We and 2000 pounds of our most essential gear arrived in Kaktovik yesterday, and will likely be here tomorrow too.

“We” being myself, Ken Irving, Jack Schmid, Alexandra Mittermeier, and Kristin Nolan. Ken and Jack are technicians at UAF assisting with field work, Alexandra is student from Germany working on her thesis, and Kristin is a volunteer with the US Fish and Wildlife Service helping with a new clean-up effort. Everyone gets along well and are looking forward to getting to the glacier. However, the weather is not cooperating.

Here we are, wondering why...

The helicopter that will take us from here to there is stuck in Deadhorse. On Tuesday it was unable to even make it that far, and yesterday and today there have been low fogs and drizzle all along the coast. The forecast is for more of the same, though later in the day the rain is supposed to change from rain to freezing rain and maybe to snow.

It’s been a strange spring throughout much of Interior Alaska and farther north. Spring came late in Fairbanks, then like a switch it went from below freezing to more than 70F for a week. The same occurred on the glacier, which experienced above freezing temperatures for about a week, with temperatures peaking at 10C. It cooled off afterwards, but for the past week temperatures on the glacier were once again above freezing, even at night, leading to significant snow melt. Such warm temperatures are not normally found until June here.

Spring came late to the local arcade too...

As places to wait go, Waldo Arms has become fairly comfortable. Ed and LuAnn are running the place while Walt and Merlyn are away, and we are currently the only guests. Everyone is familiar with the project and supports us however they can, and we try to return the favor. For example, Jack spent the morning trying to repair their satellite-internet connection on the roof and we’ve all taken turns changing the buckets placed under the drips from the leaking roof.

The front door. There's no lock, but you have to push hard to open it when its closed, which is sort of the same thing.

Stenciled on the side of this rig is "For official use only". Apparently not much goes on officially in Kaktovik.

Walt's shed near the runway, looking over the sea ice.

It’s been good to relax a bit too. The past three or four weeks have been non-stop 12-16 hour days in preparation for the trip. The tasks for getting ready have become familiar, though still take time. This year we had to learn new GPS receivers and techniques, build some new weather station structures, plan for incorporating some new sensors, and prepare for some shallow ice coring. Added to this was of course all of the camp preparations, like buying, cooking and packing the food, as well as designing and building a new outhouse system. Then the process of transporting all of this to the airport in time for Frontier to get it all here.

Everything more or less went as planned, or at least as well as expected. We were able to get most of the science gear shipped ahead of us. The last few days were fairly frantic, but nothing out of control. Though it’s always nice having people stay with us before the trip, having the place to ourselves this time allowed us to spread things out a bit more and work at a more comfortable pace. The morning of departure we had only a few hours sleep, as all of the little last minute projects kept creeping in. And transporting nearly a thousand pounds of gear and getting it through check-in was another familiar ordeal that we’d rather avoid. With bad weather at the coast, the plane has to take on more fuel so it can divert to other airports, meaning it carry as much cargo. So not all of our stuff made it with us, which was a little disconcerting. On expeditions to other locations, it has taken a week or more for separated cargo to show up again, with some tense moments on the tarmac with the air carriers. Fortunately, our air carrier for these trips watches out for us, and they were able to get us the remaining gear today. Considering that the helicopter still hasn’t made it here yet, this caused no real delays.

A rare view of the hangar from the telescope at Waldo Arms. Often it's too foggy to see, a mile away.

So we’ve spent the day puttering around. Ken’s been working on the telemetry system to the glacier. Just when we need to have it working so that we can check the weather before our flights, UAF changed their networking around and screwed up our system. So it’s taken some time to get the right people to make the right changes and get things going again. Alexandra’s been working on writing some programs to reduce weather station data for her project. Kristin has been programming and checking our satellite phones. I’ve been programming our GPS, sorting and checking gear (and trying to keep it dry), and generally just futzing around. As the day wears on, it becomes more and more clear that we’re going to be spending another night here. Nobody is particularly sad about this, as the drab weather is not particularly inspiring or motivating. Hopefully we’ll wake up to bright sunny weather, a view of the mountains, and the sound of rotor-wash flapping the blue tarp on the roof.

Ken, getting his Linux fix.

Friday, 21 May 05, Kaktovik, Midnight

Waldo Arms – a great place to wait.

The morning’s weather looked promising, and a phone call with the pilots seemed reassuring, so after a nice breakfast we went down to the runway to sort our gear into various loads of appropriate weights. We have a lot of stuff, as usual. It’s always a bit unclear at the beginning of expeditions whether all of that stuff will be needed, but it’s rare that I come back with much that didn’t come in handy. At just about the same time as we began untarping our pallet loads, wet flakes began landing on us. Soon it became clear that even if the helicopter did make it here, it would be a while before it would take off again. I knew this before we made it to the runway, as Ken had solved our telemetry problems only to learn that winds speeds on the glacier were gusting to 50 mph and getting stronger with time. That’s a bit beyond anyone’s reasonable comfort level for voluntary flights. But conditions are constantly changing, so it’s best to be prepared to leave on short notice. As it turned out, changes were mostly bad to worse, so the day came and went pleasantly enough, but with no helicopters within sight or sound.

We killed time by re-sorting our gear into different piles...

After an hour or so of the fresh air, we headed back to Waldo’s to resume our new lives as the guests that came for lunch and never left. All day long, a steady stream of visitors and phone calls keeps Ed, LuAnn and Kevin on their toes, whether it was kids buying candy or soda, adults trying to scam free rides or cargo on the planes, residents wondering whether their mail came in, or anyone getting breakfast, lunch or dinner. It’s not really clear to me what happens in town that somehow doesn’t involve this place. The kids especially seem to like it here, and don’t seem discouraged about being swooshed out when they no longer seem to have a purpose for hanging around. In general they’re mostly kind of shy, but many seem fairly capable, especially for their age. I met one that was probably only 10 that could drive a front-end loader, a bunch of teenagers that were capable of keeping their snowmachines running as they took off on 50 mile trips to go duck hunting, and others that were just happy that school ended yesterday.

Ed, the local sugar connection.

Baby Flossy, hoping to stay warm.

Especially considering examples set by other small villages, Kaktovik definitely seems to have it together. Though it seems every house and vehicle is in some state of disrepair, the people themselves are not the trailer-trash type that you would at first glance expect to be living in such a neighborhood. I’d bet that many of the doors are unlocked and that most vehicles have the keys in the ignition all the time; considerng Kaktovik is on a small island with no bridges, cars can only go so far. They do lock the door at Waldo’s, but that’s only to get a few hours peace and quiet from the requests for food, candy, soda or flight information. Ed told me a story about a kid that had just gotten a brand new four wheeler and parked it next to a big Cat that he then decide to fire up to go for a little joy ride, in the process of which he managed to run over his brand new four wheeler not once, but twice. Lesson learned there I guess. And that’s the way it seems to be in general. Things break, and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger or wiser without need for much commentary.

