Polar Bear Dip and more hiking

“Oh wow, definitely!”

That was more or less my first thought when I heard and signed up for a Polar Bear Dip planned for this past Sunday.

“What have I gotten myself into?” was my second thought.
 

Starting up the bonfire, so we'll have something to warm up to after our dip in the ocean.

The experience was incredible though. Cold as fuck, but I probably didn’t need to tell you that. There were about 30 participants, with around another 40 personnel coming out to watch those crazy enough to participate.

Just before we ran into the Arctic Ocean. Unbelievable experience, and not one I'm planning on doing again anytime soon.

We boarded buses on station at 1345 on Sunday, July 22nd, and travelled north from base to the tip of the airstrip, 3.5km away, where there was a massive bonfire waiting for us. After shedding off our outer clothes, those participating in the polar dip did a quick role call, followed by a few more minutes standing around to allow our bodies to get acclimatized to the air temperature (it makes the shock of the cold Arctic Ocean a little less shocking, which that afternoon was a frigid -2C).

There were 3 rules for this event; don’t spend more than 60 seconds in the water, don’t dive into the water (too shallow), and don’t swim out to an iceberg (they can be as sharp as broken glass, and you’ll be too cold to notice you’re hurt/losing blood).

Us polar dippers were split up into 3 groups, with one group going into the Arctic Ocean at a time. For better or worse, I was in the last wave. My original plan was to go in fairly deep, then dunk myself underwater. The other two waves had just went, and it was our turn now.


Warming up by the bonfire.

The Doc blew the whistle, and we all sprinted our way into the ocean. Sprinting quickly turned into wadding when the water reached our knees, and by the time it got to my waist I jumped forward and swam out. But the cold hit fast, and it hit hard. I got about 3 breaststrokes in, and had only been in for about 15 seconds, but couldn’t feel my feet. I stood up (it was around chest height), and started looking around at everyone else nearby. Most had also stopped continuing onward, and we all just kinda chilled there (pun intended).  By this point my main thought was “MUST GET WARM” or something along those lines, so dipping my head underwater wasn’t even on my mind.

Getting out was an even more interesting sensation than going in. From neck down my entire body was numb, and I was pretty much walking on instinct. My hands felt heavy, as if I was carrying 5 pounds in each, and having only a swimsuit on in the breezy Arctic air suddenly felt fine. The bonfire helped bring feeling back to me though, but it was still another 10 minutes or so until my body could realize just how cold I really was. Myself and everyone else dried off and changed, and hot beverages were served to help bring out body temperatures back to normal.


Large variety of moss, at the base of a mountain ~10km from base.

This week’s military plane that arrived yesterday afternoon delivered more personnel than usual, including the new CO who will be here the next 6 months. To celebrate this in part, dinner this evening was steak and crab. I actually had just come back from some pretty extensive hiking today, and so was pleasantly surprised when I got into the mess hall. The hike itself wasn’t very noteworthy; we went to places where caribou and muskox are common sights, but failed to see either. Funny enough, when looking for muskox we travelled along Caribou road, which is known as the longest road on Ellesmere Island. And we went to the end of it. I don’t know for sure how long the road actually is, but the end of it is off any map I can find on the base.
 

A common terrain this end of the world. You can just barely see our red truck parked off in the distance.

After an unsuccessful attempt at finding muskox past Caribou road, we went to a small hidden valley between the twin peaks of Crystal Mountain, where I’m assured caribou roam. We didn’t see any when we hiked up into it though, which was a bit disappointing.


On top of Crystal Mountain again, looking southwest.

I did see my first wolf the other day; while driving back from the lab, we came across the wolf right on the edge of the base, just walking around not giving a single fuck. I didn’t get pictures but I will whenever I see the next one. I also saw an arctic fox early last week, a few dozen meters from the back entrance to the GAW Lab. I took a few pictures, but they’re pretty shitty. I’ll save the bandwidth that would otherwise be wasted by posting them :D

I'm having some trouble uploading larger pictures, but I'll try to get some of them up in the next bit. Till then, make do with what's either here or whatever I've posted on facebook. Cheers!

Ice Caves and Crystal Mountain

What a first week it’s been!

