, we finally arrived in Anjiamazava, exhausted, sore, and covered in mud. We had 10 hours to rest before the next hike.
The sun bloomed over the mountains at 5am the next morning. The forest had taken pity on us. The porters, however, had not, trickling in hours after we had planned to leave. At 8:45am, almost four hours behind schedule, we started the trek up the mountain. At 8:46am, I realized I had sprained my ankle on the previous day’s hike. All the individual aches and pains in my lower body had blurred into one ibuprofen-dulled haze the night before, but after a night of rest, I was finding out in rather sharp clarity what the actual problems were. Maybe the hike today wouldn’t be so bad, I told myself, a delusion that shattered about three minutes later when I had to shimmy across a precarious, slippery log over what looked like an endlessly deep and uninviting agricultural pond. But there was no recourse. This was the time to go for broke, and there wasn’t really anywhere else for me to go anyway. Aaron and Niaina went ahead with Antoine, a local guide from Anjiamazava, to scout for a campsite at the right elevation, while I lumbered behind with Lawi and Jao. The trail was akin to an obstacle course, snarling along both sides of a riverbank, sometimes disappearing completely into the river itself, but the forest was wild and beautiful. I felt more than I ever had that I was somewhere special, somewhere rugged and untamed and full of life. Every step sent shockwaves of pain radiating up my leg, even as excitement and wonder ripped through my heart. I was so, so lucky and so, so miserable. I thought of my friends, and that gave me strength when the hills seemed a little too daunting. The last two hours were more of a climb than a hike as we used tree roots to pull ourselves up sheer slopes. It felt like we were too high, impossibly high. Where were Aaron and Niaina?
An hour before dark, we finally found them on an exposed plateau at 1700m elevation. They had overshot the target elevation while trying to find a campsite, and by the time they had realized it, it was too late to turn back. We would have to make the best of where we were for the night. But what about tomorrow, they asked me. What would we do?
I looked up into the foggy evening sky. The summit was hidden from me, and I knew I would never make it there. This was as high as I could go. Two years of dreaming and scheming, and I was going to come up 300 meters short. But there was no time for heartbreak. I had to make a new plan, right there, with my team staring at me, wondering what we were going to do. I had to find peace with this new reality. And that peace came quickly, as it so often does in the forest. I had given everything I had. That was all I could do.
Over the next two days, we found and set up a camp lower down the mountain for our 1550m site. Aaron and Niaina continued to lead the point counts, while I hobbled after vangas the best that I could. It was an incredible final expedition. We found hidden waterfalls. I saw really interesting behavior from birds that I’m excited to analyze. And at the end, Niaina, Jao, and Antoine made it to the summit. We got the data we needed. By this time next year, that data will have been analyzed, shown to my committee, presented at a conference, and written into the first chapter of my dissertation. And who knows what adventures my team and I will have endured in the meantime. Whatever those are, you will find them here.