It will be interesting, and no doubt unfortunate, to see what will happen in the next few years as oil exploration and extraction makes its way here. The changes will be enormous, no doubt. Kaktovik sees it’s share of visitors, for sure, but not so much like these. There’s the tourists, politicians, eco-freaks, jesus freaks, construction workers, and so on, but it seems to me that the spirit of Kaktovik endures this just like it does a broken snow machine or leaking roof – you just work with it or around it. But oil means five hundred or maybe much more semi-permanent residents, with very different values, culture, and standards. The eventual outcome of this must be a new character to the town. For example, no longer will you be able to drive down the middle of the runway at night to go watch the polar bears feeding on whale carcasses; driving down the Deadhorse runway at night would likely get you a free seat in a Federal prison, even though there’s just as little traffic there. Also, no more buckets on top of the TV to keep the leaking roof from shorting it out – oil field workers expect something different.

Maybe that’s OK, or maybe I underestimate the will of the locals. But what I find most curious about it all is what gets defined as the cultural instant in time that needs to be preserved. For example, when Princess Tours takes a busload of cattle to see a native show-and-tell, they are not presented with kids with greasy hands fixing snow machines or crushing them with bulldozers. They’re presented with the culture of 100 years ago, pickled in a jar and taken down from the shelf when needed. Why is that the snapshot that is preserved? Doesn’t that pickling process make a mockery of what is truly so special about native culture – the adaptability that allowed them to survive here for thousand of years without an oil-based infrastructure? As far as my limited perspective can tell, it’s the very same adaptability that helps Kaktovik remain a viable community, doing it’s own thing it’s own way, without descending into chaos, crime, and despair. I don’t see that oil wells are going to reinforce that viability, but rather overwhelm and replace it with something new and probably worse, but again, I could be underestimating the will-power and resiliance of the people. If nothing else, once the oil dries up, the people and infrastructure associated with it will dry up with it, just like the DEW line operations, and the town made it through that so why not this too?

What strikes me about what makes the people of Kaktovik special is that they’re able to stay calm and laid back about their problems, and this is largely what prevents small problems from turning into bigger ones. Man-against-nature problems rarely escalate out of control, the seasons take care of that. It’s man-against-man problems that get scary. Right now, the sense I get from the people here is that people can do their own thing, as long as it’s in the realm of what’s Right. Plinking at polar bear cubs is just not cool, and everyone except for the kid that did it seems to know that, and they dealt with the problem their own way. But there’s nothing Wrong with a leaking roof, or a couple of junked pickup trucks in your backyard. They may not be pretty, but as things go on the historical scale of human abuses, this doesn’t even rank. Yet try storing a few junkers in the backyard of your gated-community town house in Colorado, and you’d likely have a lynch mob at your door composed of junk bond traders, corporate raiders, and United airlines laywers claiming you don't really need retirement benefits anymore. Who’s really got the screwed-up priorities? But it’s those priorities that unavoidably come with modern oil drilling infrastructures, because they simply can’t tolerate the bad press and would rather spend a million dollars to shine shit and proclaim it beautiful than freely step around it.

The Kaktovik runway at high tide. There's nothing to fix, just land to the left a little...

Wednesday, 25 May 2005, McCall Glacier

Still crazy, after all of these years...

We ended up spending another three days in Kaktovik. The weather between us and Deadhorse, where the helicopter was, was constantly marginal, with a low overcast over snow creating very flat light preventing a safe traverse. We spent the time in various ways. I read my book on weather and climate, Ken worked on getting the internet working through our telemetry system, Jack read papers on McCall Glacier and 10 year old issues of Popular Mechanics, Kristin read her flying books, and Alexandra worked on reducing weather data from the glacier. Ken was probably the most dedicated, but we also spent a lot of time sleeping, watching movies, playing pool, and wandering aimlessly around town. We also entertained ourselves with the infrared camera, searching for water leaks within the walls, veins in our arms and legs, and small children in our bellies.

Ken: "Nine ball in the camera lens"

Killing time -- 1.8 MB

Alexandra, creating her interview tape for the next Geoge A. Romero film.

Alexandra's feet -- 1.7MB

Ken's hands -- 2.5MB

I had lunch a few times with the mayor and the principal, as well others from town. I got the general feeling that my impression of the town was correct, that it had evolved into a stabilizing system that helps keep it from sliding into community decay. No one had any thoughts as to how it got that way, but agreed that it was likely to continue. I learned that it was unlikely that Kaktovik would become a major hub of oil activity like Deadhorse any time in the near future, but the feeling was that the community would survive if it did. We also got to know many of the kids from town better too. Especially Flossy, an 8 month old that was regularly brought over by the girls that baby-sat her.

After a while, we began eating our own food instead of the meals from Waldo’s, since it was now too much to bring to the glacier and would just go bad otherwise. We even cooked for the LuAnn and the pilots (once they showed up) since we had so much.

The sticker on my sweater says "Chill", which was the theme of the week.

The helicopter was able to make it in about dinner time on Monday, long after we had given up hope of seeing it that night. Apparently conditions had improved temporarily in Deadhorse, but the traverse was still a bit sketchy. In any case, it was definitely uplifting to see them here and begin making plans for the next day.

We had rearranged our gear several times while stuck in Kaktovik, adjusting to the changing conditions. In addition to reducing our food, I also began culling some of the equipment that we would not have the chance to use. The helicopter turned out to be a great unit, capable of fitting quite a lot. On the first load, Kristin, Alexandra and I flew in with a scattering of food and enough GPS equipment to start getting some work done. There was still a low overcast, but we followed the Jago river up towards the mountains, and by the time we reached the foothills, the overcast was gone and it was largely blue skies. We landed at our usual camp spot, six days later than planned.

The gear after sorting one last time. After this it was every box for itself.

On the subsequent flights, we only had to carry one person. This allowed us to completely fill the rear cargo area and carry considerably more volume. Our stuff in general is not very dense, so typically we fill up the available space before we max out the load carrying capacity of the helicopter. In this case, we were able to carry about 1000 pounds per trip. It took three trips to get us completely in, which took about 5 hours.

Our first view of the glaicer this trip, patiently waiting (or melting) for us in the sunshine.

Kristin: "There's only two of us back here honey, and I know I'm not the one that farted"

Kristin and Alexandra silhouetted on the ridge.

Jack arriving -- 2.6 MB

Jack, trying to find the door handle.

Ken, after having found the door handle, but now not sure of his next move.

After everything was in, we took a trip down to the site where we planned to extract some debris. Here was an old snow machine and a bunch of fuel barrels. My plan was to extract it in May because I thought the slope it was on would be more stable then, as it is located on a steep, ice cored moraine where large boulders regular slide. Beneath the debris is an ice-marginal stream and a moulin, so falling into this would not be good. Fortunately, in May the stream is not flowing. However, this time of year, much of the debris is frozen into the ground. I had anticipated a little of this and had brought crow-bars, but in the case of the snow machine it was actually frozen into a small lake that it helps create, and there was simply no chance of freeing it within the few minutes that we had. The pilot, Tim, was getting a bit anxious to leave, as he had flown a full day and the weather in Kaktovik was not improving. So we gave up and thought about trying again the next day (today).

Jack, retreating down the slippery slope. Note the snow-machine under the boulder to his upper right.