I’ve been busy all week, though luckily not all of it was work related. Monday was spent at the GAW Lab, where I began learning the tasks I’ll be in charge of doing for the next year or so. There’s a lot to cover, and in another week or two I’ll start learning the co-op’s job as well, since I’ll be in charge of training future students who come up here for co-op in the next year.

Tuesday’s are a much more relaxed day I’m told, and I’ll believe it from what I saw of this one; the current operator, Matt, opted to stay and hold down the office while I, the co-op student Kevin, and the base’s Padre went out on an excursion together. Didn’t miss much back at the office; Tuesday’s are usually spent away from the lab, and we only go up if equipment is malfunctioning and needs to be fixed.


These are the paths I took for the Tuesday trip to the Ice Cave and Love Shack, and the Friday trip to Crystal Mountain. The yellow line signifies the portion of the trip travelled on vehicle, while the orange represents the portion travelled by foot. Click to enlarge.

The goal of our excursion was to see an ice cave formation that is about 9 kilometres southwest from the base. To go farther than 4km from base (up to a maximum allowed distance of 11km), you need permission from your supervisor and the SWO, but because of my position as head of the EC GAW Lab, I’m my own supervisor (as well as the co-op’s), so all we needed was a quick signature from the SWO, and we were cleared to go.

View north, overlooking Colan Bay (See map below if you want to get yourself oriented)

One of the perks of being a civilian on a military base is that I have access to both EC trucks, so the first boring kilometres of flat, swampy, glacier-carved land were driven through with the help of my Ford F-350. About 4 kilometres out, the road (if it can even really be called that, this far from the base) reached a steep ice-covered hill that we had no chance of going over.

Getting out, it was a beautiful 8C out, and there was only a slight wind. We took our time hiking out to the ice caves, partly because the terrain was constantly changing from boggy to rocky and back again several times, but also partly because the landscape was so breathtaking that we were constantly stopping and taking pictures of everything. I was quick enough with the camera to catch a few hasty pictures of an arctic hare that was nearby before it decided to scamper away.


Supper!

About an hour into our hike we began approaching a small valley, through which flowed a small creek, and led towards the ice caves that the Padre and I were promised (Kevin, our guide for the hike, had been here several times before).  About half an hour of navigating on rocks back and forth through the frigid waters, we reached our destination. And let me tell you, what a magnificent sight it was. Pictures don’t do it justice, but the ice cave and the surrounding area we just amazing to behold. We spent a full hour hanging around the ice caves before beginning to head back.


View of the approaching valley mouth



Navigating the waters in the miniature valley was a little tricky, since the water moved fairly quick, and if you got soaked you'd stay that way the rest of the trip (or at least I would; Kevin and the Padre were wise enough to bring a second pair of shoes & socks)

 

In front of the ice cave.



Looking inside the cave.



I look like something out of the X-Files :P
 But I'm trying to show that even near the back of the cave, I can't reach the tall ceiling!



View looking back down the creek; the way we came up. Directly behind would be where the ice cave is.

Instead of going back the way we came, through the valley, we opted to climb up and around the ice cave itself, to the top of one of the hills (a very steep climb, let me assure you), and follow the top of it before going down the much more gradual descent back down to the valley mouth. Our next goal was to reach what is called the Love Shack, a military shack built back in the 60s that’s now used as a place to have campfires on weekend afternoons.

The reason for the nickname I believe stems back a few years ago, where a couple who were engaged and worked up here actually got married on the base, and spent their honeymoon at the shack for a week! Not my idea of a romantic honeymoon, but hey, I guess it works for some people.

View looking north, overlooking Kirk Lake. To give you a sense of scale, if you zoom in to the right of the lake, you can just barely see the 'Love Shack'

 

Love Shack


The rest of the hike was largely uneventful, but that didn’t stop us from taking a few more pictures along the way. We eventually reached the truck and drove back to the base, arriving sometime around 3:30pm, meaning our time spent outside hiking was around 5 hours (the time spent in the truck amounted to about an hour, in total).

Navigating the water near the end of our hike was still a pain in the ass.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent mainly at the lab, learning more of the job and trying to fix two pieces of equipment that weren’t behaving properly. Both are software issues though, and one we’ve since fixed with the help of those in charge of the experiment down south, however the other is as of yet unresolved (the head of the experiment is taking a well deserved vacation I’m told).

