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| 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?!
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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).
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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.
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| 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!