The snow machine was perched beneath a huge boulder that had slid onto it, frozen in a small pond beneath it, and located above a large hole that carries melt-water to the bed of the glacier. Maybe we'll let the guys that left it here extract it...

Tim: "Last call for Kaktovik..."

It took a week, but all six of us made it.

By the end of our first day on the glacier, we had most of camp set up and the GPS up and running. Ken and Jack working on getting the solar power system operational, while Alexandra got the GPS unpacked and working. I sorted gear while Kristin got the tent interior organized and functional. We celebrated our productive first (sixth) day with a Mexican fiesta.

Prost!

This morning we planned to split into two groups. Ken and Alexandra were to do a full shake-down of the D-GPS out on the glacier to make sure everything was working correctly, while Jack and I took the helicopter to consider our debris removal options, collect some snow samples and maybe download some of our data loggers. It was a beautiful sunny day that was downright hot at times. We spent the morning preparing, and the helicopter arrived around 1PM. Jack and I took off as Ken and Alexandra head towards the glacier for surveying. After deciding that there was nothing that was worth the effort in terms of debris removal, we continued out onto the tundra to grab some snow samples. It was a crystal clear day all over the north slope, with little wind. The snow was melting fast, not the ideal conditions for our work, and the first caribou of the migration could be seen in the distance. Afterwards we returned to the glacier and downloaded the dataloggers we have that are not telemetered, as we could save a day by not doing this on foot. Several of these had failed, likely due to high winds creating static from blowing snow, but fortunately the most important sensors survived. We got back to camp around 6PM, to find Ken and Alexandra returning from their day’s work. Their shake-down resulted in a few lessons learned. Overall, Kristin was probably the most successful, having completely reorganized the kitchen tent into a workable and functional environment. We finished a nice quiche dinner reasonable early, in anticipation of a long day of surveying tomorrow.

Jack, clean man: "Take me to your beaker."

One of our thermocouple stations, fortunately still standing and logging.

This one got a little wet on the inside, but was still working.

The pilots, enjoying a few beers in the sun...

We asked them to stay, but we forgot to pay our cable bill...

Monday, 30 May 2005, McCall Glacier

It’s been a busy, but productive, few days on the glacier, helped considerably by good weather.

Our first real day of surveying on Thursday went reasonably well. Ken, Alexandra, Jack and I began by surveying a pole together near camp to make sure that we all were using the same methods. Our plan was to survey using the RTK method, where a radio link from our base station near camp allows us to get centimeter accuracy in the field and know for sure that the data is valid without post-processing. After surveying the first pole in common, we split up, with Jack and I heading up to the Middle Cirque and Ken and Alexandra heading towards the Lower Cirque and confluence area. It was a nice day, with clear skies and warm temperatures. Everything went reasonably well until about 4PM, when the GPS radio from the base station stopped transmitting. Jack and I were on our way up to the Upper Cirque by that point, with the others deep in the Lower Cirque. After some talking with Kristin, who was back at camp, on the walkie-talkies, Jack and I headed back to camp to see if we could figure out the problem. We couldn’t quite figure out what shut it off, but restarting it seemed to work fine. So Ken and Alexandra were able to continue working where they were, but Jack and I stayed at camp to begin preparing other equipment for the days ahead, as it was already after 5PM.

Ken: "Are we lost yet?"

GPS confabulation at Pole 22/04.

This pole is supposed to be in an accumulation area, but is clearly melting out.

As long as the GPS is recording, may as well cover as much area as possible...

It's hard to ski when you're carrying half the slope with you though.

Jack, his first time on down-hill skiis in 30 years.

Matt, hoping the radio link will last the whole day.

I spent the rest of the evening sorting out gear and equipment, mostly in relation to maintenance of our weather stations. This year I hoped to create a new structure for our station in the Upper Cirque, which is an accumulation area. I feel reasonable confident of my designs in the ablation area, where the snow melts completely in summer, but the accumulation area has its own unique issues, because the snow builds up over time. One of the tricky things about it is that some years are heavy accumulation, and some years are light or even negative. This means that the sensors can either get buried or melt out completely, so it is difficult to plan for. The new station has a single mast made of thick pipe, hopefully minimizing the amount of upkeep. In heavy snow years, all we should need to do is add another section of pipe to the top and slide the crossarm holding the sensors up higher. In low snow years (or melting years), hopefully the pipe is buried deeply enough that it will not tilt over. This design is more or less what’s done in Greenland, and seems fairly reliable. This year I also wanted to replace the wind sensor on our weather station on the mountain behind camp, as the current one keeps getting destroyed by winds in excess of 100 mph. So it takes a little time getting all of this organized. That night we again ate a nice dinner and reduced the day’s data, finding that the data between the time that the radio stopped transmitting and when it was restarted was no good, but everything else seemed OK.

The next day we once again split into the same survey teams. Jack and I headed to the Upper Cirque, where we surveyed most of the poles there. We also dragged up a first load of stuff need for installing the new weather station there. Fortunately we had the helicopter drop the heaviest stuff off up there already, which included the coring drill and the pipe. So once we finished surveying, we gave the coring drill a shake down so that we could use that hole to place the pipe into. It went reasonably well, and was another nice sunny day, with some clouds moving around up high. It became clear to me that drilling cores in snow takes some expertise, which we lacked, but we were able to get a decent sized hole drilled and drop the pipe into it. For the moment, we have 3 m below the surface and another 3 m above it, and hopefully this should be fine for the next year.

The spot we are locating this station in was chosen last May when the Japanese team was here. They used radar and drilling to locate the deepest pocket of firn in the Upper Cirque. This firn is essentially snow from previous years that gradually gets thick enough to smush the lower layers into ice, and it is this ice that then flows downhill and supplies the rest of the glacier with the ice we see on the surface of the ablation area. The general idea is that enough ice has to be formed here to balance the amount of ice melted from the rest of the glacier at lower elevations. If less ice forms here than melts elsewhere, the glacier begins to thin and terminus retreats, as has been happening over the past 100 years. This accumulation area is apparently quite small, as just 140 m downglacier, there is no long-term accumulation and no firn at all. Last year we set up two weather stations to study this, one in the sweet spot of accumulation and one 140 m down-glacier at the edge of the accumulation area. It is the station in the sweet spot that we are now reconstructing to account for higher accumulation rates.

Extracting a core or making a hole, depending on your perspective.

Preparing to drop the pole into the hole.

It was dead-level when we installed it. We'll see what happens next year...

After we finished with erecting the new mast for this station, we headed back down to survey a few last poles on our way to camp. However, the base station radio had once again stopped transmitting. We switched to a different mode of measurement in the hopes that it was just the radio not working and that we could post-process the data, but didn’t linger with extra measurements as this seemed to be a low probability endeavor. Once back at camp, we found that restarting the base station was necessary. Ken and Alexandra were on their way back from the terminus at the time. I spent the rest of the evening working out a plan of attack for the coming days, trying to optimize our efforts to accomplish more than a week’s work in just the couple of days remaining. Ken and Alexandra returned at about midnight, having accomplished nearly all of what we set out to do. Unfortunately, the GPS measurements made during those hours when the base was not transmitting would not process. Our conclusion at the end of the day was that the internal program of the base station’s GPS is such that it resets itself at 4PM (for reasons unclear to us). These receivers were programmed by Unavco for us such that we could leave them on the glacier over the summer, and something about that requires them to start a new file every 24 hours, and that seems to occur at 4PM. The major clue was that it stopped at exactly 4PM every day and that the processing error we received indicated that the base station and the roving stations were not logging at the same rate, which was consistent with the summer programming.

