Hello-hello,
I’m sitting here in the coffeehouse, my bike outside leaned up against the wall, and my double chocolate chip cookies by my side along with a mug of tea. This decadence has become my Sunday tradition. Among other things from the other world, I check the weather in the mountains at home… ever hoping for snow, the kind you step in, not on.
Tomorrow Larry gets back from almost 3 weeks putting in a major camp out on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. I must say we’ve both been so busy and so tired that we’ve had little time to do much together before he left anyway; this isn’t the first time we’ve experienced this down here. I think it’s funny that we met down here, but back then the newness of it all helped overcome the tired factor and we were both a lot more social. I remember how much fun we have off-ice, the laughter and energy, and know that this flatness is simply situational. I suspect many couples have the same experience day after day, year after year, dealing with dual careers, kids, and taking care of a house, so I know not to feel sorry for myself!
I’ve been working a lot with a project studying how sea ice fractures. The work site is close to the ice edge on two feet of ice and we go out for 16+ hour days (I get to sleep in the next morning and go into work for the afternoon, but it throw’s me off to get to bed 4 hours before my normal wake-up time).
Using chainsaws, they isolate a 7m x 4m plate of ice and then use ice hooks from the 18th century to pull out the chunks of ice from along the sides so the plate is free floating with a strip of open water surrounding it. Then they install instruments, cut a slot in the side to put a special jack into. They pump nitrogen into the jack, basically a balloon, until the plate cracks. It takes most of the day to get to this stage and I must say the final effect was anti-climatic. I was hoping for a big CRACK and such, but sea ice, esp younger ice, doesn’t do that. It creaks and groans, making small popping noises as it slowly rips in half. But still pretty cool.
The resulting plates are just small enough to get rocking by stepping on and off of it till it’s going pretty well. It’s fun to stand with one foot on each of the post-fracture plates and step back and forth, getting the floes rocking hard, to actually feel the ice moving. In my experience down here, the aliveness of ice has been theoretical, so this is all rather exciting. Interesting, at least. As the ice warms and thins in the coming weeks, we’ll have to tune in to whether the ice is moving with the swells: a sign that we should probably leave soon esp if the day is warm and the winds from the south. So by standing on the bobbing floes I am training myself to feel the undulations… all important scientific research in the name of Field Safety.
Locating the site was a challenge. It took several helo flights to find ice thin enough for the researchers adjacent to ice thick enough for Science Support departments for a tent, snowmobiles, and helo landing. Then when we came out the 3rd time, a huge crack 40m across had opened up just a couple meters from the work site. That was an eye-opener. I’d like to say we chose that site sensing it would stay put, but the reality is even the researcher was surprised that our site happened to end up on the fast-ice side of the lead. The fracture didn’t follow any predictable path such as old fractures or plate margins. Hmmm. Was fun to write about this in the Sea Ice Report.
After much programmatic hand wringing we decided to stay with the site. Storms have since blown all the ice on the far side of that crack out, but recently a foot or so of new ice has formed. I’ve been watching that carefully out of curiosity as much as anything, measuring it further out each time I go out there, seeing how it’s forming up (.25m is as thin as I’ve been on). As warm as its getting these days, we’re not accumulating much more ice thickness on the existing ice anymore so this will likely stay soft and spooky.
Funny that I am the Sea Ice point of contact, when last year I spent a whopping 2 days on the sea ice. There is so much variety in this job that 5 years into it, I am still new to numerous components. I like that in a job. This is the first time I’ve seen thin ice or been at the ice edge. That was that one day when there was actual water next to the site. I kept an eye out and saw a penguin porpoising through the water. When he saw us, he turned and launched, landing on his belly and rapidly gliding, nonchalant, toward the powercord to the generator. After checking out our scene thoroughly, he laid down for a nap, bill in the snow.
What a treat to see a penguin swimming. Our standard sighting is them either vertical walking or tobogganing on their belly, kicking along with their feet. They are so graceful in the water; delightful.
Sea ice forms quite differently than freshwater ice, and now I’ve been able to actually see some of the differences. Quite interesting. I’ve been learning a lot, figuring things out, combining theory with reality. We hear that the marine USAP station, Palmer, allows foot travel on a foot of sea ice, but we’re not sure what ice temperatures that includes. Here we normally have a 2-5m of ice, so thin ice is something new to me. We still have lots and lots of thick ice and travel is closed long before it gets thin. The hazard is that it gets warm (while thick) and then falls apart and blows out, not that it would get thin enough that you’d fall through like on freshwater ice. The whole thing is interesting and I’m grateful to get to know this complex and dynamic medium a bit more.
Also seeing penguins and seals regularly. As always, the penguins usually visit us to make sure we’re doing things right. They are as charming as ever, and the two different species as different in movement, in effect, as I described my first season. I remind myself that these are the real things, wild creatures, free as can be, doing their own thing. When else in my life will I get to watch real penguins in their world, going about their business, which is frequently investigating us?
For that matter, when else will I commute by helicopter? How fun is that? I quite like working around them and feel pretty comfortable with it, dealing with the protocols, radio comms, all things that I’ve learned down here. Enjoy working with the pilots, all seasoned local veterans. They know this place and their job here really well. And they seem less crusty than when I met them 4 years ago as a helo-passenger novice. (I hope that doesn’t suggest I’m getting crusty).
The seals are done pupping and are training their little ones to swim now (so I hear from the researchers). Near our work site I saw a distant skua (big brown gull) feeding. There isn’t much to feed on, so I investigated, predicting what I’d find: dead pup. The skuas peck out the eyes but, like ravens, cannot open a carcass. Ravens wait for coyotes (et al) to open the bonanza, but here with no terrestrial animals, carcasses just freeze into the ice, basically mummifying until the ice goes out and they feed marine scavengers. Some of the multi-year ice includes carcasses years old, mummified with the fur worn off by winter snow-blasting.
The part of the dead pup that wasn’t drifted in was soft pliable, probably due to the sun’s heat. I didn’t realize their hind flippers are really like hands: five furry fingers, each with a claw, separated by skin like a duck’s foot but with fur. The outer fingers are biggest by far, followed by the middle finger. The coat was super thick (same number of hairs as adult, so ultra dense), but not as soft as one might expect given that baby seals were killed for their fur no so long ago (or at least not in the papers anymore). They have beautiful little faces, not unlike a Labrador but rounder.
The other day we heard a seal breathing nearby, and found the hole. Every ten or so minutes the seal returned, taking big bold breaths before going down for another fishing dive.
I know I have made a new record this year for poor personal correspondence, as exemplified by the scarcity of these updates. Despite that, know that I really appreciate hearing from you, from those in my other life, knowing what’s going on back there, how you are. It’s a treat to get photos too: you, your family, adventures, house, kids, pets, and especially landscapes with plants and animals… the Land of the Living.
This place is amazing no doubt. I am still enchanted with this powerful landscape; there is much to it. I suspect that for the rest of my life when I’m done coming down here, I’ll cry every time I hear the voice of a penguin, among other reminders. My comments above simply reflect the fact that I remain quite attached to other kinds of landscapes as well, and playing within them.
I hope you enjoyed Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday: family, friends, food, but without the hype and commercialization of Christmas (that’s one thing I really don’t miss). I hope you were able to get out and walk that day too, soak in the cooling temperatures (or so I hope they are), the dead leaves, the longer nights.
Nights! Yeah, that’s something else miss under the ever-present sun. This is such an intense place, a lot different than the feel here in August and September when there were a third as many people here and dark nights.
Larry is back and today we biked out to the informal skating rink, yea. Quite a lot of fun, and something different. I’ll send some photos from that as well as seal snout shots and maybe some penguinos.
Love and wild winds, Susan
November 30, 2007
September 27, 2007
A different season on 'the ice'
Hi all,
I hope you have been enjoying the changing seasons. Crunch through some leaves, drink in the scent of the early morning air, and admire the aspens turning gold.
I arrived here on August 20… full-on summer at home. I only worked for a couple days and wasn’t exactly ready to leave when the time came. I had been curious about the Antarctic 6-week pre-season, hoping to see the aurora australis, nacreous clouds, darkness (southern stars!) and to feel the cold here in McM. I knew I wouldn’t do it again because I too much miss late summer in the mountains, and personal trips after the work season. But to be here once for this time was worth it despite having missed the infrequent aurora displays that occurred during the few clear nights. Local knowledge has it that this is the most unstable weather of the year. Only one nacreous cloud has been sighted and I missed it.
Yet the lighting has been lovely because of the sun being at such a low angle. Brilliant and long-lasting sunsets, brightly illuminated clouds, even the steam from building vents glows pink in the light. The velvety colors and long shadows on the Royal Society Range (13,000’) across McMurdo sound continually draw admiration. The enormous full moon, looming large just above them, provided photographers grand material and the rest of us a great distraction.
When I arrived, it was only light for a few hours midday. Darkness was a real novelty and I enjoyed the restfulness of it. The always glaring sun or at least light of summer is exhausting. Walking to and from work at night was quite a bit different and after a few days I even looked forward to being able to see into the distance as the sun eased just above the horizon, remaining hidden due to the hills on 3 side of town. With the snow and town lights, it wasn’t really that dark in town. The light changes fast this time of year, each day about 20 more minutes of light. Two weeks ago sunglasses came out midday.
There are only about 350 people on station, less than a third of the summer population and only 3 science groups (one measuring ozone, which starts to break down this time of year as the sun comes up).
Everyone loves how quiet it is, except the remaining winter-overs who think it’s busy and crazy. It’s easy to get on a cardio machine at the gerbil gym, find a seat in the coffee house, and linger at a relaxed dinner. All that is about to change, but on the other hand, it will be fun to see a lot of old friends returning. Unfortunately, like anywhere one stays for some time, fewer and fewer of my longer-time friends still return which is a drag even though cool new people enter the scene each year. On the other hand are the people who have been coming here for decades and will forever.
Even with only 350 people here during this pre-season which is called “winfly” for “winter fly-in”, there’s enough talent for a number of bands. Recently the Recreation dept put together “Winstock”, a party during which band after band played for a few hours. It was fun to be out and dance, something I very rarely do during the summer season.
I’ve been Acting Supervisor for these 6 weeks. A few days into it, one of our dept’s new guys arrived so I began training him in addition to being interim SAR Leader and Sea Ice Point of Contact. The latter is a role that I’ll have through the sea ice season, and means that I take the lead on gathering data (how thick is the ice, how big are the cracks) and write the biweekly report.
So far I’ve been pretty consumed with supervisory responsibilities and haven’t been able to get out on the sea ice as much as I expect to next month. I am super glad I didn’t apply for the dept Supervisor position when it came open 2 seasons ago. It has been fun to interact with and get to know a new set of people and I’ve enjoyed having the wider view of what’s happening in the program. I also don’t mind developing my limited computer skills. However, it isn’t worth the time spent in a chair, all the admin stuff, and especially dealing with politics and the bureaucracy. This time of year there’s no one to handle course sign-ups, so I had to get people signed up (a couple hundred people) for their Refresher and other classes. I couldn’t believe how much time and emailing this took. It did, however, make the actual teaching all the more fun.
