Overdue blog, vol. 1

Ever seen the Sun set in the south? You have now!

Welcome to another instalment of ‘Where do I even begin!?’, where I try and remember everything I’ve done these past few months! Sure, it would have been easier if I had been blogging more frequently, but where’s the fun in that?!

The GAW Lab, with Mount Pullen off to the right, about 6km away

Since mid-August, when I last updated my blog, a lot has happened. I’ll begin by saying that the guy I replaced, Matt, left sometime early September, so I’ve been in command of the GAW Lab since then. The changeover itself went very smoothly, largely because I had a whole 2 months to acquaint myself with the lab and the job!

View from atop the GAW Lab, looking north towards the old TX Site, where I have to park and walk every time I go up

I’ve also got myself a new co-op student to do my bidding (evil laugh) now that Kevin’s gone. New guy’s name is also Mike, and he’s been here since the first week or so of September. He’s around 7 years older than myself, and probably a foot taller as well – his nickname ‘Big Mike’ is well earned haha.


Incoming Hercules, early September. Note the lack of snow, and the wolf being a total badass in the foreground

Another noticeable change around here over the past month has been the weather. Since my last blog entry, we’ve received a total of close to 20cm of snow – most of which has disappeared though due to the high winds we have here on the occasional day (upwards of 80km/h!). The snow that remains is very packed, enough that you can drive a vehicle over it and not squish the snow. The amount of sunlight received has started to substantially drop as well, with today the sunrise being around 10:00am, and setting right around 3:00pm. In a week’s time we’ll have the ‘Sunset Ceremony’, held on the weekend that is closest to whichever day is the last we’ll see the Sun for a few months! Just last month it was a common occurrence to stumble out of the bars at 3:00am and see the Sun, but pretty soon we’ll be having lunch in the pitch black!

Incoming Herc during Boxtop, mid-September

The most notable event during September was Operation Boxtop, which is a two week operation that restocks and refuels everything on base. To understand, on a typical week usually there is only one flight that comes in/leaves, but for Boxtop there is a flight that comes in EVERY FOUR HOURS (assuming all planes are serviceable). They come in all hours of the day, every weekday, flying in from the U.S. military base in Thule, Greenland. The waters at Alert are too shallow for the icebreaker to make it to port here, which is why they go up to Thule and offload there. The first week we get ‘dry goods’ flown in, which include everything from food and medical supplies, to vehicles and lab equipment. The second week is centered around (you guessed it!) ‘wet goods’, which are usually chemicals and fuel for the planes/vehicles on station.

The operation wasn’t without its mishaps though, with the big one being that there were no flights in for a few days at the end of the first week, due to heavy fog and snow. Dry goods got pushed back to part of the weekend/following week, and because of that we ended up not getting all of our wet goods up – the rest are going to brought up slowly with any regular flights that come in from Thule in the next few months.

Some of the Boxtop crew

Now that Boxtop is done, the number of personnel on base has dropped considerably – before Boxtop we probably had around 110 people on station, then during Boxtop we increased to around 130. With the operation done, as of right now we’re down to 77 people on station, and it’ll likely go down to around 65 by November. Right before Christmas we’ll have an extra flight or two taking a lot of people down south, and I’m guessing by that point we’ll only have 40 people by then. But I’ll talk about that more when it actually happens haha. I’ve already had to say goodbye to a few dozen friends who won’t be coming back, but luckily I’ve been able to exchange emails/facebook with most (a few weren’t so lucky – slipped my mind until it was too late, but such is life).

CBO personnel, saying their goodbyes

Besides Boxtop, there was a large changeover with our civilian personnel at the start of the month. CBO (Canadian Based Operators) was the company in charge of supplying most of the civilian personnel who worked here the previous 4 years, but after a bidding war sometime earlier this year, another company, Nasittuq, won the rights. In the end though, more than half of the civilian personnel who were already working here with CBO became rehired through Nasittuq, so it wasn’t as drastic a change as it could have been.


Click to enlarge - Polar bears, with CFS Alert in the background. Taken sometime late August (not by me!)