Kristin, checking in with the powers-that-be.

That morning we slept in a bit and planned for a camp day, such that we could hit the ground running early the next morning for a major effort in the Upper Cirque. Alexandra worked on the GPS, trying to figure out the problems we had, organize the data collected thus far, and make sure that our summer-over GPS deployment would work properly. Jack began construction of small structures on which to mount the solar panels and hardware for the on-ice GPS stations that we would leave behind. Ken and I organized for a hike up to Ahab, our mountain-top weather station. The weather was a bit overcast, but still warm and pleasant to work in.

We reached the station about 4PM and began setting things up. A day or so earlier, the telemetry radio that transmits our weather data stopped working, and no amount of fooling with things on our end seemed to help. So Ken dealt with that as I began installing the new wind sensor. I planned to leave the old one up too, so that we could compare them. Fortunately it was a reasonably calm day, so there were no major issues with climbing the structure and fooling with things. It was immediately clear that the near sensor was superior to the old, as it was spinning vigorously in the light wind while the old one barely turned. We were unable to sort out the problem with the radio, but swapped the old one out so that we would have additional hope of solving the problem once back at camp.

Ken, wearing the jet-pack that would ultimately become the new wind-sensor cross-arm.

Taking down the old sensor.

The new (black) and old (white) wind sensors.

Ken, probably wishing he had an ultra-light for the way down.

I also installed a time-lapse camera to look at the terminus region over the summer. One of the side projects I had hoped to conduct this season was looking at the influence of the rock walls on glacier weather. The general idea is that the rocks heat up in the sunshine much more than the glacier does (because ice cannot get warmer than 0C), and this warms the air over the rocks more than over the glacier. The effect of this should be that the air rises over the rocks, drawing new air into the valley from the tundra below. Support for this is seen in the fog that often rolls upglacier in summer, carrying warm and wet tundra air over the glacier surface where it condenses. Further support is seen in our air temperature and wind data on the glacier surface. For example, air temperatures seem to fluctuate randomly in the lower part of the glacier, whereas in the upper part they follow a nice diurnal pattern with peaks during the day and lows at night. An explanation for this would be a down-glacier cool wind (caused by the cold surface there) mixing with an upglacier warm wind (brought in by the rock-heating effect). But it’s unclear. So what I hoped to do was use the camera to know for sure when the fog was present, and then correlate this with our weather instruments on the glacier surface. This year I hoped to install a solar radiation sensor near the terminus and at the firn site to complement the one already in place in the mid-elevation of the glacier, such that I could determine the effect of this process on the glacier’s mass balance and rates of melt. Ken and Alexandra installed the lower one the day before, and the next day we hoped to install the upper one.

The time-lapse camera, with a patch of tundra and then coastal fog visible in notch in the hills that our telemetry goes through..

Alexandra: "I am Queen of the Mountain"

Alexandra joined us at the top of the hill as we were finishing up, and we enjoyed the view a few minutes before heading back down. On the way, we found most of the old solar panel that had blown off two years earlier. The glass was gone, but the silicon wafers were intact and still attached the electrical box. We haven’t tried it yet, but it might still work. We got back to camp about 8 PM, early enough to enjoy a relaxing evening watching a DVD on the laptop and another nice meal.

Gourmet feast -- 5 MB

The next morning, Sunday, we mobilized for the work in the Upper Cirque. In the end we had four full sled loads, and it was after noon before we arrived at our destination. Kristin joined us too, as her first real outing on the ice this trip. She has mostly stayed at camp and helping organize the basics of the little city we create during our stay, as well as baby-sit the GPS and other equipment here while we are on the glacier and frantically call back for on-site support. Ken and Jack concentrated on the weather station upgrades, while Kristin, Alexandra, and I worked on the mass balance and coring work.

A chair lift would make this quicker, but not if we had to keep going back to town for lift tickets.

Plus it's harder to take sleds on a chair lift.

Downloading the old station before disassembling it.

Weighing big snow flakes...

One of the outstanding questions regarding Arctic Glaciers is how much melt-water gets refrozen within the firn. Some people have estimated this to be 50% or more of the accumulation of these glaciers, but there have been few reliable direct measurements of this. My original plan for this season was to take several replicate cores to 10 m within the firn, and measure it’s density reliably. Then we could come back in subsequent years and repeat the process, and hopefully directly measure the increase in density as a proxy for this internal accumulation. That is, the meltwater that percolates down into the firn refreezes there, making the firn heavier, and this is something that we should be able to quantify. In addition to this, I had hoped to take back samples of these cores to measure the isotopic composition of the water there, and see how these change over time. Both data together should help answer the general question of internal accumulation, as well as improve our interpretations of climate changes over the past 100 years, as this is largely derived from water isotopes. But there simply wasn’t time for any of this.

By the time we fooled a bit with the corer and further humbled ourselves, it was already getting late in the day and there were higher priority things to do. We had to finish up with the steam drill that day so that we could use it elsewhere in the next two for installing the GPS. We also had to dig a nice snow pit to understand the stratigraphy of this winter’s accumulation. Digging this pit took quite a while due to numerous hard layers of snow and ice. It turns out that we got here well after summer began on the glacier this year. Earlier in April, a heat wave began melting the snow in earnest, such that the lower part of the glacier was likely snow free. Similarly in the upper regions, surface melt had percolated downward into the snow and refroze there, creating the ice layers. Because of a wind-packed hard layer near the surface, we were actually able to find many of the little percolation channels that the water followed vertically into the snow pack, as water had frozen within them after the temperatures returned down to normal. We cleared an area and counted these, and I had hoped to do this at several other locations nearby with different surface slopes, but there was simply not time. By the time we analyzed the pit, it was late in the day and we still had finish with the weather station construction.

The orange dots are percolation tubes highlighted with Tang.

An excavated percolation tube.

Ken and Jack had much of the structure up and instruments attached by about 7PM. It was a beautiful sunny day, and downright hot through most of the afternoon. The arctic sun was still high in the sky though, reminding of us of our latitude. While they continued with the upper structure, Kristin and I installed a new thermistor string into the firn down to about 6 m. This complements one that we had installed last year down to about 12 m. The idea is that as meltwater percolates downwards, it makes the firn warmer and we can detect this, as another indication of the internal accumulation process. By the time we had things more of less wrapped up and started heading downhill, it was after midnight. The sun was still up, but hidden behind the steep valley walls, so the temperatures had dropped and we were glad to be heading back. It was Jack and Alexandra’s first time hauling sleds downhill, so it was a creative learning experience for all of us. The soft snow had crusted over quickly with the setting sun, as the clear skies allowed more energy to leave the surface than to be gained by it, but the soft snow just underneath made skiing conditions challenging. Though it was a late night, we continued talking long after dinner was over, still somewhat amped from the day’s work.