I’ve already ran a few GPS courses. Given that I didn’t know the first thing about them when I started here and now use one a lot, esp on the sea ice making or following routes and marking crack crossings, it’s been fun to figure out how to effectively share this skill with others. As useful as this tool is here, I don’t see any real use for it in normal backcountry use, esp with 7.5 minute maps. I am really glad I grew up pre-GPS, in the map and compass era and culture.
The politics have been a bit of an education. I learned about how important it is to know the personalities of the people above you on the food chain. We had a vehicle incident in which someone in a high position on station sent around an inaccurate and accusatory message regarding my involvement (fried transmission). Not realizing this guy is known for shooting and asking questions later, I took it pretty seriously and spent a lot of time explaining to everyone what actually happened. It was a bit of a mess for a couple days, but I did find out how much respect and support I have in this community. Eventually a formal investigation was launched, much to my relief, so that key questions were asked, ones I could not ask because I am so close to the situation. It’ll all resolve fine, but good grief, what a dumb way to spend time! Esp when there is so much real work to be done.
I also learned that no matter how much I appreciate and respect a casual friend with a good reputation, to document via email, all work related conversations, even those that happen at dinner. People don’t always say what they really mean and sometimes tell you what you want to hear even when it isn’t true, esp if their supervisor isn’t in on the discussions, it can lead to a mess. That too resolved fine, but I sure didn’t appreciate having to deal with it.
That was a challenging week but things have mellowed since and I can get back to actually being productive. I am quite sure that most of you are amused that only now am I learning such Office Basics, and that these little messes are nothing compared to some of the drama you’ve been dragged into and had to spend a ridiculous amount of time dealing with.
Training Galen has been fun. Enjoying figuring out how to pace and prioritize the tremendous amount of information required simply within our job, as well program-wide. Fun to figure out how to make his learning curve smoother and better supported than mine was in ‘03. He’s been doing well. I however chronically have mixed feelings about assigning him all the logistical tasks and much of the teaching that I would normally do and esp. sending him out in the field without me because I have to sit in front of the computer instead.
I look forward to Cece returning with the gang and me getting to be just a Field Instructor again. I have a suspicion, however, that she’s going to take advantage of the admin and supervisory skills I’ve gained esp because our dept of 6 will be half new this year. And, for the first time, 50% women which is esp cool given that when I arrived, people couldn’t remember exactly when a woman had last been in the dept.
Fortunately I’ll be busy getting out on the sea ice to gather data (and then entering it into the spreadsheet and writing the reports… butt time but I’ll learn to be FAST about it), which also means I’ll have a lot more opportunities this year to see penguins and seals (have already seen seals!). Last year I spent a lot of time in the deep field, mostly on the plateau, and missed a lot of the animal action, which is all coastal. Always a balance: this year I won’t camp as much, but I’ll see more wildlife and I’ll get to try out the speed-skate blades I bought that fit onto my skate ski boots. Last year Larry had a day of skating near penguins so this year I might get a chance.
Enjoying having my bike down here even though I just putz around town. Somehow it gives me a feeling of freedom of movement, esp. comparison to walking and in light of being very used to biking around town at home.
The sea ice will likely be interesting again this year. It is still recovering from the mega-berg years, when that giant iceberg (as big as small NE state originally, now gone) grounded locally blocking currents and causing a tremendous build-up of sea ice, some of which remains (4+ meters thick). Last year a lot of the ice “went out” so with the icebreaker ship channel, we had some open water in front of the station. The breaker channel was only about 10 miles long, not 80 as it was just a few years ago. We have more new ice locally than I’ve seen (1.5m or more) and maybe it’ll “all” go out this year so conditions will return to the pre-mega-berg days and have full-on open water right here in front of town.
One our big jobs during the pre-season is assessing the ice north of town where the scientists work and flagging a route so that Fleet Ops can groom it and drag out the little huts for the research camps. That took five different trips, the first two of which aborted due to vehicle problems with the cold. The only one I could go on was one of these first two, unfortunately. This job takes a lot of people, so we take volunteers from the community. They love it and its fun to offer these “work trips” to the many people who don’t get out much.
Then there’s the depts. who prepare the sea ice runway (70” ice minimum) just outside of town for the C-17s to land upon almost until Christmas. We landed on the ice shelf, floating glacial ice on an airstrip that remains landable most of the time with minimal management because it’s wind scoured hard ice. This runway is a long way from town, so it’s worth it for them to build and maintain the sea ice runway right outside of town until the ice weakens and they switch to the other runway.
Our dept has nothing to do with the runway work. Their surveyor keeps track of that ice and reports it’s temperature to us, which I’ll include in the sea ice report.
Enjoying living with Larry again. We have our little scene pretty figured out and leave a lot of stuff here over the southern-winter so don’t have to fly with so much stuff. He has a soymilk maker and it’s a treat to have fresh soymilk. Also this year have realized I can fill out of form from the galley to get ingredients to make my fabulous double chocolate chip cookies! I avoid most of the chocolate desserts here due to hydrogenated oils, so being able to bake my own in our nice breakroom kitchen has improved life. Sometimes after lunch, Larry and I fill out the hour with popcorn in our breakroom, another treat.
Well that's about it for now.
Thanks for the updates and photos... I greatly appreciate it.
Love and light, Susan
I hope you have been enjoying the changing seasons. Crunch through some leaves, drink in the scent of the early morning air, and admire the aspens turning gold.
I arrived here on August 20… full-on summer at home. I only worked for a couple days and wasn’t exactly ready to leave when the time came. I had been curious about the Antarctic 6-week pre-season, hoping to see the aurora australis, nacreous clouds, darkness (southern stars!) and to feel the cold here in McM. I knew I wouldn’t do it again because I too much miss late summer in the mountains, and personal trips after the work season. But to be here once for this time was worth it despite having missed the infrequent aurora displays that occurred during the few clear nights. Local knowledge has it that this is the most unstable weather of the year. Only one nacreous cloud has been sighted and I missed it.
Yet the lighting has been lovely because of the sun being at such a low angle. Brilliant and long-lasting sunsets, brightly illuminated clouds, even the steam from building vents glows pink in the light. The velvety colors and long shadows on the Royal Society Range (13,000’) across McMurdo sound continually draw admiration. The enormous full moon, looming large just above them, provided photographers grand material and the rest of us a great distraction.
When I arrived, it was only light for a few hours midday. Darkness was a real novelty and I enjoyed the restfulness of it. The always glaring sun or at least light of summer is exhausting. Walking to and from work at night was quite a bit different and after a few days I even looked forward to being able to see into the distance as the sun eased just above the horizon, remaining hidden due to the hills on 3 side of town. With the snow and town lights, it wasn’t really that dark in town. The light changes fast this time of year, each day about 20 more minutes of light. Two weeks ago sunglasses came out midday.
There are only about 350 people on station, less than a third of the summer population and only 3 science groups (one measuring ozone, which starts to break down this time of year as the sun comes up).
Everyone loves how quiet it is, except the remaining winter-overs who think it’s busy and crazy. It’s easy to get on a cardio machine at the gerbil gym, find a seat in the coffee house, and linger at a relaxed dinner. All that is about to change, but on the other hand, it will be fun to see a lot of old friends returning. Unfortunately, like anywhere one stays for some time, fewer and fewer of my longer-time friends still return which is a drag even though cool new people enter the scene each year. On the other hand are the people who have been coming here for decades and will forever.
Even with only 350 people here during this pre-season which is called “winfly” for “winter fly-in”, there’s enough talent for a number of bands. Recently the Recreation dept put together “Winstock”, a party during which band after band played for a few hours. It was fun to be out and dance, something I very rarely do during the summer season.
I’ve been Acting Supervisor for these 6 weeks. A few days into it, one of our dept’s new guys arrived so I began training him in addition to being interim SAR Leader and Sea Ice Point of Contact. The latter is a role that I’ll have through the sea ice season, and means that I take the lead on gathering data (how thick is the ice, how big are the cracks) and write the biweekly report.
So far I’ve been pretty consumed with supervisory responsibilities and haven’t been able to get out on the sea ice as much as I expect to next month. I am super glad I didn’t apply for the dept Supervisor position when it came open 2 seasons ago. It has been fun to interact with and get to know a new set of people and I’ve enjoyed having the wider view of what’s happening in the program. I also don’t mind developing my limited computer skills. However, it isn’t worth the time spent in a chair, all the admin stuff, and especially dealing with politics and the bureaucracy. This time of year there’s no one to handle course sign-ups, so I had to get people signed up (a couple hundred people) for their Refresher and other classes. I couldn’t believe how much time and emailing this took. It did, however, make the actual teaching all the more fun.
I’ve already ran a few GPS courses. Given that I didn’t know the first thing about them when I started here and now use one a lot, esp on the sea ice making or following routes and marking crack crossings, it’s been fun to figure out how to effectively share this skill with others. As useful as this tool is here, I don’t see any real use for it in normal backcountry use, esp with 7.5 minute maps. I am really glad I grew up pre-GPS, in the map and compass era and culture.
The politics have been a bit of an education. I learned about how important it is to know the personalities of the people above you on the food chain. We had a vehicle incident in which someone in a high position on station sent around an inaccurate and accusatory message regarding my involvement (fried transmission). Not realizing this guy is known for shooting and asking questions later, I took it pretty seriously and spent a lot of time explaining to everyone what actually happened. It was a bit of a mess for a couple days, but I did find out how much respect and support I have in this community. Eventually a formal investigation was launched, much to my relief, so that key questions were asked, ones I could not ask because I am so close to the situation. It’ll all resolve fine, but good grief, what a dumb way to spend time! Esp when there is so much real work to be done.
I also learned that no matter how much I appreciate and respect a casual friend with a good reputation, to document via email, all work related conversations, even those that happen at dinner. People don’t always say what they really mean and sometimes tell you what you want to hear even when it isn’t true, esp if their supervisor isn’t in on the discussions, it can lead to a mess. That too resolved fine, but I sure didn’t appreciate having to deal with it.
That was a challenging week but things have mellowed since and I can get back to actually being productive. I am quite sure that most of you are amused that only now am I learning such Office Basics, and that these little messes are nothing compared to some of the drama you’ve been dragged into and had to spend a ridiculous amount of time dealing with.
Training Galen has been fun. Enjoying figuring out how to pace and prioritize the tremendous amount of information required simply within our job, as well program-wide. Fun to figure out how to make his learning curve smoother and better supported than mine was in ‘03. He’s been doing well. I however chronically have mixed feelings about assigning him all the logistical tasks and much of the teaching that I would normally do and esp. sending him out in the field without me because I have to sit in front of the computer instead.