As for wildlife around here these days, I’ll post more pictures as I take them, but they’re becoming scarcer as it gets colder and darker outside (largely because the dark makes critters harder to find when I’m out, and the cold makes me NOT leave the warmth of indoors as often). I’ve been out on a few smaller expeditions, including some geocaching, but weather lately has been getting a little too intense to stay outside of extended periods of time – today was one of the better days, and even though it was a beautiful bright day out, with the wind chill today it was -30C, and there was only daylight for 6 hours!


United States Mountain Range in the background, something like 75km away. Looks a lot closer, but it ain't

One more little tidbit of info – I’ll be bartending starting tomorrow! Due to it being Thanksgiving, the bar will be opened earlier as well; from 1pm-5pm, then the usual 7pm-11pm. I’m technically working at the GAW Lab all day, but I’m hoping to get all of my work done before lunch (If not to bartend, then at least to relax with everyone else, who actually get the day off!). Dinner tomorrow night will be a bona fide Thanksgiving supper, with stuffing, turkey, gravy; the works. I’m already looking forward to spending the following days working off the extra weight gained from it all hahaha.

View south from the airfield, taken around 11am late September. See how low the Sun is, even though it's near midday

Well, that catches you all up a bit. I know there’s plenty more I can recall that I haven’t mentioned (2nd polar dip, hydrogen weather balloon launches, a delicious pigroast, more polar bear sightings, a med evac, etc) and plenty more I can’t recall that I’ll have to talk about at a later date, but I’ll have to save it all for a later time, as I’m both exhausted and lazy.

Until next time!

Ramblings & Polar Bears

Hey! It’s been a few weeks! Yeah, been pretty busy on my end, but they’re quieting down slightly for the next week or so. Don’t hate the playa’, hate the game, and all that jazz :P

I barely know where to start! Of late, I’ve been neglecting blogging, in favour of posting pictures of FB with a short description. But I have the time tonight, and some exciting things have happened on base these past few weeks that I feel I have to make another blog entry.

First, on August 1st, there was a ceremony for the incoming and outgoing CO (Commanding Officer). Originally it was going to be outside, complete with marching parade, but due to weather conditions it was held in the big gym. It wasn’t mandatory for us civies to attend, but I wanted to see the ceremony regardless. After all, it only happens every 6 months. It kinda blows my mind a bit that I’ll have seen 4 different COs here by the time I’m all done (I saw the 1st for my first month here, and I’ll see the 4th for my last).

Hiking these past few weeks have been greatly rewarding in terms of scenery, though ironically a great deal of the local wildlife I see is near the base.  So far I’ve seen 2 arctic foxes, 2 lemmings, 3 arctic wolves, 1 seal, and more arctic hares than I can count (biggest group was around 20 though). Below - Lemming, Seal, and Wolf, respectively. Only the picture of the lemming was taken by me though. 

People have seen both caribou and muskox in the past few weeks, although I’ve had no such luck personally. Maybe this weekend, but it’s entirely possible they’ve all moved on south. Below are some recent pictures of them, courtesy of my co-op student.

The hikes themselves are enjoyable too, though for some of the longer hikes we’ll bring bikes(which would normally be ok with me), except in this case the bikes are for the most part in fuckin terrible shape. Most have brakes on either the front or back tire (not both), and you’re considered lucky if you can change gears consistently. Additionally, on our last hike we ended up pushing our bikes for about 2 kilometers until we finally gave in and realized the terrain wasn’t going to improve, and so we’d pick them up and push them another 2km on the way back. I’d wanted to ditch mine a lot sooner too, but I was assured the terrain would improve. I’m still a little bitter about it lol.

View of Hilgard bay on July 29th. As you can no doubt see, very foggy.

A fair ways up, but it's hard to tell. You can see iceflows down below in the bay if you look hard enough.

An interesting ice/snow formation that we found while hiking down one of the valleys back to the shore of the bay.

Our second hike to Hilgard bay, on August 5th. Same view as picture just above this, except taken one week of warm weather later. 

