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!