I look forward to Cece returning with the gang and me getting to be just a Field Instructor again. I have a suspicion, however, that she’s going to take advantage of the admin and supervisory skills I’ve gained esp because our dept of 6 will be half new this year. And, for the first time, 50% women which is esp cool given that when I arrived, people couldn’t remember exactly when a woman had last been in the dept.
Fortunately I’ll be busy getting out on the sea ice to gather data (and then entering it into the spreadsheet and writing the reports… butt time but I’ll learn to be FAST about it), which also means I’ll have a lot more opportunities this year to see penguins and seals (have already seen seals!). Last year I spent a lot of time in the deep field, mostly on the plateau, and missed a lot of the animal action, which is all coastal. Always a balance: this year I won’t camp as much, but I’ll see more wildlife and I’ll get to try out the speed-skate blades I bought that fit onto my skate ski boots. Last year Larry had a day of skating near penguins so this year I might get a chance.
Enjoying having my bike down here even though I just putz around town. Somehow it gives me a feeling of freedom of movement, esp. comparison to walking and in light of being very used to biking around town at home.
The sea ice will likely be interesting again this year. It is still recovering from the mega-berg years, when that giant iceberg (as big as small NE state originally, now gone) grounded locally blocking currents and causing a tremendous build-up of sea ice, some of which remains (4+ meters thick). Last year a lot of the ice “went out” so with the icebreaker ship channel, we had some open water in front of the station. The breaker channel was only about 10 miles long, not 80 as it was just a few years ago. We have more new ice locally than I’ve seen (1.5m or more) and maybe it’ll “all” go out this year so conditions will return to the pre-mega-berg days and have full-on open water right here in front of town.
One our big jobs during the pre-season is assessing the ice north of town where the scientists work and flagging a route so that Fleet Ops can groom it and drag out the little huts for the research camps. That took five different trips, the first two of which aborted due to vehicle problems with the cold. The only one I could go on was one of these first two, unfortunately. This job takes a lot of people, so we take volunteers from the community. They love it and its fun to offer these “work trips” to the many people who don’t get out much.
Then there’s the depts. who prepare the sea ice runway (70” ice minimum) just outside of town for the C-17s to land upon almost until Christmas. We landed on the ice shelf, floating glacial ice on an airstrip that remains landable most of the time with minimal management because it’s wind scoured hard ice. This runway is a long way from town, so it’s worth it for them to build and maintain the sea ice runway right outside of town until the ice weakens and they switch to the other runway.
Our dept has nothing to do with the runway work. Their surveyor keeps track of that ice and reports it’s temperature to us, which I’ll include in the sea ice report.
Enjoying living with Larry again. We have our little scene pretty figured out and leave a lot of stuff here over the southern-winter so don’t have to fly with so much stuff. He has a soymilk maker and it’s a treat to have fresh soymilk. Also this year have realized I can fill out of form from the galley to get ingredients to make my fabulous double chocolate chip cookies! I avoid most of the chocolate desserts here due to hydrogenated oils, so being able to bake my own in our nice breakroom kitchen has improved life. Sometimes after lunch, Larry and I fill out the hour with popcorn in our breakroom, another treat.
Well that's about it for now.
Thanks for the updates and photos... I greatly appreciate it.
Love and light, Susan
August 10, 2007
Canoe trip in NWT Canada
Hi all,
Finally I sit down to write about the arctic trip as I wait for my double-chocolate chip cookies to bake here at my home in the glorious high country. I meant to write sooner but have been consumed with getting ready to head south for the winter on Tuesday and sneaking in a few wonderful days of working. Plus Larry is around taking a first aid course, so we've been able to spend a bit of time together.
I posted photos of the trip on my website so will write about impressions of the experience rather than the itinerary. As you can probably tell by the emphasis in the photos, my favorite parts were the wildlife, the Sherbert Hills, and being on the coast, esp in the pack ice.
We saw the majority of the dramatic animals during the first week, including a trio of grey wolves that we watched for a half hour or so. As we slowly paddled up the Carnwath they trotted upriver along the bank staying about a quarter mile ahead of us rather than disappearing into the boreal forest. They'd pause, look back at us while we caught up, then trot onward.
After awhile we stopped for a break, then paddled a bit up a tributary before returning to the main river. Lo' and behold, the wolves were still there in the distance upriver. They saw us, stood up, stretched, then began "leading" us up the river again until the novelty wore off and they vanished. Lucky for us we were the most interesting thing going on that morning. That same morning we also had a quick view of a bear (all the bears we saw were grizzlies).
On the previous day, we watched a sow and two cubs swim across the river ahead of us (photo, but only one cub shown). We watched for awhile, binoculars glued to our eyeballs. The bigger cub climbed up onto a chunk of river ice and then did a little dance step ("Did you see that!?”) before jumping down to catch up with his family.
Another day, after watching a sow and cub mosey along digging up roots across the river, we saw her lie down and start to nurse her big toddler. Wow, what a personal moment. It didn't last long, however, as she abruptly sat up with a distressed expression, looked in our direction with her nose in the air, and quickly ran up the steep hill, hungry cub on her heels.
The second bear photo was taken weeks later where we wanted to camp. Before committing to that great site, we wanted to make sure that 1.) the bears became aware of us before getting too close, and 2.) that they would run away immediately when they smelled us. Anything less would mean we'd move on. As you can see, these two bears were especially pretty.
That camp was at the mouth of a 3-mile long estuary with a narrow neck the tides flowed through. We reveled in the thrill of watching and listening to the pack ice race through the narrows and then temporarily ground on a shallow area on it's way deep into the estuary. The pieces would pile up against each other making a wonderful crunching and grinding sound, so cool I wanted to stay awake all night to watch. Then of course 6 hours later it was rapidly flowing back out right past our camp. A fabulous sight.
It was really something to watch birds from the courting/nesting phase through raising chicks. In June it was all eggs, and July we only saw chicks. We would look at the little chicks, goslings, ducklings and wonder how on Earth the little critters could possibly get big and strong enough to fly thousands of miles in, what, 6-8 weeks?! Baffling. Observation and our field guides led to all kinds of fascinating insights about the different strategies species use to deal with the short season and harsh conditions. Animals really are amazing and diverse... so little we can really know.
Many species we saw so frequently that I really felt like I to got to know them, their ways of being, not simply that I could identify the species. It's really different getting a sense of their character, how they live, rather than the usual simple sightings. For example, my sense of bald eagles really changed. Did you know that big boldly marked bird, our national symbols, squeaks? I kind of knew it, but nothing like I understand now. So much for "Screaming Eagles" and that kind of misrepresentation. They have this delightful truly-squeaky little voice that they use freely when you paddle below their giants nests. The voice is actually quite charming, endearing, unlike the screech of peregrines or the persistent cry of rough-legged hawks. Did you know that Canadian geese raise their kids in groups of 2-3 families? And the goslings dive and swim like loons when scared, an ability they lose with adult plumage (and I really know that having skinned one and felt the deep, pelt-like chest plumage). They share parenting duties when responding to perceived threats, whereas female ducks raise their little ones alone.
The Sherbert Hills were quite fascinating as you can tell by the number of photos. (I omitted a lot, believe it or not!). It took me awhile to figure out the basics: sulfuric acid seeps up from the deeps, becoming hydrogen sulfide gas at the surface (which we smelled most of the time: the classic rotten eggs). The acid chemically weathers the sedimentary rock into clays, which don't support vegetation. Various metals and whatnot in the rock oxidize, causing the beautiful sherbert hues in the badlands-type landscape. I wished we could have had a geologist along to interpret another level; there isn't a guidebook for this terrain. I don't know what was going on with those large white crystals other than they must have precipitated out of the acidic solution; somehow I think they’re calcite (let me know if you recognize them). In the photos you can also see what the wind has done around the vegetation that does manage to grow on these unstable slopes. The water coming out of the hills was nasty acidic so we paddled out to the far side of the river for potable water. Further down the river we saw much smaller sherbert slopes with only faint sulfur scents, so the crustal cracks must be fairly long. You can see in the photos the clay-mud coming from the hills.
I have learned to love the smell of hydrogen sulfide because I associate it with fantastic landscapes: the volcanoes Baker and especially Erebus and the geothermal activity in the Yellowstone area. This place just added to my appreciation of this smell that most people consider unpleasant.
A week later I found the instability of a canoe in coastal waves much less disturbing with the cover on because the boat appeared a lot more like a kayak, in which I'm used to rocking around in river waves (past life). In fact one day in Wood Bay I was paddling blissfully along casually noticing the waves increasing when Larry noted it was time for a break. When he turned the boat toward the shore, where the waves were breaking, I realized with a start that we were in lively water and that this wouldn't be the easiest landing. Soon, as I stepped out of the "cockpit", which was rising and falling with the waves, I managed to catch my second foot on the canoe cover. I nearly face-planted, catching myself on the submerged rocks with my gloved hands and other knee, and then instantly jumped up to scramble out of the way in case the boat was about to plow me over (it wasn't). I was fine, but it was a funny way to discover that it doesn't take much in terms of waves for a loaded canoe to be exciting. Soon Larry said that we should camp here, even though it was only 2pm, because of the increasing waves. I didn't argue.
As it turned out, for the previous half hour, Larry had been in Decision Mode, carefully assessing the whole situation to determine at what point we needed to get off the water. He had been feeling the stress of making the right decision (couldn't camp just anywhere along the shore) while I was completely unaware that anything was going on! I realized how useless I was in terms of coastal decision making at this point, and made a note to tune in extra carefully to the tone behind his understated words. What a different role to be in, no doubt good for me to appreciate the helplessness novices sometimes experience.
Interestingly, both days when we were in the denser pack ice, the water was glassy. The correlation was so striking that I had to wonder if there was something going on. Maybe the ice was absorbing enough heat to chill the lowest layer of air, making it dense and heavy. Then maybe breezes, warmer lighter air, were riding up over the chilled layer on the water leaving the water so still. Ok, maybe a crackpot idea, but I suspect that there was something going on, maybe related to the melting ice affecting the water temp/density/salinity. Or, maybe it was just a freak coincidence that the only glassy water of the trip was during the hours we were surrounded by ice.
The fishing rod you see in the photos was just being carried there; we weren’t trolling. The plastic gas container we found on a beach.
I loved the ice (what it is about ice?). There was something surreal paddling through it in the silence on the smooth water. At one point we could see the floes moving in different directions due to variations in tidal currents, making navigation in the dense ice more interesting. Sometimes the ice moved fast and at one point when it was really dense we found ourselves paddling fast to get through a gap before it closed. It wasn't like we were going to get squashed like berg ice could do, but it was still a kick to have to paddle hard to shoot the gap.
A couple times isolated seals checked us out, poking their heads up and even rising up like orcas do, "spy-hopping" to get a better look. Given that they are probably hunted, we assumed that they only approached because we didn't have a motor. It was fun spinning our heads around trying to see where they'd pop up next. Sometimes they alerted us that we'd missed them with a big sassy splash. There were also more birds among the ice flows than out on the open water.