Friday morning was spent at the lab, however since Fridays are typically a quicker day, we had the afternoon off. Kevin had already planned on this happening though, and had a trip request filled out for 6 of us to travel to the summit of Crystal Mountain, a (I’m estimating) 1km tall mountain that’s about 8km south south-east of the base. The allure (and namesake) of the mountain is that it is a wellknown place in the area to find quartz crystals.

At the summit of Crystal Mountain (Or Dean Hill as it's labelled on maps, but I haven't heard a single person call it that since I've been up here). All five guys I hiked with are in this picture; see if you can find them all.

It was an exhausting trip to get to the summit; while it’s true we drove both trucks out to about a kilometre to the base of the mountain, the hike up it was very difficult. Once we reached the top, we spent somewhere around 2 hours looking and digging for crystals; the time honestly flew by. It was exceedingly windy at the top however, and the temperature even without the wind was probably 5 degrees colder than it was at ocean level (putting it somewhere around 2C).

The arrows I've put on this picture are pointing to 2 little whitish specks; those are our trucks. This picture was taken near the summit.

Between the 6 of us we found somewhere around 100 crystals of various size and colour, however I know we could have found many more had it been less cloudy (the sparkle the crystals create when it’s sunny make them very easy to spot, but damn near impossible to find when cloudy).

There's a small bump on the top of the mountain, just left of the center of the picture. That's Kevin. And we're only about a third of the way down.

Near the base of the mountain. You can see the trucks much more clearly now, but they're still a fair ways away.

The hike back to both trucks were about as exhausting as the trip up them; the footing was unstable to say the best, so it was hard to contain your downhill momentum without destroying your ankles. I opted to destroy my ankles though, instead of the rest of me (everyone else had similar thoughts), so the trip downhill back to the trucks took about the same as it did the way up; close to an hour.

All in all, a pretty fun week, and I’ll be updating again sometime next week with whatever interesting events happen between now and then!

From 35C to 35F

Greetings from Alert!

I’ve been here for a little more than 28 hours now, and it’s been an amazing experience so far. The wait to get up here was a bit much though, but I was eventually able to catch up on the sleep I lost from it. If I may, I’ll start my recollections from Wednesday afternoon, when I was staying near CFB Trenton.

The lodge I stayed the afternoon, and part of the night at. Cozy place; the rooms were your standard hotel rooms at a fraction of the price.

I was lucky enough to have a drive up from Brockville on Wednesday; my mom took the afternoon off from work and moved me and my luggage to the Yukon Lodge in Trenton I’d be staying at for part of the night. Arrived at the motel around 3:00pm (or 1500, as I should start getting used to writing it as), and waited around until I was due to check into CBF Trenton around 1:00am. I couldn’t have slept even if I’d wanted to while at the motel, so I lounged around, watched some TV and played some games to pass the time.



This is the building at CFB Trenton where I checked my luggage, waiting for the C-17

Once I checked my baggage, myself and around 20 others had to wait until 4:00am to board the C-17 (Again, stayed awake and passed the time by reading, as there was no suitable place to sleep). It actually ended up being around 4:45am when we were allowed to board, and the jet didn’t take off from the base until closer to 5:30am!



Part of the cargo from inside the C-17. The majority of the other passengers were a little wiser and slept during the flight, but me and a few others stayed awake and got some amazing shots of the landscape outside.

The ETA was 11:15am, so I did what was finally had some sleep! Only about 2 hours was spent sleeping; the rest was spent either trying to sleep, or taking pictures outside of the portholes. And I took some pretty spectacular pictures, so I think it was worth a few hours of missed sleep. Here's two of the more noteworthy ones here:

We landed about 11:30am, and were quickly whisked away via bus to the base, where upon entry to the building we were greeted with thunderous applause by most of the personnel on base (I at first assumed it was because of how awesome I am, but later learned it’s standard procedure for every arrival and departure).

After random luggage searches were conducted for any illegal materials, I moved my luggage to my assigned room. The residential area is set up very similar to a typical university style dorm, but the room I’m in is considerably larger than your average college room. I’ve got three night tables, 2 sofas, dresser, two coffee tables, and a sink, in addition to your standard bed, desk, and closet. I’ll be doing some rearranging in the coming weeks though, so I won’t be getting too used to the look of the place just yet.