Just like the government work -- one person working, the rest watching...

Jack, using an improvised persuasion tool.

Assembling the new weather station on the mast we installed several days earlier.

Ken, signaling success -- 2MB

The completed station, with the midnight sun still catching the peaks.

Ken, testing the snow -- 3MB

The next day, today, we slept in a bit again, and planned for a half day’s work (only about 8 hours) so that we could get an early start the next day. The helicopter is due to arrive the day after tomorrow, so we have only a short time left. Fortunately, most of the work is complete, with only loose ends to tie up. One of those loose ends was making our weather station telemetry functional again. It mysteriously stopped working a few days ago, and changing the radio didn’t seem to fully solve the problem. So Ken spent a few hours trying to use our satellite phones to reach the internet and tunnel into his University computer to attack it from that end, but that resulted in no further clues. So he made plans for another visit to the station with more equipment to beat it into submission personally. Jack finished up getting the GPS structures organized, and we loaded up sleds to drill a few new survey poles and install the first summer-over GPS station. Kristin, Alexandra, and Jack headed off with the gear to an area only a few hundred meters from camp to do a shake-down with the installations that need to occur there. I had planned to go to the Upper Cirque and finish a few miscellaneous chores, but decided against it as it was already 3 PM by the time everyone got going, and Ken could use someone at camp to troubleshoot and test the telemetry connections. So I began going through the data we had collected thus far and devising a take-out plan that could include all of the things we wanted to do with the helicopter, thinking that everyone would be back at camp by 6PM or so. That came and went as various problems plagued progress of the various groups, also slowed down a bit by a snow storm that developed during the afternoon. We’ve been remarkably lucky with the weather thus far, it sure would be nice if it could hold out for three more days.

We share our space with the locals, including the mouse posing to the right of our tent rope.

Our buddy in action -- 610 kB

Hopefully not a satellite view of the nieghboring glacier...

Our most common neighbor is lichen.

Thursday, 02 June 05, McCall Glacier

As usual, we had great weather until it was time to leave.

The problem with the telemetry radios that Ken worked on turned out to be a classic clusterfuck. Initially, the computer at Kaktovik that we use to receive the data spazzed out and was continually trying to connect but then doing nothing but simply tying up the connection. So while we were up there a few days ago, we installed a new radio here that had a different phone number than that the computer in Kaktovik didn’t know about. This radio worked fine for us at camp before bringing it up, but once we got back down from the site where it was installed, we could not connect to it from camp. However, we could connect to it by first connecting to one of our weather stations on the glacier, then using it as a repeater to connect to the new one. So we knew the new one was working, but not why we could not access it directly, or use it to contact Kaktovik. Using our satellite phones to contact Kaktovik’s computer and mess with it did not seem to solve the problem either. However, while up on the ridge, Ken discovered that the power setting for the radio was at the lowest setting, which partly explained why it worked at camp but not after it was deployed, and why the other stations could reach it with their better line-of-sight connection. So then I was able to contact it from camp and use it to contact Kaktovik. Ken then fooled with the antennas a bit while I did other things and about 45 minutes went by before I noticed that I was still connected to the radio with my computer. Ken had turned his walkie-talkie off to prevent interference, so I just disconnected on my end. About 5 minutes later Ken called to say he couldn’t figure out the problem, but now everything was working, after which I explained being connected here probably screwed things up for him. So after a few hours of all of this, everything was working in the end.

We are constantly reinventing schemes to charge batteries, depending on loads, sunshine, broken equipment, etc. In this case, we're changing DC to AC and then back to DC to top off a drill battery.

The drilling/GPS team had their share of problems too. Apparently the propane connections we use for heating the steam drill limit power too much, and when hard ice layers are encountered, drilling slows considerably. After several hours of work they had managed to install one 6 meter pole completely, but the other had gotten stuck in the hole on the way down. So they tried drilling holes next to it to free it up. In the end it could not be freed, and the eventual conclusion was that the tip off the steam drill was allowed to rest on the bottom of the hole while drilling, and this tends to create curving holes into which the rigid pipe cannot follow. The GPS installation, however, seemed to go without a hitch.

That evening we hauled most of the next day’s equipment to the bottom of the hill where we packaged it on sleds, hoping to get an early start the next day. The plan was that Jack, Ken, and Alexandra would install the other two GPS units while Kristin and I inventoried the camp supplies in preparation for leaving the next day. In the morning, the glacier was covered by fog, which quickly dissipated as the sun got higher in the sky and the temperatures warmed. The remainder was a beautiful sunny day, with light to calm winds, perfect for both skiing and sorting gear. Despite our preparations the night before, it was 11 before the GPS team got underway, but it’s been rare that we’ve ever been able to avoid several hours of preparation time in the morning. It was nice working outside the whole day, even though it was on the moraine instead of the glacier, and it felt good to get a really good handle on everything we have in our cache of supplies. It took quite a long time to go through it all thoroughly. The basic idea is that we don’t want to accumulate junk or foods that will never be eaten, but we don’t want to fly things out that we will just have to fly back in later. So we filled several of our plywood seats/boxes with foods that keep well (like candy bars and tea), and I have several boxes with tools, solar panels, and hardware that we use often. It all fits into a fairly compact and neat cache of supplies that minimizes helicopter time and hopefully is the lowest impact alternative to balancing the goals of the Refuge with the preexisting goals of this long-term science effort. In any case, the amount of stuff we have here is insignificant compared with the amount of useless debris we have hauled out in the past, and I think there is little chance of it ever becoming a problem that future scientists will have to deal with.

A neat fog covered the glacier in the morning.

Packing up sleds for the trip down-glacier.

Alexandra ready to go and clearly losing her grip...

Skiing downhill with sleds is tricky.

The six small dots on the glacier, to the right of the poles in the foreground, are the three skiers and their sleds.

The further down-glacier they got, the less snow they found.

Installing "ETHL"

That night we all seemed to finish up by about 10PM, after which we had dinner and began discussing plans for our take-out the next day. There were only two remaining science tasks that I wanted to complete. First was to return to the Upper Cirque and fix up a few sensors that were not working on the weather stations. Second was to visit several nearby glaciers and measure their surface elevations with D-GPS. So my plan for the take-out was to visit the other glaciers in the morning, then fly out Jack and Kristin in the afternoon, in time for them to catch the Frontier flight at 4:30PM. The remaining three of us would then travel to the Upper Cirque to finish the work. The next day the helicopter would return and take us to a few new glaciers, then take us all out. Kristin and I managed to get most of gear packaged for take-out, and it seemed like it could be done in these two flights, especially if everyone could send out as much personal gear as possible on the first flight.

That night was exceptionally cold. Typically we all wake up overheated in our warm sleeping bags, but this morning they were appreciated and the temperature and wind slowed down the morning’s productivity. I talked with the pilot at 8AM, and he seemed to think that it would be possible to arrive by about 9:30AM. Not long after hanging up, our clear skies here turned cloudy and it began to snow. We had had a few flurries several days ago, but this didn’t stick because the rocks were so warm. However, with the cold night the rocks had cooled off quite a bit and the snow began to accumulate. Temperatures remained cold beneath the clouds and with the wind and snow made us remember why glaciers exist here. It was our first real taste of a typical winter/spring day.