We paid through the nose to rent a satellite phone in case of an emergency (bear injury), but it turned out to be worth it for the freedom and options it provided. We went into the field with neither an end-date or location... when have I ever done that?! It was gloriously refreshing to have such freedom to explore and decide as we go along what we wanted to do and even how long we wanted to stay out (at least up to a certain date). Our main options were either go up the Kugaluk River, or go through the Eskimo Lakes, all the way to the road via some tiny marshy creek or get picked up at a lake near the road. Such beauty in options, being able to customize and respond to whatever inclination we had rather than having to commit so far in advance.
We were strong by the time we got to the Kugaluk so paddling upstream in that current was reasonable. We heard that there was a lot of wildlife and good fishing there, and the map showed miles of curvy canyon so it was an easy choice. We were disappointed by the paucity of animal sightings. The fish were burbot, a bottom feeder; it was a warm river lacking trout or grayling. Our broken fishing rod didn't help. We didn't see any large mammals for weeks, and only one (handsome!) bull moose just before we reached our pick-up lake (where I caught that Northern pike, my first fish!). The fishing on the Anderson and Carnwath wasn’t because it was so early in the season. We put it as soon as they could fly us in after ice break-up, when the water was still muddy. Breaking the fishing rod didn’t help either.
Unlike on the Carnwath where I did all the tracking (walking-ferrying boat upriver), I didn't do any on the Kugaluk. This far into the summer the rocks were snot-slick with algae and the Kugaluk had more current than the Carnwath. We also didn't know whether we'd have enough days left to deal with whatever mysteries the Kugaluk held (we had little info beyond the map) so it made sense to maximize our chances of getting to a lake at the top where we could get picked up rather than having to go all the way back down the river to the delta where we could also get picked up. Larry enjoyed the challenge of tracking in these conditions so found this section of the trip engaging enough despite the few animals. Sometimes in higher current the water was too shallow to paddle in and there wasn't a good bank bar for tracking. For these spots we devised a new technique "motorboating" in which Larry would jump out and push the boat while I stayed in the bow and continued paddling! It worked great.
We did have one class 1.5 rapids complex enough that we had to paddle through part of it. There was an exciting few seconds after paddling like hell to ferry across above the crux when he was telling me to "GRAB SOMETHING: GRASS, ANYTHING. GRAB SOMETHING NOW" so we wouldn't go down backwards. There wasn't much to grab, but I managed to claw enough mud and grass to arduously pull us in and eventually scramble out to pull the boat further up out of the rapids. Then we had to track the boat climbing through a willow thicket, passing the rope to each other to get it around the willows that we then climbed over... good fun.
We weren't in an official Wilderness Area, the concept of which is the product of our modern nature-distanced industrial lives. This landscape is well used by the local native peoples (several groups). We saw a number of subsistence cabins, "camps" accessed by boat or snowmobile. This is not the plane culture of Alaska (gringo culture). These camps ranged from a pile of ruins and junk, to a 3-family relatively well-maintained camp that has obviously been in use for a long time. The insides of the cabins show that the families even bring their little kids with them and stay awhile. Fishing, hunting, and trapping at these camps provides much of their protein for the year (In the week during which we waited to put in, I learned a lot about northern culture.)
I found it interesting that we really didn’t see any trash from recreationists (just a couple plastic bags where we found the Great Grate: see photos of stove dying then finding a fire grate that very night). In fact we barely saw any evidence at all of other boaters the whole trip. Instead we saw many fuel drums from subsistence-related snowmobiling, boating, (possibly ORV’s and maybe from aviation caches?). We also saw what are probably giant collars for pipelines. You can see one of the 18 orange plastic halves in Liverpool Bay in the photo of the bears at the coastal camp (the latter of two bear photos).
The native people have a different ethic regarding leaving trash, one that made me look at my own perspective with a different eye. How easy it might be to criticize them, yet what would I say when a native countered with a remark about all the shit we put into the air that's causing the far north to change more dramatically than the temperate areas? We benefit from all the hydrocarbons we burn with our affluent lifestyles while they pay the higher price (including serious heavy metal toxicity in marine meat), barely enjoying the benefits.
Also, there's the visible-local-innocuous versus invisible-global-toxic effect. Is it really worth the fossil fuel it would take to remove all the shotgun shells and coffee cans, the empty fuel drums and broken down snowmobiles? Not only the fuel use, but also the greenhouse gases emitted. This issue has come up in Antarctica regarding benign trash out on the plateau where it gets consumed by the ice. I appreciate clean landscapes, but at the price of destroying those same landscapes by global warming?* Not a simple situation. [One thing we try to do in Antarctica is to fill the plane with junk after they've dropped us off at one of these older camps, so the trash gets out without requiring special flights, but this is less feasible via boat or snowmobile.]
The two government related huts were better maintained, but it was the commercial hunting camp, run by and for gringos, that were the four star scenes... and accessed via planes. Definitely a lot more money available for guided hunting/fishing (and us), a contrast that I'm sure doesn't escape the native population. [The photo at the end with the satellite dish]. The #9 record-sized barren-ground grizzly was shot here a month before we arrived, by a client from Montana.
We also saw a number of cabin ruins from the old days of trapping, presumably the 1800's. We observed that the beaver and muskrat populations had recovered well. A book suggested one of the coastal cabins had been a whaling camp.
The culture within our little team of two caught my attention as well. I knew Larry pretty darn well going into this trip, but 46 days alone together, in his element, took it to a whole new level. The first weeks found us sharing more and more stories of our lives (and I kept talking about Outward Bound-NOLS courses as this extended trip reminded me). He doesn’t draw attention to himself and is super laid-back. Because he doesn't always talk about himself much it was great to get him going about his life, parts that I'd only known a bit about. I loved it.
More significant than our stories was how he worked with me. My background in working with others in parallel situations allowed me to step back and observe how he dealt with me out there. Even when it was inconvenient (and costly) for him, he gave me a lot of room to figure things out for myself. The biggest example is how concerned I was about grizzly bears during our planning months. Partly based on the opinion of a senior serious wilderness explorer I guide with, I was pretty into having a good shotgun (semi-automatic), a tarp (so no human-taco of a tent, unless weather a bigger hazard), a satellite phone, and bearproof food canisters for when we were off hiking. On all his prior trips he's taken none of this except a pump-shotgun and bear spray (which we also had), but he didn't give me ANY shit for being bearanoid. He even bought two of the bear canisters. He didn't want me to be nervous out there (which I wasn't) even if it was more hassle for him.
He let me see for myself that the bears are indeed "well-behaved". As soon as they smelled us, they always ran off just like his past experiences. Over time I became comfortable camping in places that weren't the absolute-least bear-exposed. Mid-trip I even suggested a particular camp but he pointed out that it was on a narrow travel corridor (meaning a bear might feel trapped when stumbling upon our camp)! Not that all bears will always run away, and we did go through protocols for different kinds of encounters, but it was nice to have the space to figure it out for myself, to find my own level of comfort with one of the more complex outdoor hazards.
The other thing was how he dealt with me regarding hunting. He trained me well before the trip and we practiced shooting again the first morning in the field. During the first couple weeks we talked a lot about hunting but nothing happened. I finally realized it wasn't happening yet because he was waiting for me to step up and take the initiative. He's pretty mellow about hunting or fishing, and wanted to be sure that I was mentally ready to deal with the reality of shooting a animal,
watching it die, and then gutting the little body to eat. He was smart to make sure the impetus was mine.
I shot the first of two ptarmigan in the Sherbert Hills. We always hiked with the gun for bears, but put 2 birdshots in so we could hunt but still, on the third shot, take down a bear if necessary. Larry refrained from taking photos for the first bird I shot, letting me go through the experience without having a camera in my face. From the start I was committed to only shooting a bird on the ground (no flight shots) and well within range. And male ptarmigan only (bird books say female can raise chicks alone). For both ptarmigan I aimed at the bird as he trotted away and asked Larry "Is he in range?" "Yes", as the bird continues to move. "Is he still in range?!" “Yes”. I realized I'd better stop asking and shoot or he'd be out of range. For the first one, I walked right past the female, still as death, incubating her eggs. A bit weird: she was safe as could be though I could have grabbed her I was so close, and yet I was about to kill her sweetie. Whew.
The sound of the gun was a bigger deal than the kickback, and I even shot the next bird a week later with earplugs! In fact this first time I didn’t even notice the kickback because my ears were exploding.
It took me awhile to "get it" about the "chicken thing". You know how chickens supposedly run around when beheaded? Larry assured me it's true, but didn't hassle me when, for each bird, I kept trying to hand-kill the already dead bird as it flopped around. Frantically, while audibly asking the bird to "please die!", I'd beat the neck with a rock, pinch the trachea, break the neck.... anything to stop the movement. Nothing made a difference: the birds were already dead. Larry just patiently watched until I finally accepted the chicken thing. And afterward, when I held the soft little body between my hands, feeling the weight and warmth, silently thanking the little being, he stood by quietly. He coached but let me do all the skinning, gutting, and cooking-prep, and didn't mind my delaying (despite the mosquitoes) while I examined the various organs (there really were rocks in the gizzard, just like there's supposed to be!).
We also got two geese. It took me weeks for me to get past the golf-course chemical concern with Canadian geese, and to figure out that the large flocks were likely pre-breeding birds: single (not married) and fewer years eating chemicals. A couple times I hatched plans to stalk geese. We came across a large molting flock. One might think they'd be easier to catch. WRONG! They are even more alert than ever and run or swim away unbelievably fast. I got pretty interested in getting a Canadian goose (something I've thought about for years actually).
Twice I asked Larry to wait while I tried to outsmart the birds by very patiently sneaking around from another direction... not a chance. Larry stood around waiting, remembering that I was never a ten-year-old with a .22, so I haven't been through that phase. One time I even devised a plan in which Larry would signal to me while I oh-so-slowly crawled up truly on my belly, mostly hidden by small shrubs. The plan seemed pretty foolproof, but every time he lifted an arm to signal a direction, the geese would perk up and cackle. Plus I forgot to figure out a signal for going backwards... it was actually a rather funny 45 minutes. I really took my time trying to get the Look-Out goose, even moving only when his friends weren't looking. I figured that maybe if he made the alarm call and they hadn't seen me themselves, they might not take him as seriously.
Didn't work. He intently watched me creep up, scooting intermittently on my belly. When I was still at least twice shooting-distance away, he flew to join his flock, who had been grazing-walking away faster than I had been advancing. Then I tried Larry's strategy of suddenly running up to close the distance, then shooting as they start to take off. Later Larry said he'd wanted to signal this via acting it out in place, but the geese were way too savvy. I had been lying down so long that when I stood up and tried to run on the lumpy tundra, it was like I was drunk. Plus I was carrying the gun in a position ready to shoot (awkward), and didn't have a pre-picked spot to stop at so I floundered across the tundra while the geese nonchalantly walked away and eventually took flight. I didn’t have a chance; what a scene. After this Larry told me that waterfowl hunters don't stalk their prey: they put out decoys and sit in a blind drinking beer till the birds arrive.