Spent the rest of Thursday touring parts of the base, but went to back to my room as soon as I’d eaten supper around 6:00pm, and fell asleep very shortly thereafter.

Part of my room. I've since rearranged the sofas and TV in my room, but I didn't feel the need to update anyone with a pic of that (I mean, I'll likely be moving stuff around a lot in the next month or two until I find what works best)

Today’s been pretty busy so far. Woke up around 7:00am, had a quick shower, ate breakfast and went the EC GAW office to see what Matt and Kevin were doing. Matt’s the current GAW Lab Operator, who’s position I’ll be filling come the end of August, and Kevin is the co-op student who assists with the day-to-day activities on the base and at the lab.

We went up to the GAW lab shortly after 8:00am, but I won’t bore you with details around that just yet. Maybe once I have some pictures from around there I will, but I’ll save that for another time.

The rest of the afternoon I have off, and Friday nights have a mandatory TGIF at the main bar, so I’ll be introduced to the personnel on station, and contribute $10 along with everyone else who arrived on base to pay for the first few rounds of drinks. Bar closes at 3:00am, and I’ve been told it’s a very surreal feeling stumbling out of the bar after midnight, only to see it’s still broad daylight outside. I guess I’ll experience it firsthand tonight!

Sidenote: I wrote this out in Microsoft Word on Friday evening, but this was my first real chance I had to post it.



Getting prepped and pumped

It's been a hectic past few weeks. Informative, but hectic.

Let me start off with a quick introduction. I've recently been given the opportunity to work in the arctic for the next year, as a Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Lab Operator. I'll be working for Environment Canada, living at the northernmost permanent settlement in the world (Alert, Nunavut). 

For those who want to get an idea of just how far north it is, let me show you: 

Alert's in the northernmost part of that red circle, in the far, far north of Nunavut

Why do I say these past few weeks have been hectic? I had started training for the job in Toronto and the surrounding area, and the logistics of it were troublesome to say the least. EC wasn't concerned with how I showed up to work these past few weeks, as long as I showed up at all, so my options were limited. 

View from the side of the Environment Canada's Downsview labs; my base of operations these past few weeks. I also received training at the Center for Atmospheric Research Experiments near Barrie, and AirZone One in Mississauga.

View from the roof of the labs. The white machines in the foreground are programmed to always aim directly at the Sun during the day, collecting and analyzing UV rays. They're called Brewers, but they only brew science, not beer.

It was either stay in a nearby motel, stay at a friend's place, or commute (This last option was particularly unpleasant, as I'm based in Waterloo, and a 4-5 hour commute each workday wasn't very appealing). Luckily, I have a few truly great friends in Toronto who stepped up and helped me out when I needed it. Julia, Nick, you guys are awesome (They split the 'workload', one week each of letting me crash at their respective places.

The training focused mainly on how to be self-sufficient with the instruments; how the worked and how to fix them. There are so many different instruments up there it is almost mind boggling, not to mention all of the different companies and countries that have their own experiments up there I have do every week (For some name dropping, I'm aware of at least France, Japan, UK, Germany and the US who have equipment up there, not to mention of course Canada).

In terms of how much I'll be testing, there are at least a dozen projects I'll be in charge of, but likely that number is larger. As for what I'll be testing for, there are many, many different chemicals in the snow, air, and soil that are being monitored (I'll likely post at least a partial list  in the coming months). I'm officially done training now, and will be spending the next few days getting together any last minute supplies and tying up any loose ends.

The flight itself is scheduled for July 5th, at 4:00am local time. I'll be taking off from CFB Trenton, on a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III, which is a pretty badass sounding name, and it looks even more badass to be honest. I'll take my own pictures of the aircraft after we land in Alert (the flight apparently only takes 4-5 hours, so I'll be in Alert before lunchtime), but this stock image of a C-17 will have to do for now:

Unless the military has a last minute change of plans, I'll be taking a C-17 similar to this on a 4-5 hour trip directly to Alert

I'm looking forward to the change in temperature though. These past few weeks the temperature has reached as high as 42C, while in Alert I'm told the weather station recorded a high of somewhere around 2C. Haha, a bit of a difference, for sure. Luckily I'll be able to ease my way into the harsher, colder temperatures of an arctic winter in the coming months, where temperatures can reach as low as -50C with wind chill. But that's for future me to worry about :P