It soon became clear that even if the weather in Kaktovik was good enough to launch a helicopter, that it would never make it here. Indeed, by the time the Frontier flight went overhead about 10:30AM, we learned from them that the helicopter had only made it five miles before it had to turn around. So we continued to sort gear a bit in the snow and get piles ready for caching or flying. The temperature gradually warmed and snow melted, with occasionally some freezing rain instead of flakes. We discussed several new plans for leaving given the changing situations and checked in with Waldos several times during the day. Alexandra had pulled one of the summer-over GPS receivers deployed nearby to use on our other glacier surveys (to be put back when we finished), so we downloaded the day or so worth of glacier-motion data to make sure it was working. It seemed to be working, though the motion we expected over one day is only 2-3 cm and this is only just beyond the accuracy of the instrument. Here we are recording the position of the glacier every 15 seconds over the entire summer, so it should be really neat data in the end. By 6 PM, the weather both here and there was still pretty bleak, so we gave up hope of leaving and unpacked our bags and set up the tents again. We spent that night watching movies and celebrating life. By the time we emerged from the cook tent after midnight, the winds were calm and sky was crystal clear, perfect for flying.

The view out the tent door change from this...

... to this throughout most of the day, but ended up...

...like this by midnight.

That night remained warm as was typical this trip, and in the morning the winds were again light and the sky generally clear. I talked with the pilot, Scott, at 7AM, and he said the weather in Kaktovik was too poor for taking off, but that he would hopefully try it later. So I left the phone on and went back to sleep. About 9 AM I got up to find everyone else in the cook tent, checking weather over Ken’s telemetry/internet connection. Not long afterwards, the phone rang and Scott said that the weather had improved a bit and that he would give it a try. So we began packing and sorting again. It seemed to me given the great weather here that we could generally follow the same plan as yesterday, except this time after we had surveyed a glacier or two, we would fly everyone out and skip the second day. Eleven AM came and went, and it became clear that the helicopter must have turned around. We connected with a Frontier flight passing overhead who confirmed that the helicopter was tied down in Kaktovik 20 minutes earlier. Given that it would likely be several hours before he would try again, Ken and Alexandra went off to the Upper Cirque to take care of a few things there. One of the unfortunate things that I had given up scientifically on this trip was the isotope work there in both the pit and the core I hoped to extract. Had we one more real science day, I think it would have worked out, but trying to squeeze it in between aborted take-out flights is just a little more than is reasonably intelligent I think.

So here we are in expedition limbo once again. Fortunately it’s become so familiar that it’s not stressful or frustrating, but it’s still limbo. Or as they would say in Big Trouble in Little China (one of the movies we watched last night), it’s the Hell of Waiting to Hear the Sound of a Helicopter with Half-packed Bags. Most of our stuff is packed and should stay that way, but as the days go on, there’s always something you’d like to get, which then jumbles up all of the sorting and packing. So it’s not at all like having an extra free day to do something, as essentially at any minute we need to drop what we’re doing and begin loading a helicopter. In fact I think I hear one now. Or is it a bumble bee a mile away flapping at just the right frequency…?

Wednesday, June 8, 2005, Fairbanks

By our third day of waiting on the glacier, it seemed we had resigned ourselves to spending the summer here. Ken, ever busy, decided to begin construction of a local circus, starting with a slack line in front of camp for rope walking. Using some materials left-over from our wind generator guy-lines, he fixed anchors on two boulders draped a length of wire-rope between them. He then proceeded to walk back and forth over the line, balancing himself on the thin wire. We all tried it, and it soon became clear that he had done this before as he was the only one who could actually make more than a few steps without falling off. For the time being, the circus stopped with the slack line, but as the hours and days wore on, I’m sure bigger and better things were gradually coming to mind. Ken’s son was getting married in a few days in California, and the longer we were stuck here, the less likely it seemed that he would be able to make the trip.

I suspect this the first time this has been done on McCall Glacier, but you never know.

Ken, practicing for the wedding.

Ken in action - 6MB

Alexandra, asking us to hold our applause.

Alexandra in action -- 1MB

Jack participated in the fun, but it was also clear that he would rather be elsewhere. He had been planning a trip to Germany with his mom that was to begin a few days later. My intention was to have him fly out on our first day of helicopter use, so that he would have the weekend to pack his things and get his house in order for his mother’s visit. Apparently they had been planning this trip for some time, and his mother was not one to go on the trip alone. As the weather in Kakovik showed no signs of letting up, and our opportunities for leaving the glacier before his plane left were gradually decreasing, he also began resigning himself to a summer on the glacier and made a few phone calls describing this new lifestyle ‘choice’. It was a testament to his internal resolve and good-nature that he never let this outwardly get him down or show any signs of frustration or depression, but I kept the bar open just in case.

For me, I would just as soon spent the summer here. I had long since made it successfully through my email withdrawals, and the chance to spend some days with no real work to do was a welcome relief. Ken had devised a method to connect to the internet through our telemetry system, but I had avoided this like the plague, as the last thing I looked forward to was putting out fires for other projects. I spent much of the afternoon sketching out a proposal for the International Polar Year for new work on the glacier. Part of this included spending a year or two on the glacier and turning it into a major arctic research center. Right now I spend weeks or months preparing for a two week trip, but it would not take much more effort to prepare for a year-long trip. Much of our time is spent mobilizing and demobilizing a small city, complete with a power plant, water and waste-water systems, communications, restaurants, hotels, etc. By the time it is up and running, the bulk of the work for a long-term trip is already completed. The idea of waking up each morning with a single task to complete that day, rather than a week’s worth of tasks, was particularly appealing. If we were here for a year, whole new lines of research would be possible, and something like a normal work day would be possible, complete with opportunities to pursue random new discoveries and occasionally going on fun hikes or trips.

Jack spent some of his extra time shining up his tent.

Ken, probably thinking that MicroSoft will never find him here...

Kristin, probably wishing she didn't eat that second package of Lasagna...

Still wishing -- 3MB

I had spent most of this trip on the moraine, just trying to stay one-step ahead of the others in our accelerated and compressed work-scheduled that was caused by our initial delays. While it was great being in the mountains and working in cooperative weather, I began to feel a little like the work was getting in the way of the research itself. With little time to get on the ice and explore its dynamics in person, I was becoming a manger rather than a scientist. As places to work go though, it was still great, and the panorama from my office was unparalleled. There’s something about being surrounded by steep rock walls, such that the world outside remained out of view, that was somehow reassuring. It was a bit like being in El’gygytgyn crater, where it seemed like everything in sight was a little part of the earth that was here just for us, like we owned our view and nothing outside of it really mattered. That evening, after our first movie, I remember just looking down on the ice and thinking how massive yet tiny it looked, with the light just perfect for seeing every tiny piece of survey pole and instrument, and how much better it is to see it all laid out in front of me for real, rather than as dots on a paper map. Though I felt somewhat obliged to remain at camp in case the helicopter showed up unexpectedly, I resolved to myself that if the weather was not any better in Kaktovik the next morning that I would go for a ski and let the circumstances sort themselves out.