I got a shot at a snow goose. It was a surprise as we hadn't come with 200m of them, and then there was this one walking away from us on the beach. I checked in with my coach and this time I did the run up and shoot plan; I could feel my heart beating as I ran! After he died we found out what Larry had suspected: the bird wasn't right. His chest had two major open wounds, maybe from a fox? Couldn't fly and it probably hurt too much to swim, so it turned out to be a mercy killing, poor guy. We didn't eat him, don't know if he was sick from infection or what. I set him on some nest-like sticks, folded up his feet and wings, and then tucked his head under his wing like he was sleeping. A scavenger will be happy to find this meal.
The Canadian goose we got was even more a team effort than the other birds. We were paddling upstream late in the trip when we found ourselves close enough for a shot. I needed Larry to actually watch the bird to determine when it was about to fly because it was all I could do to keep "the bead" (aim) on the goose. The bird was running away and the boat was bobbing up and down as Larry kept paddling to close the distance. He gave the word and I pulled the trigger. The bird was on a muddy bank so that's where I cleaned him, getting dirt into the clear-colored fat under the skin despite my best efforts to keep him on his skin and wings. Larry was patient about the dirt and it turned out we couldn't taste/feel it anyway.
This bird we pressure-cooked which worked well in terms of reducing the chewy factor. But they all tasted good (I opted out of the commercial meat industry years ago NOT because I don't like meat), better than the fish, which I also enjoyed. A great break from bean, rice, and tortellini.
I must say my respect for these animals increased quite a bit and my overall relationship with them has deepened. Hunting is difficult, and represents a very different way of being on the landscape, a way of moving. It really is a powerful and primal experience (or it can be, I am well aware that it can be a lot different than that). Can hardly imagine the process of taking down and field-dressing a large mammal like a deer. Yeowza. Also increased respect esp for traditional native hunters.
The mosquitoes were a real psychological challenge. At the beginning, we had almost two glorious weeks with nearly no bugs. I appreciated it more because Larry pointed out that this would be our only perfect-conditions phase: not too buggy, hot, or windy. He sure was right. From the start I was determined to keep my head about me regarding bugs, to not let them get to me: a significant challenge. Never scratching a bite helped, but not as much as thinking of it as being "too hot" rather than "too buggy". In that photo where I'm lying on a chunk of sea ice I was desperate to cool off. Wearing our full bug suits makes it look like cool weather. Don't be fooled! It was full-on shorts and t-shirt heat, but that would've been a worse fate than drowning in sweat in the bug suit, esp when the air was still. Heinous. Thanks dearly to Mike for the bathroom bug net (see photo). Larry preferred using a stick to switch to bugs away during very quick squats... don't know how he did it. I even learned to slide a pee bottle down my pants so I could pee without exposing skin. Crazy.
Another way to deal was to think of caribou. Not only are they truly tortured by mosquitoes, but the book describes two horrifying parasitic flies that make summer absolute misery for caribou and also substantially weaken them (large wad of larvae in sinuses, hundreds of larvae under skin on back... every caribou). This was consistent with the tortured look on their faces and especially how they are always moving (burning calories they need for winter). They are so miserable it wasn't fun to see them except that one bull in the purple flowers (photo). If I ever find myself born as a caribou calf, I'm heading for the nearest wolf.
Larry and I wondered how the native people dealt with mosquitoes with traditional materials. Mind boggling. We had little to complain about. Late in the trip Larry told me that the bugs were worse this time than on his previous trips.
Fortunately just when we were about to lose it, a breeze would reduce the bugs. Paddling out on the water, esp. in the sea ice helped reduce bug density. If you look carefully, you can see bugs (sometimes as smudges) in many of the photos including the night paddle shots. In the bug-screen shelter we cheered for the bees that plucked mosquitoes off the screen, bit off wings and legs, then rolled up the carcass to take back to feed their larvae. We noticed that when the horseflies got thick on the Kugaluk River (killed 22 on my pants in 3-4 minutes), the mosquitoes subsided. Not sure if it was due to the horseflies being a direct threat or if it was a safe-airspace issue, but it was definitely a better deal.
Larry says that years ago he promised himself that he'd never be out again during blackfly season, assuring me that they're worse. Turned out that we left the day they began to hatch.
Back to the bit about Larry. My appreciation for him grew not only for how he dealt with me out there, but also seeing him in his element. I'm not exactly new to rivers or seeing animals, but he took all that to a whole different level, esp. reading river and the bays. It was amazing how easily and well he interpreted the water, the level of subtlety. (I realize (hope!) it's no more so than my reading of rock and alpine environments). Clearly he's an elite wilderness paddler and traveler. His years of canoe racing also help, esp for the upriver sections (and I got some great coaching on my technique!). What a unique position for me to be in, so much learning. Refreshing. I wrote a ton in my journal, about many things.
Most of all, he's really easy going and has a similar level of risk acceptance as I do. I knew those things from climbing and skiing with him, but with water I am not on the same level so need to rely on him and trust his judgment unlike I do in familiar terrain. I knew that he wouldn't let us get into a situation that we couldn't handle as a team, that he can read people as well as he reads water. This meant that it all flowed beautifully. Even the few times that my eyes got large (like that landing above), I knew we really weren't in a serious situation, that all I had to do was combine my judgment with his instructions and all's well.
Did you notice the photos in which he’s in the boat and I’m walking? I have teased him saying I’m going to tell everyone that he kicked me out and made me walk! Not the case. Sometimes I felt like I hadn’t walked enough lately or just wanted to take pictures. He, on the other hand, might have been glad to finally get some time away from me!
I'd never been out that long before, much less with just one other person and not seeing anyone else. We really got into a flow of working and being together, a lot of humor (except when the bugs, uh, I mean the HEAT, was at it's worst; then we were just quiet). Fun to find that it's really as great as I expected to be out for such a long time period, how one really settles into the flow of it even more than all the 30-day courses I've worked. We adapt in many subtle ways bodily as well as mentally, such as one's hair stops producing much oil so the itchy-head of the first weeks disappears. Our food was so good that we didn't have any cravings when we got back to town except of course fresh produce.
So there you have it, more details than you cared to know on my northern adventure. I hope you enjoyed the photos.
Since getting home I've been alpine-homesick, missing and appreciating being here and working here, but I'm finding I'm feeling it less having just re-lived much of our trip. Funny.
I hope you and your family are well and getting out more this summer. Thanks much for the updates about your lives, and photos… including your home remodeling, your kids, your dog, and anything that is of interest to you in your life. I so love staying in contact, however sporadically, with each of you receiving this.
Love and wild winds, Susan
* (yes, global warming has occurred before, but this rate is unnatural and now it's a hell of a lot harder for organisms to adapt).
Finally I sit down to write about the arctic trip as I wait for my double-chocolate chip cookies to bake here at my home in the glorious high country. I meant to write sooner but have been consumed with getting ready to head south for the winter on Tuesday and sneaking in a few wonderful days of working. Plus Larry is around taking a first aid course, so we've been able to spend a bit of time together.
I posted photos of the trip on my website so will write about impressions of the experience rather than the itinerary. As you can probably tell by the emphasis in the photos, my favorite parts were the wildlife, the Sherbert Hills, and being on the coast, esp in the pack ice.
We saw the majority of the dramatic animals during the first week, including a trio of grey wolves that we watched for a half hour or so. As we slowly paddled up the Carnwath they trotted upriver along the bank staying about a quarter mile ahead of us rather than disappearing into the boreal forest. They'd pause, look back at us while we caught up, then trot onward.
After awhile we stopped for a break, then paddled a bit up a tributary before returning to the main river. Lo' and behold, the wolves were still there in the distance upriver. They saw us, stood up, stretched, then began "leading" us up the river again until the novelty wore off and they vanished. Lucky for us we were the most interesting thing going on that morning. That same morning we also had a quick view of a bear (all the bears we saw were grizzlies).
On the previous day, we watched a sow and two cubs swim across the river ahead of us (photo, but only one cub shown). We watched for awhile, binoculars glued to our eyeballs. The bigger cub climbed up onto a chunk of river ice and then did a little dance step ("Did you see that!?”) before jumping down to catch up with his family.
Another day, after watching a sow and cub mosey along digging up roots across the river, we saw her lie down and start to nurse her big toddler. Wow, what a personal moment. It didn't last long, however, as she abruptly sat up with a distressed expression, looked in our direction with her nose in the air, and quickly ran up the steep hill, hungry cub on her heels.
The second bear photo was taken weeks later where we wanted to camp. Before committing to that great site, we wanted to make sure that 1.) the bears became aware of us before getting too close, and 2.) that they would run away immediately when they smelled us. Anything less would mean we'd move on. As you can see, these two bears were especially pretty.
That camp was at the mouth of a 3-mile long estuary with a narrow neck the tides flowed through. We reveled in the thrill of watching and listening to the pack ice race through the narrows and then temporarily ground on a shallow area on it's way deep into the estuary. The pieces would pile up against each other making a wonderful crunching and grinding sound, so cool I wanted to stay awake all night to watch. Then of course 6 hours later it was rapidly flowing back out right past our camp. A fabulous sight.
It was really something to watch birds from the courting/nesting phase through raising chicks. In June it was all eggs, and July we only saw chicks. We would look at the little chicks, goslings, ducklings and wonder how on Earth the little critters could possibly get big and strong enough to fly thousands of miles in, what, 6-8 weeks?! Baffling. Observation and our field guides led to all kinds of fascinating insights about the different strategies species use to deal with the short season and harsh conditions. Animals really are amazing and diverse... so little we can really know.
Many species we saw so frequently that I really felt like I to got to know them, their ways of being, not simply that I could identify the species. It's really different getting a sense of their character, how they live, rather than the usual simple sightings. For example, my sense of bald eagles really changed. Did you know that big boldly marked bird, our national symbols, squeaks? I kind of knew it, but nothing like I understand now. So much for "Screaming Eagles" and that kind of misrepresentation. They have this delightful truly-squeaky little voice that they use freely when you paddle below their giants nests. The voice is actually quite charming, endearing, unlike the screech of peregrines or the persistent cry of rough-legged hawks. Did you know that Canadian geese raise their kids in groups of 2-3 families? And the goslings dive and swim like loons when scared, an ability they lose with adult plumage (and I really know that having skinned one and felt the deep, pelt-like chest plumage). They share parenting duties when responding to perceived threats, whereas female ducks raise their little ones alone.