  

Looking North, where Hilgard Bay attaches to the Arctic Ocean.

As for life on the station right now, it’s pretty good too. All of my extra stuff came in about 2 weeks ago (ie. Graphics tablet, books, speaker system, etc) so I’ve been spending a little more time in my room than I previously had been. Still been going out Friday nights to the bar for TGIF, and Wednesday nights for pool. Even went out Tuesday night for some hot cribbage action, though I didn’t end up in the top 3 (7 of us played, whoever had the highest total score out of 6 matches won. 2nd and 3rd also got cash prizes). I did win my last 3 matches, but it wasn’t enough to get some sweet, sweet cash. It’s mostly for the fun though, and I admit it was pretty fun :D

Tuesday nights and Saturday nights are Movie Nights at our auditorium, which can quickly be converted into a movie theatre. And it’s actually a really good setup; it honestly feels like I’m in a small movie theatre. There’s probably close to 150 seats, terrific sound system, and free popcorn you can take into the theatre if you want.

There’s still a lot I want to do on base, both easy and difficult to accomplish. I’d like to gain access near the runway one of the coming weeks when a C-17 or Herc comes in, and take some pictures of it. BOXTOP, a massive supply operation, will begin near the end of September, and planes will be coming in every few hours, every weekday, for about  3-4 weeks. I’ll likely accomplish that goal then. Right now only 1 comes in a week, and it’s usually while I’m away at the lab. Below is a picture someone else took earlier this year of one of the old Hercs touching down.

I’ve already hiked a great deal farther than most on base, and anything more farther out is truthfully just more of the same. Being a civie, and a scientist with access to several pick-up trucks allows for a much greater headstart than beginning right out of the station, as is usually the case with most personnel. There is a boundary set up by the military though, as to how far you can go from base. Anything more than 4km, and you need a trip request, that needs to be signed by your supervisor (In my case, I am my own supervisor :D ), and also a signature from the SWO (Station Warrant Officer), who is basically the second in command of the station. There are a few on station who know that EC sometimes cuts it close on these boundaries, or maybe even exceeds them *cough* ‘slightly’ *cough*. But those who know, both military and civie, typically only want a spot in our truck for a ride, which we usually encourage.

Another small goal of mine was to see polar bears. Notice I say ‘was’ though. There’s a good reason for that. I SAW FUCKIN’ POLAR BEARS TODAY! I was at the lab late though, and didn’t have my radio on (it’s not required), but apparently just after 4pm someone working on the water pipeline spotted a pair of polar bears about 150meters east from the big gym, which is right on the edge of base. The station was quickly under lockdown, but me and my co-op student were 7km away at the lab in complete ignorance.

We didn’t get back until around 5pm, but the polar bears were still around, albeit farther away. Of course we couldn’t go back out and see, now that we knew the base was under lockdown, but they were still close enough to see visually (White specks travelling off along the brown coast, about a kilometre away). One guy was videotaping it all on a very high quality camera/tripod setup, so I and many others will be getting the footage off of him in the coming days.

  

First picture snapped. They were a few hundred meters from the guys who took these pictures.



Thinking of investigating the humans....Oh shit

  

Shots are fired, and the noise scares the polar bears down towards the shoreline.



Debating on whether to get in the water, or something else? They were spooked enough they weren't planning on coming back up though.

 

Swimmin' in the ocean.



Click to enlarge. There's actually a seal that jumped out of the water to get out of the way from the polar bears. You can see the ripples off to the left where it jumped had jumped and where it is. The polar bears are together off to the right.

Over on the far shore, where they stayed for a few minutes before continuing southward.



One of the military personnel, Bellhop, snapped a few pictures in a truck alongside the SWO and others, who had guns out. They successfully scared the bears off base, and into the waters, though the bears only really hugged the coast and swam ashore about 1km further south. This was around the time I got back from the lab.

There’s probably a lot of other things I’m forgetting, but I think I’ll leave that all for another day. Until then, enjoy the warm weather down south!

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!