Our GPS base station standing guard over the alpenglow.

The next morning, I followed my morning ritual of sticking my head outside the tent at 7 AM and calling the pilot in Kaktovik. Once again the weather here was beautiful and there foggy. I rolled over for an extra hour’s sleep, then began unpacking and resorting my gear for a ski. I didn’t bother waking anyone else up, as by this point there was no use stating the obvious, as had a helicopter flight been likely before breakfast the frantic packing on my part would have woken even the soundest sleeper. It was nearly noon before I was ready to go, and the others were already well into their own daily coping rituals. The snow was soft and great for skiing. I began by hiking up to our first GPS station to check it out. In anticipation of surveying some other glaciers, we had pulled this receiver out several days ago to temporarily bring it with us, and by so doing had a day’s worth of data to check out. It seemed to be working, though the motion in that short of time was only barely above the accuracy of the instrument. Still, it was neat thinking about how, during the short time I spent looking at it, that it was actually measuring its own motion during that time, as well as my own motion while standing next to it. I skied down to the confluence over the gentle slopes, perfect for my skiing abilities, and looked back at camp. Now lit by direct sunshine, the former glacier levels were clear and I wished someone had been around then to take a picture we could compare to.

GPS station "LUCY". "FRED" and "ETHL" are located down-glacier from here.

My goal for the afternoon was to download one small weather station I had missed thus far. These are inexpensive little dataloggers that we can easily hang on our survey poles to measure air temperatures. I found it there still in one piece, but it had stopped logging in October. There is obviously a trade-off with these units in that they are cheap, so it is easy to put many out, but they tend to stop working during storms, when the static from blowing snow likely zaps them. This has been the case on many of these, but the data up to that point is always still safely stored and the equipment itself is not permanently damaged. It just takes going there with a laptop to download it and restart them. Normally I set them to log every hour so that they don’t fill up the memory, but considering that they rarely run long enough to do that, I set it to record every 5 minutes. Had we planned to spend the summer there, I would likely deploy many more of these and record every minute. In this way, we might actually have the chance of tracking air packages flowing up or downglacier, such that we can see them warm or cool as they compress or expand, depending on their direction of travel. I’m not sure that anyone has actually tried that on a valley glacier before.

After finishing that, I considered skiing down-glacier to visit our other stations and just take in the view. However, just about then I got a call on the radio saying that the helicopter would be here in 20 minutes. Then another saying that it was leaving in 20 minutes, then again that it would be here in 20 minutes. Considering that I was at least 30 minutes from camp, I considered skiing down further to a place where I could easily be picked up, but then, figuring that there was a good chance it was a false alarm, decided to ski. I made sure that it was clear that Jack and Ken should go out first, and then asked Kristin to confirm with Frontier that they could hold the plane in Kaktovik to until this first load arrived. Normally the plane leaves Kaktovik about 4:30PM, but on this day when we talked to them flying in this morning we learned that they were not going to Barrow and so would be leaving about 2:30PM. I was still at the bottom of the hill when the helicopter did arrive, and by the time I got to camp much of our retro-gear was already loaded and Ken and Jack had cleared out of their tents and were frantically getting their gear aboard. Ten minutes later they were gone, leaving Kristin, Alexandra, and I to pack up the tents and get everything ready for what was hopefully the final flight.

I'm late -- 3MB

This is by far the most frantic part of the trip. Usually it works out that it is just Kristin and I, so it was nice to have Alexandra’s help. As seems to be typical, shortly after the first flight left, the weather came down and it began to snow, and thoughts of unpacking again inevitably began to form. But knowing that Ken and Jack were going to make it back to Fairbanks that night, Saturday, was the most important thing, as the rest of us did not have such major deadlines to meet. Kristin was scheduled to work on Monday, but this was already a remote possibility, and it being her last official week on the job, I think the company was already mentally prepared to work around this. Alexandra worked on breaking down the sleeping tents, as I packed up my own things and began demobilizing the power systems and other infrastructure. Kristin worked on (re)packing up and clearing out the cook tent and we began staging gear for the next load. It always ends up being largely than anticipated, and this time was no different.

The outhouse was one of the last things to be packed up.

The helicopter quickly returned, with about ten minutes warning from the Frontier flight passing overhead with Ken and Jack already on it. Apparently they offloaded the helicopter directly onto the waiting plane and were able to get everything (and everyone) on board. So at least there would be less gear for us to deal with once we returned, and the two people with hard deadlines were going to make them (or at least not miss them because of me). Scott, the pilot, worked hard on solving the 3 dimensional jigsaw puzzle necessary to fit everything inside, while we continued to drop more stuff on the makeshift heli-pad. The ASTAR we used doesn’t look all that big from the outside, but it does have lots of nooks and crannies to jam things. And because it is so powerful, we had little fear of overloading it as our stuff was not that dense. Though we were mostly prepared to go, it still took several hours to get to the point where we could leave, much to the consternation of Scott who was likely a bit apprehensive about the visibly lowering clouds and increasingly large snowflakes. By the time we were finished, he was definitely ready to go. We didn’t get quite as much on board as we hoped, but we have a nice pile ready to go when the helicopter returns empty in August after dropping us off again then. Or at least after dropping someone off then, as it’s still unclear whether I’m going to make it.

The way the boxes are stacked reminds me of flying in Russia, but at least these are securely tied down.

Once we left the moraine and entered the lower glacier valley, the weather improved below the clouds and by the time we left the valley it was clear skies again. The snow was mostly gone from the foothills, but there were no hordes of caribou present as in previous years. Though we could see the coast, there was a low layer of fog present on the coastal plain between us, and it was clear that this was still underlain by snow. So it seemed that we had both an early spring, with lots of melt in the mountains, and a late-spring with the persistent fog near the coast (that plagued our flights the entire trip) protecting the snow at lower elevations from melting. We scouted the path under fog and then eventually just popped up and over it, as it was clear that it was patchy enough that we could descend down through it nearly anywhere if we needed to. And so, about 4 hours after the first word of imminent helicopter arrivals, we were back in Kaktovik rather than the glacier for the weekend, just in time for dinner. As the next flight was not until Monday afternoon, we now had several days more waiting to do, but this time we could unpack in peace and not have to be prepared to drop everything on a moments notice in order to leave.

A wall of fog separated us from the coast. Fortunately it was thinner than it looked.

I remember thinking on the last trip that things were feeling more routine and familiar, but now a new element of the experience was definitely becoming more entrenched. Returning to Kaktovik and Waldo Arms was like returning to our home away from home. Maybe everyone that spends any time there begins to feel similarly, but the transition for us is certainly becoming less and less of a transition. We shuffled our stuff into our bedrooms, relaxed on the couches, raided the fridge, etc, without so much feeling like we were checking into a hotel as visiting some friends. There were a few new faces, but it was still early enough in the season that the stress of tourism and the formalities that come with that had yet fully engaged.

Felisha and Betty.