The Sherbert Hills were quite fascinating as you can tell by the number of photos. (I omitted a lot, believe it or not!). It took me awhile to figure out the basics: sulfuric acid seeps up from the deeps, becoming hydrogen sulfide gas at the surface (which we smelled most of the time: the classic rotten eggs). The acid chemically weathers the sedimentary rock into clays, which don't support vegetation. Various metals and whatnot in the rock oxidize, causing the beautiful sherbert hues in the badlands-type landscape. I wished we could have had a geologist along to interpret another level; there isn't a guidebook for this terrain. I don't know what was going on with those large white crystals other than they must have precipitated out of the acidic solution; somehow I think they’re calcite (let me know if you recognize them). In the photos you can also see what the wind has done around the vegetation that does manage to grow on these unstable slopes. The water coming out of the hills was nasty acidic so we paddled out to the far side of the river for potable water. Further down the river we saw much smaller sherbert slopes with only faint sulfur scents, so the crustal cracks must be fairly long. You can see in the photos the clay-mud coming from the hills.
I have learned to love the smell of hydrogen sulfide because I associate it with fantastic landscapes: the volcanoes Baker and especially Erebus and the geothermal activity in the Yellowstone area. This place just added to my appreciation of this smell that most people consider unpleasant.
A week later I found the instability of a canoe in coastal waves much less disturbing with the cover on because the boat appeared a lot more like a kayak, in which I'm used to rocking around in river waves (past life). In fact one day in Wood Bay I was paddling blissfully along casually noticing the waves increasing when Larry noted it was time for a break. When he turned the boat toward the shore, where the waves were breaking, I realized with a start that we were in lively water and that this wouldn't be the easiest landing. Soon, as I stepped out of the "cockpit", which was rising and falling with the waves, I managed to catch my second foot on the canoe cover. I nearly face-planted, catching myself on the submerged rocks with my gloved hands and other knee, and then instantly jumped up to scramble out of the way in case the boat was about to plow me over (it wasn't). I was fine, but it was a funny way to discover that it doesn't take much in terms of waves for a loaded canoe to be exciting. Soon Larry said that we should camp here, even though it was only 2pm, because of the increasing waves. I didn't argue.
As it turned out, for the previous half hour, Larry had been in Decision Mode, carefully assessing the whole situation to determine at what point we needed to get off the water. He had been feeling the stress of making the right decision (couldn't camp just anywhere along the shore) while I was completely unaware that anything was going on! I realized how useless I was in terms of coastal decision making at this point, and made a note to tune in extra carefully to the tone behind his understated words. What a different role to be in, no doubt good for me to appreciate the helplessness novices sometimes experience.
Interestingly, both days when we were in the denser pack ice, the water was glassy. The correlation was so striking that I had to wonder if there was something going on. Maybe the ice was absorbing enough heat to chill the lowest layer of air, making it dense and heavy. Then maybe breezes, warmer lighter air, were riding up over the chilled layer on the water leaving the water so still. Ok, maybe a crackpot idea, but I suspect that there was something going on, maybe related to the melting ice affecting the water temp/density/salinity. Or, maybe it was just a freak coincidence that the only glassy water of the trip was during the hours we were surrounded by ice.
The fishing rod you see in the photos was just being carried there; we weren’t trolling. The plastic gas container we found on a beach.
I loved the ice (what it is about ice?). There was something surreal paddling through it in the silence on the smooth water. At one point we could see the floes moving in different directions due to variations in tidal currents, making navigation in the dense ice more interesting. Sometimes the ice moved fast and at one point when it was really dense we found ourselves paddling fast to get through a gap before it closed. It wasn't like we were going to get squashed like berg ice could do, but it was still a kick to have to paddle hard to shoot the gap.
A couple times isolated seals checked us out, poking their heads up and even rising up like orcas do, "spy-hopping" to get a better look. Given that they are probably hunted, we assumed that they only approached because we didn't have a motor. It was fun spinning our heads around trying to see where they'd pop up next. Sometimes they alerted us that we'd missed them with a big sassy splash. There were also more birds among the ice flows than out on the open water.
We paid through the nose to rent a satellite phone in case of an emergency (bear injury), but it turned out to be worth it for the freedom and options it provided. We went into the field with neither an end-date or location... when have I ever done that?! It was gloriously refreshing to have such freedom to explore and decide as we go along what we wanted to do and even how long we wanted to stay out (at least up to a certain date). Our main options were either go up the Kugaluk River, or go through the Eskimo Lakes, all the way to the road via some tiny marshy creek or get picked up at a lake near the road. Such beauty in options, being able to customize and respond to whatever inclination we had rather than having to commit so far in advance.
We were strong by the time we got to the Kugaluk so paddling upstream in that current was reasonable. We heard that there was a lot of wildlife and good fishing there, and the map showed miles of curvy canyon so it was an easy choice. We were disappointed by the paucity of animal sightings. The fish were burbot, a bottom feeder; it was a warm river lacking trout or grayling. Our broken fishing rod didn't help. We didn't see any large mammals for weeks, and only one (handsome!) bull moose just before we reached our pick-up lake (where I caught that Northern pike, my first fish!). The fishing on the Anderson and Carnwath wasn’t because it was so early in the season. We put it as soon as they could fly us in after ice break-up, when the water was still muddy. Breaking the fishing rod didn’t help either.
Unlike on the Carnwath where I did all the tracking (walking-ferrying boat upriver), I didn't do any on the Kugaluk. This far into the summer the rocks were snot-slick with algae and the Kugaluk had more current than the Carnwath. We also didn't know whether we'd have enough days left to deal with whatever mysteries the Kugaluk held (we had little info beyond the map) so it made sense to maximize our chances of getting to a lake at the top where we could get picked up rather than having to go all the way back down the river to the delta where we could also get picked up. Larry enjoyed the challenge of tracking in these conditions so found this section of the trip engaging enough despite the few animals. Sometimes in higher current the water was too shallow to paddle in and there wasn't a good bank bar for tracking. For these spots we devised a new technique "motorboating" in which Larry would jump out and push the boat while I stayed in the bow and continued paddling! It worked great.
We did have one class 1.5 rapids complex enough that we had to paddle through part of it. There was an exciting few seconds after paddling like hell to ferry across above the crux when he was telling me to "GRAB SOMETHING: GRASS, ANYTHING. GRAB SOMETHING NOW" so we wouldn't go down backwards. There wasn't much to grab, but I managed to claw enough mud and grass to arduously pull us in and eventually scramble out to pull the boat further up out of the rapids. Then we had to track the boat climbing through a willow thicket, passing the rope to each other to get it around the willows that we then climbed over... good fun.
We weren't in an official Wilderness Area, the concept of which is the product of our modern nature-distanced industrial lives. This landscape is well used by the local native peoples (several groups). We saw a number of subsistence cabins, "camps" accessed by boat or snowmobile. This is not the plane culture of Alaska (gringo culture). These camps ranged from a pile of ruins and junk, to a 3-family relatively well-maintained camp that has obviously been in use for a long time. The insides of the cabins show that the families even bring their little kids with them and stay awhile. Fishing, hunting, and trapping at these camps provides much of their protein for the year (In the week during which we waited to put in, I learned a lot about northern culture.)
I found it interesting that we really didn’t see any trash from recreationists (just a couple plastic bags where we found the Great Grate: see photos of stove dying then finding a fire grate that very night). In fact we barely saw any evidence at all of other boaters the whole trip. Instead we saw many fuel drums from subsistence-related snowmobiling, boating, (possibly ORV’s and maybe from aviation caches?). We also saw what are probably giant collars for pipelines. You can see one of the 18 orange plastic halves in Liverpool Bay in the photo of the bears at the coastal camp (the latter of two bear photos).
The native people have a different ethic regarding leaving trash, one that made me look at my own perspective with a different eye. How easy it might be to criticize them, yet what would I say when a native countered with a remark about all the shit we put into the air that's causing the far north to change more dramatically than the temperate areas? We benefit from all the hydrocarbons we burn with our affluent lifestyles while they pay the higher price (including serious heavy metal toxicity in marine meat), barely enjoying the benefits.
Also, there's the visible-local-innocuous versus invisible-global-toxic effect. Is it really worth the fossil fuel it would take to remove all the shotgun shells and coffee cans, the empty fuel drums and broken down snowmobiles? Not only the fuel use, but also the greenhouse gases emitted. This issue has come up in Antarctica regarding benign trash out on the plateau where it gets consumed by the ice. I appreciate clean landscapes, but at the price of destroying those same landscapes by global warming?* Not a simple situation. [One thing we try to do in Antarctica is to fill the plane with junk after they've dropped us off at one of these older camps, so the trash gets out without requiring special flights, but this is less feasible via boat or snowmobile.]
The two government related huts were better maintained, but it was the commercial hunting camp, run by and for gringos, that were the four star scenes... and accessed via planes. Definitely a lot more money available for guided hunting/fishing (and us), a contrast that I'm sure doesn't escape the native population. [The photo at the end with the satellite dish]. The #9 record-sized barren-ground grizzly was shot here a month before we arrived, by a client from Montana.
We also saw a number of cabin ruins from the old days of trapping, presumably the 1800's. We observed that the beaver and muskrat populations had recovered well. A book suggested one of the coastal cabins had been a whaling camp.
The culture within our little team of two caught my attention as well. I knew Larry pretty darn well going into this trip, but 46 days alone together, in his element, took it to a whole new level. The first weeks found us sharing more and more stories of our lives (and I kept talking about Outward Bound-NOLS courses as this extended trip reminded me). He doesn’t draw attention to himself and is super laid-back. Because he doesn't always talk about himself much it was great to get him going about his life, parts that I'd only known a bit about. I loved it.
More significant than our stories was how he worked with me. My background in working with others in parallel situations allowed me to step back and observe how he dealt with me out there. Even when it was inconvenient (and costly) for him, he gave me a lot of room to figure things out for myself. The biggest example is how concerned I was about grizzly bears during our planning months. Partly based on the opinion of a senior serious wilderness explorer I guide with, I was pretty into having a good shotgun (semi-automatic), a tarp (so no human-taco of a tent, unless weather a bigger hazard), a satellite phone, and bearproof food canisters for when we were off hiking. On all his prior trips he's taken none of this except a pump-shotgun and bear spray (which we also had), but he didn't give me ANY shit for being bearanoid. He even bought two of the bear canisters. He didn't want me to be nervous out there (which I wasn't) even if it was more hassle for him.
He let me see for myself that the bears are indeed "well-behaved". As soon as they smelled us, they always ran off just like his past experiences. Over time I became comfortable camping in places that weren't the absolute-least bear-exposed. Mid-trip I even suggested a particular camp but he pointed out that it was on a narrow travel corridor (meaning a bear might feel trapped when stumbling upon our camp)! Not that all bears will always run away, and we did go through protocols for different kinds of encounters, but it was nice to have the space to figure it out for myself, to find my own level of comfort with one of the more complex outdoor hazards.
The other thing was how he dealt with me regarding hunting. He trained me well before the trip and we practiced shooting again the first morning in the field. During the first couple weeks we talked a lot about hunting but nothing happened. I finally realized it wasn't happening yet because he was waiting for me to step up and take the initiative. He's pretty mellow about hunting or fishing, and wanted to be sure that I was mentally ready to deal with the reality of shooting a animal,
watching it die, and then gutting the little body to eat. He was smart to make sure the impetus was mine.
I shot the first of two ptarmigan in the Sherbert Hills. We always hiked with the gun for bears, but put 2 birdshots in so we could hunt but still, on the third shot, take down a bear if necessary. Larry refrained from taking photos for the first bird I shot, letting me go through the experience without having a camera in my face. From the start I was committed to only shooting a bird on the ground (no flight shots) and well within range. And male ptarmigan only (bird books say female can raise chicks alone). For both ptarmigan I aimed at the bird as he trotted away and asked Larry "Is he in range?" "Yes", as the bird continues to move. "Is he still in range?!" “Yes”. I realized I'd better stop asking and shoot or he'd be out of range. For the first one, I walked right past the female, still as death, incubating her eggs. A bit weird: she was safe as could be though I could have grabbed her I was so close, and yet I was about to kill her sweetie. Whew.
The sound of the gun was a bigger deal than the kickback, and I even shot the next bird a week later with earplugs! In fact this first time I didn’t even notice the kickback because my ears were exploding.
It took me awhile to "get it" about the "chicken thing". You know how chickens supposedly run around when beheaded? Larry assured me it's true, but didn't hassle me when, for each bird, I kept trying to hand-kill the already dead bird as it flopped around. Frantically, while audibly asking the bird to "please die!", I'd beat the neck with a rock, pinch the trachea, break the neck.... anything to stop the movement. Nothing made a difference: the birds were already dead. Larry just patiently watched until I finally accepted the chicken thing. And afterward, when I held the soft little body between my hands, feeling the weight and warmth, silently thanking the little being, he stood by quietly. He coached but let me do all the skinning, gutting, and cooking-prep, and didn't mind my delaying (despite the mosquitoes) while I examined the various organs (there really were rocks in the gizzard, just like there's supposed to be!).
We also got two geese. It took me weeks for me to get past the golf-course chemical concern with Canadian geese, and to figure out that the large flocks were likely pre-breeding birds: single (not married) and fewer years eating chemicals. A couple times I hatched plans to stalk geese. We came across a large molting flock. One might think they'd be easier to catch. WRONG! They are even more alert than ever and run or swim away unbelievably fast. I got pretty interested in getting a Canadian goose (something I've thought about for years actually).
Twice I asked Larry to wait while I tried to outsmart the birds by very patiently sneaking around from another direction... not a chance. Larry stood around waiting, remembering that I was never a ten-year-old with a .22, so I haven't been through that phase. One time I even devised a plan in which Larry would signal to me while I oh-so-slowly crawled up truly on my belly, mostly hidden by small shrubs. The plan seemed pretty foolproof, but every time he lifted an arm to signal a direction, the geese would perk up and cackle. Plus I forgot to figure out a signal for going backwards... it was actually a rather funny 45 minutes. I really took my time trying to get the Look-Out goose, even moving only when his friends weren't looking. I figured that maybe if he made the alarm call and they hadn't seen me themselves, they might not take him as seriously.
Didn't work. He intently watched me creep up, scooting intermittently on my belly. When I was still at least twice shooting-distance away, he flew to join his flock, who had been grazing-walking away faster than I had been advancing. Then I tried Larry's strategy of suddenly running up to close the distance, then shooting as they start to take off. Later Larry said he'd wanted to signal this via acting it out in place, but the geese were way too savvy. I had been lying down so long that when I stood up and tried to run on the lumpy tundra, it was like I was drunk. Plus I was carrying the gun in a position ready to shoot (awkward), and didn't have a pre-picked spot to stop at so I floundered across the tundra while the geese nonchalantly walked away and eventually took flight. I didn’t have a chance; what a scene. After this Larry told me that waterfowl hunters don't stalk their prey: they put out decoys and sit in a blind drinking beer till the birds arrive.
I got a shot at a snow goose. It was a surprise as we hadn't come with 200m of them, and then there was this one walking away from us on the beach. I checked in with my coach and this time I did the run up and shoot plan; I could feel my heart beating as I ran! After he died we found out what Larry had suspected: the bird wasn't right. His chest had two major open wounds, maybe from a fox? Couldn't fly and it probably hurt too much to swim, so it turned out to be a mercy killing, poor guy. We didn't eat him, don't know if he was sick from infection or what. I set him on some nest-like sticks, folded up his feet and wings, and then tucked his head under his wing like he was sleeping. A scavenger will be happy to find this meal.
The Canadian goose we got was even more a team effort than the other birds. We were paddling upstream late in the trip when we found ourselves close enough for a shot. I needed Larry to actually watch the bird to determine when it was about to fly because it was all I could do to keep "the bead" (aim) on the goose. The bird was running away and the boat was bobbing up and down as Larry kept paddling to close the distance. He gave the word and I pulled the trigger. The bird was on a muddy bank so that's where I cleaned him, getting dirt into the clear-colored fat under the skin despite my best efforts to keep him on his skin and wings. Larry was patient about the dirt and it turned out we couldn't taste/feel it anyway.
This bird we pressure-cooked which worked well in terms of reducing the chewy factor. But they all tasted good (I opted out of the commercial meat industry years ago NOT because I don't like meat), better than the fish, which I also enjoyed. A great break from bean, rice, and tortellini.
I must say my respect for these animals increased quite a bit and my overall relationship with them has deepened. Hunting is difficult, and represents a very different way of being on the landscape, a way of moving. It really is a powerful and primal experience (or it can be, I am well aware that it can be a lot different than that). Can hardly imagine the process of taking down and field-dressing a large mammal like a deer. Yeowza. Also increased respect esp for traditional native hunters.
The mosquitoes were a real psychological challenge. At the beginning, we had almost two glorious weeks with nearly no bugs. I appreciated it more because Larry pointed out that this would be our only perfect-conditions phase: not too buggy, hot, or windy. He sure was right. From the start I was determined to keep my head about me regarding bugs, to not let them get to me: a significant challenge. Never scratching a bite helped, but not as much as thinking of it as being "too hot" rather than "too buggy". In that photo where I'm lying on a chunk of sea ice I was desperate to cool off. Wearing our full bug suits makes it look like cool weather. Don't be fooled! It was full-on shorts and t-shirt heat, but that would've been a worse fate than drowning in sweat in the bug suit, esp when the air was still. Heinous. Thanks dearly to Mike for the bathroom bug net (see photo). Larry preferred using a stick to switch to bugs away during very quick squats... don't know how he did it. I even learned to slide a pee bottle down my pants so I could pee without exposing skin. Crazy.
Another way to deal was to think of caribou. Not only are they truly tortured by mosquitoes, but the book describes two horrifying parasitic flies that make summer absolute misery for caribou and also substantially weaken them (large wad of larvae in sinuses, hundreds of larvae under skin on back... every caribou). This was consistent with the tortured look on their faces and especially how they are always moving (burning calories they need for winter). They are so miserable it wasn't fun to see them except that one bull in the purple flowers (photo). If I ever find myself born as a caribou calf, I'm heading for the nearest wolf.
Larry and I wondered how the native people dealt with mosquitoes with traditional materials. Mind boggling. We had little to complain about. Late in the trip Larry told me that the bugs were worse this time than on his previous trips.
Fortunately just when we were about to lose it, a breeze would reduce the bugs. Paddling out on the water, esp. in the sea ice helped reduce bug density. If you look carefully, you can see bugs (sometimes as smudges) in many of the photos including the night paddle shots. In the bug-screen shelter we cheered for the bees that plucked mosquitoes off the screen, bit off wings and legs, then rolled up the carcass to take back to feed their larvae. We noticed that when the horseflies got thick on the Kugaluk River (killed 22 on my pants in 3-4 minutes), the mosquitoes subsided. Not sure if it was due to the horseflies being a direct threat or if it was a safe-airspace issue, but it was definitely a better deal.
Larry says that years ago he promised himself that he'd never be out again during blackfly season, assuring me that they're worse. Turned out that we left the day they began to hatch.
Back to the bit about Larry. My appreciation for him grew not only for how he dealt with me out there, but also seeing him in his element. I'm not exactly new to rivers or seeing animals, but he took all that to a whole different level, esp. reading river and the bays. It was amazing how easily and well he interpreted the water, the level of subtlety. (I realize (hope!) it's no more so than my reading of rock and alpine environments). Clearly he's an elite wilderness paddler and traveler. His years of canoe racing also help, esp for the upriver sections (and I got some great coaching on my technique!). What a unique position for me to be in, so much learning. Refreshing. I wrote a ton in my journal, about many things.
Most of all, he's really easy going and has a similar level of risk acceptance as I do. I knew those things from climbing and skiing with him, but with water I am not on the same level so need to rely on him and trust his judgment unlike I do in familiar terrain. I knew that he wouldn't let us get into a situation that we couldn't handle as a team, that he can read people as well as he reads water. This meant that it all flowed beautifully. Even the few times that my eyes got large (like that landing above), I knew we really weren't in a serious situation, that all I had to do was combine my judgment with his instructions and all's well.
Did you notice the photos in which he’s in the boat and I’m walking? I have teased him saying I’m going to tell everyone that he kicked me out and made me walk! Not the case. Sometimes I felt like I hadn’t walked enough lately or just wanted to take pictures. He, on the other hand, might have been glad to finally get some time away from me!
I'd never been out that long before, much less with just one other person and not seeing anyone else. We really got into a flow of working and being together, a lot of humor (except when the bugs, uh, I mean the HEAT, was at it's worst; then we were just quiet). Fun to find that it's really as great as I expected to be out for such a long time period, how one really settles into the flow of it even more than all the 30-day courses I've worked. We adapt in many subtle ways bodily as well as mentally, such as one's hair stops producing much oil so the itchy-head of the first weeks disappears. Our food was so good that we didn't have any cravings when we got back to town except of course fresh produce.
So there you have it, more details than you cared to know on my northern adventure. I hope you enjoyed the photos.
Since getting home I've been alpine-homesick, missing and appreciating being here and working here, but I'm finding I'm feeling it less having just re-lived much of our trip. Funny.
I hope you and your family are well and getting out more this summer. Thanks much for the updates about your lives, and photos… including your home remodeling, your kids, your dog, and anything that is of interest to you in your life. I so love staying in contact, however sporadically, with each of you receiving this.
Love and wild winds, Susan
* (yes, global warming has occurred before, but this rate is unnatural and now it's a hell of a lot harder for organisms to adapt).
February 02, 2007
Crazy ice and Icebreaker ship ride
Hi all,
I just saw spray from a whale in the icebreaker channel right here by town. The winds is blowing the broken up ice to one side, inviting the whales in to play, or hunt, or do whatever they do... Very cool. We get Minke whales and orcas.
So much for writing shortly after returning from Minna Bluff. That was almost 2 weeks ago. The consequence is that now I've had two especially interesting experiences since the last update... so, well, not quite so short this time (eeekk!). But not so long as previous years, at least.