We spent the next several days doing odd jobs around the place. Walt and Merlyin had not yet returned for the summer, but had sent up some some new toys. So I programmed the new cash register (and made the first sale on it), got their computer systems working again, and made some new forms for tracking bush flights for Walt’s flying service. Felisha and Yvonne stopped by for fries regularly and to pass around whatever babies they were taking care of. Ed and I discussed plans to purchase the hangar at the airstrip and start new businesses. Alexandra and Kevin went four-wheeling around the island. Kristin relaxed and read several novels, traded music, let the kids listen to the second heartbeat in her belly, and talked flying with the local pilots. At night, Ed and LuAnn often left us in charge to get some time off. By the time Monday afternoon came, the new folks that came in on the morning flight assumed we worked there. But though it was certainly nice to relax and be part of something completely different, we were all ready to head back to Fairbanks. It was not a particularly long trip in total, a little less than 3 weeks, but of that time more than half of it was spent waiting to get somewhere, and this is a bit draining. It was time to sleep in our own beds and wake up in our own houses.

The baggage carousel at BTI. You can't do this at SEA-TAC...

Kristin and Dave, in front of my new hangar.

My other new building at the runway.

Kristin having withdrawals for the glacier already...

Alexandra and Kevin, unloading the plane.

Baby Betty, complete with fur-lined mukluks.

Yvonne, taking Betty home, and no doubt exchanging her for another..

Frontier Flying purchased Cape Smythe Air while we were on the glacier.

The plane ride home was uneventful, and the three of us soon stepped off the plane into the heat and greenness of Fairbanks' summer. It was a beautiful evening, and we had arranged to meet up with Jack and Ken at Pikes for one last hurrah before really dispersing across the planet. Jack was leaving that night for Anchorage to meet his mom and leave for Germany the next morning, so we had an hour of two in the sun near the water to drink a few pitchers and enjoy each other’s company before he had to catch his plane. The rest of us stayed late into the night, as even though it was Monday, the fates had aligned to bring many of our Fairbanks friends to the deck that night for their own reasons. Keith showed up too to wish some other friends goodbye, and we chatted a bit about the glacier. As it turns out, Ken had worked with Keith 20 years earlier on Variegated Glacier, so it was all a tangled web of connections there, as seems to be typical for Fairbanks. Thus, though we had left a small town of 300, we had arrived in a small town of 30,000 where years of mutual interests and travels makes it inevitable that you can hardly go anywhere in town without bumping into someone you know who is has just finished or is about to start the adventure of a lifetime for the umpteenth time.

Taken by an "Army Photographer"...

Jack: "Isn't it just like the Germans to have OctoberFest in September?"

Kristin and Ken: "Any time you're ready to pass that pitcher over would be fine with us"

We slept well that night and let the phone ring in the morning. The house was a mess, looking like someone had left in a hurry for a long trip and squatters had moved in afterwards. We found many new things lying around, like carpets, baby accessories, clothes, kitchen things, and lawn chairs. Later I found a rifle under the fridge. I’m still not sure where it all came from, but I suspect that Bernhard had something to do at least some of it. As it unfortunately worked out, he and his family had come to town while we were away, largely to see their old cabin one last time before selling it, and some of this might be what they cleared away from there. We spent the day mucking the place out to the point were we could see the floor again and removed most of the rotten food from the refrigerator. Because the weather was still holding out from the day before, Kristin and I ate lunch on the deck at Pikes again on our way to the airport to pick up our remaining gear, then got showers, picked up our mail (which filled a whole USPS tote), and went to Fred’s to buy food for the week. There we bumped into Walt and Merlyn, who were still stuck in town waiting for empty seats on the next plane to Kaktovik. We chatted with them for quite a while, and it was clear that they were ready to go back home too and resume the life they had become accustomed too. By the time we got back home, it was nearly time to go to bed, as Kristin had to be up at 4AM to begin flying the next day, today.

So here I am, sitting on my new lawn chair on the deck, watching the sun rise above the ridge, the geese fly over head, and the mosquitos land on my hands. There’s something really special about Fairbanks, and I’m very glad to live here. It’s hard to describe other than to say after a long-time being somewhere else, it’s just a comfortable place to come back to.

In terms of the project itself, it was a very successful trip, especially considering the obstacles we faced this time. The good weather on the glacier and the good company there made the work go relatively smoothly and continuously, and all of our major goals were accomplished. I think the project is entering a transition phase now, and after this year things will be different. Thus far the bulk of our work has been somewhat mundane, getting weather stations up and running, getting an extensive stake network in place and surveyed, etc. The stations are for the most part in a reasonably final form, and I have let most of the stake network melt out without replacing it. This extensive network was mostly a way to break myself into the dynamics and science at the glacier, and there is no compelling scientific need to keep it going continuously. These first two years of data have given us enough insight into the peculiarities of the glacier’s dynamics, and now it’s time to pursue more focused efforts targeting particular science questions that this initial effort has generated. This phase will also hopefully lead to more in-depth collaborations with others, now that I’m able to generate and test my own ideas about what we will find should we look closely enough. And as we continue to spend more time on our way to the research site, these collaborations will hopefully extend beyond scientific to more community involvement for those who are most directly affected by the climate dynamics we are studying.

Personally, I think the trip was something of a turning point for me as well. Though outwardly I probably seemed as grumpy as ever in the field, I didn’t feel nearly the amount of stress as typical. Maybe I’m just getting older, but I think I’m getting to the point where I can more clearly visualize in the long-term scheme of things that if I don’t get everything I planned accomplished to perfection, that for most things there is always next year or the year after. Though it’s easy to lose sight of, there is only so much time in the day and at some point there is a line to be drawn between doing what is necessary or appropriate and trying to accomplish inhuman amounts of work just because it might be possible. As more and more stakes fall out, the huge D-GPS workload we’ve experienced is noticeably declining and at some point soon this might actually become a minor part of the work and frustration, and more qualitative and scientifically stimulating efforts will become more of the norm, as well as benefits that come with being able to analyze extensive and long-term data sets that didn’t previously exist. So entire months’ of effort wont boil down to whether you can fix the ridiculously fragile pins on one particular cable, and in the future we might go into the field with just our field books and sleeping bags rather than a plane load of boxes. But who knows. Part of the satisfaction of field work is overcoming the seeming insurmountable odds of monumental accomplishment on a ridiculously low budget, even though that feeling of satisfaction is usually only felt after the trip is over.

How our next trip will shape up is still something of an unknown however. It's still unclear who can make it and what our goals will be, for a variety of reasons. Early-August is likely to be a busy time in our family, and my presence at home is likely going to be mandatory. Though the answer is likely in my unread emails of the past 3 weeks, I’m also hoping to receive funding to acquire a new topographic map of this mountain region this year, and this work would need to occur in August as well. I’ve also got several new project funded this spring that I have not started on yet, and I need to spend a fair amount of time on home improvements I’ve been putting off the past several years to increase our interior elbow room. I’d also like to spend more time relaxing at home and working with friends. But before that happens, I think I can’t avoid going on-line any longer and spending several days responding to emails urgently requesting I do something by yesterday. Whatever happens, though, fond memories of McCall Glacier are likely always to be always not far from mind, along with a mountain of data to waiting to be reduced.