I was out for 2-1/2 weeks with geologists who were working on steep snow and loose rock (often with ice just underneath), and above crevassed terrain at times. The team included my favorite researchers, the volcanologists with whom I've had my best times down here on Mt Erebus. There were four senior scientists, 3 graduate students, and a contrtact mountaineer (ie he isn't part of our dept but could be).
Minna Bluff is composed of dozens lava flows, and the team was investigating how these highly varied eruptions interacted with water: glacial ice, lakes, streams. They were also working on mapping this complex terrain and gathering samples for chemical analysis as well as age-dating. This area, 50 miles south of McMurdo, really hasn't been studied. The results will augment some major rock core drilling projects and other climate related (and more) research.
Mostly we hiked to our sites, much to my enjoyment. Much of the terrain was what one might call "technical hiking", in crampons, especially on the highly varied and uneven surfaces of glacial and melt-water ice right below the cliffs. The Ross and McMurdo Ice Shelves meet at Minna Bluff (see map on pbase.com/antarctic_suze). These two sheets of ice glide over the Ross Sea at different speeds and in different directions, creating a tremendous amount of stress resulting in miles of beautiful ice chaos. I'll send photos separately. Not only are there so many crevasses and gigantic blocks of ice that there is no discernible pattern or actual level surface except at the very edge, but there are 3 magnificent rips, canyons really, reaching out in gentle arcs several miles into the distant flat white of the shelf. Fantastic scenery, and it was really fun to explore ice in it's many magical forms walking to and from work every day, esp when it became warm enough for melting and refreezing (a game to see if you can walk on the frozen surface of the shallow meltpools).
On some days we helicopter-commuted because the distances were getting so great that too much time was spent hiking. One time the helicopter landed so close to a crevasse that we had to be careful while loading our packs into it. Another time, as the helo arrived to pick us up, the rotor wash pushed a pack out onto a snow covered crevasse. (The crevasse was visible by the sagging snow). As we started building an anchor to belay someone over to get it, the pilot said he would blow it back to us. Hearing that unlikely offer over our radios, we didn't pause in our anchor building. We had visions of the pack going further and then down into an open crevasse.
Then the pilot actually did it! He herded the pack back to us using the wind from the rotors. At one point he almost lost the pack, but he pulled it off: full-on helicopter-cowboy rounding up the errant pack. We were mightily impressed.
The other funny thing about working out there was, knowing the place is known for its wind storms, we worked our first 5 days in substantial wind with occasional snow thinking that was normal local weather. Then the 45-55mph wind abated and the sun came out... we were shocked! We had a good laugh at ourselves; we should have known. Then later when we had big winds we took some much appreciated rest time.
Last Sunday, the Coast Guard Icebreaker the Polar Sea offered 2 "morale cruises". In recent seasons there was so much ice because of that giant berg B-15 that the ships were too busy breaking a channel to offer these trips. This year they finally had some free time like in the last decade. This is the first year, since I've been here, with NO icebreaking/ship drama: a big change.
Almost everyone on station entered their names into the lottery for the limited number of spaces. The little trip out into the channel and back was a lot of fun, very novel. We saw two Minke whales, swimming right below us in the water. Beautiful. One turned it's massive head a wee bit to look up at us, although I couldn't see the eye. I didn't worry about photos because plenty of others did and I figure some good shots will make it to the common drive on the intranet (I will send some soon). Instead I focused on watching the whales for the moments we saw them up close. Beautiful powerful graceful animals. What a treat.
For the first time I saw an Emporer penguin sitting on the surface like a duck! We were all initially baffled, and I heard a couple folks wonder incredulously, "Loon?!?!" until someone realized. I've seen them via the observation tube down in the ice, swimming like torpedoes, waddling or tobogganing on land, in photos porpoising along the ice edge, but never on the surface like a huge duck with a white neck. How funny.
Also really enjoyed watching how the ice reacted to the ship. We had to push through a bunch of slightly refrozen densely packed chunks, so watching the new ice break and how the big pieces reacted to being pushed upon by the ship was cool. And later I was further back on the ship and saw large (meters) chunks of ice resurface after having been forced under by the front of the boat. Sounds bland, maybe, but it was actually really dynamic how the ice and water interacted and sounded. And of course all the wonderful aqua blues of ice on the slick looking darkness of McMurdo Sound.
Before we turned around on the 2-1/2 hour trip they rammed the 13' thick edge of the channel a couple times to give us a taste of icebreaking (just try to sleep through that!). The ship rides up on top and the weight breaks the ice, bit by bit by bit. Must've been horrendous when they had 100 miles to break a few years ago.
Seeing actual water is a real change. The area we camped in at Minna Bluff has many tiny ice ponds and a lake. Over our time there, one pond, right by my tent, began to melt. It was really different to see in to water and to see water move in the breeze; the strange normality of liquid water reminded me how 'abnormal' this place is. There was even algae in the bottom of the pool... now that too is a treat: plant life! We get so used to seeing nothing living except skuas looking for people carrying sandwiches away from the galley, that any form of life is really cool (and now whales in the channel).
The open sea absorbs light making the clouds above dark ("water sky" to the old explorer's looking for a route through the ice). Very distinctive and fun to finally see it this year.
Additional Nat'l Sci Foundation budget cuts are amply lubricating the rumor mill. Recently there's been a lot of talk of altering the flow of the year down here next season in order to skimp through until the next budget cycle starting in October, which may not be much better anyway.
This next ice year is the International Polar Year, following the Internat'l Geophysical Year half a century ago, when the US Antarctic Program began. On one hand there's been a build-up of big international high profile projects... but now with budget chopping... we shall see what happens.
Post-ice travel plans are on everyone's mind. Larry and I are working out the details for an extended Arctic river trip later this spring. We're thinking the Anderson, in the NW Territories of Canada, going through a bird sanctuary during nesting season, and ending by paddling along the coast of the Beaufort Sea back to the town from which we flew in. Part of the idea is to go before the seasonal cycle of landscape and animals is further thrown off by longterm warming. Logistics remain to be worked out; we'll see what unfolds.
I'm getting really psyched to climb for 5-6 weeks in Arapiles, Australia again. In case you're feeling nauseated by all the time that I don't work, know that if all my working hours are added up, I work more than the supposed standard for a full time job. I'm not completely slacking! But yes, I do realize that I'm pretty damn lucky, and in many ways.
Love and Light, Susan
I just saw spray from a whale in the icebreaker channel right here by town. The winds is blowing the broken up ice to one side, inviting the whales in to play, or hunt, or do whatever they do... Very cool. We get Minke whales and orcas.
So much for writing shortly after returning from Minna Bluff. That was almost 2 weeks ago. The consequence is that now I've had two especially interesting experiences since the last update... so, well, not quite so short this time (eeekk!). But not so long as previous years, at least.
I was out for 2-1/2 weeks with geologists who were working on steep snow and loose rock (often with ice just underneath), and above crevassed terrain at times. The team included my favorite researchers, the volcanologists with whom I've had my best times down here on Mt Erebus. There were four senior scientists, 3 graduate students, and a contrtact mountaineer (ie he isn't part of our dept but could be).
Minna Bluff is composed of dozens lava flows, and the team was investigating how these highly varied eruptions interacted with water: glacial ice, lakes, streams. They were also working on mapping this complex terrain and gathering samples for chemical analysis as well as age-dating. This area, 50 miles south of McMurdo, really hasn't been studied. The results will augment some major rock core drilling projects and other climate related (and more) research.
Mostly we hiked to our sites, much to my enjoyment. Much of the terrain was what one might call "technical hiking", in crampons, especially on the highly varied and uneven surfaces of glacial and melt-water ice right below the cliffs. The Ross and McMurdo Ice Shelves meet at Minna Bluff (see map on pbase.com/antarctic_suze). These two sheets of ice glide over the Ross Sea at different speeds and in different directions, creating a tremendous amount of stress resulting in miles of beautiful ice chaos. I'll send photos separately. Not only are there so many crevasses and gigantic blocks of ice that there is no discernible pattern or actual level surface except at the very edge, but there are 3 magnificent rips, canyons really, reaching out in gentle arcs several miles into the distant flat white of the shelf. Fantastic scenery, and it was really fun to explore ice in it's many magical forms walking to and from work every day, esp when it became warm enough for melting and refreezing (a game to see if you can walk on the frozen surface of the shallow meltpools).
On some days we helicopter-commuted because the distances were getting so great that too much time was spent hiking. One time the helicopter landed so close to a crevasse that we had to be careful while loading our packs into it. Another time, as the helo arrived to pick us up, the rotor wash pushed a pack out onto a snow covered crevasse. (The crevasse was visible by the sagging snow). As we started building an anchor to belay someone over to get it, the pilot said he would blow it back to us. Hearing that unlikely offer over our radios, we didn't pause in our anchor building. We had visions of the pack going further and then down into an open crevasse.
Then the pilot actually did it! He herded the pack back to us using the wind from the rotors. At one point he almost lost the pack, but he pulled it off: full-on helicopter-cowboy rounding up the errant pack. We were mightily impressed.
The other funny thing about working out there was, knowing the place is known for its wind storms, we worked our first 5 days in substantial wind with occasional snow thinking that was normal local weather. Then the 45-55mph wind abated and the sun came out... we were shocked! We had a good laugh at ourselves; we should have known. Then later when we had big winds we took some much appreciated rest time.
Last Sunday, the Coast Guard Icebreaker the Polar Sea offered 2 "morale cruises". In recent seasons there was so much ice because of that giant berg B-15 that the ships were too busy breaking a channel to offer these trips. This year they finally had some free time like in the last decade. This is the first year, since I've been here, with NO icebreaking/ship drama: a big change.
Almost everyone on station entered their names into the lottery for the limited number of spaces. The little trip out into the channel and back was a lot of fun, very novel. We saw two Minke whales, swimming right below us in the water. Beautiful. One turned it's massive head a wee bit to look up at us, although I couldn't see the eye. I didn't worry about photos because plenty of others did and I figure some good shots will make it to the common drive on the intranet (I will send some soon). Instead I focused on watching the whales for the moments we saw them up close. Beautiful powerful graceful animals. What a treat.
For the first time I saw an Emporer penguin sitting on the surface like a duck! We were all initially baffled, and I heard a couple folks wonder incredulously, "Loon?!?!" until someone realized. I've seen them via the observation tube down in the ice, swimming like torpedoes, waddling or tobogganing on land, in photos porpoising along the ice edge, but never on the surface like a huge duck with a white neck. How funny.
Also really enjoyed watching how the ice reacted to the ship. We had to push through a bunch of slightly refrozen densely packed chunks, so watching the new ice break and how the big pieces reacted to being pushed upon by the ship was cool. And later I was further back on the ship and saw large (meters) chunks of ice resurface after having been forced under by the front of the boat. Sounds bland, maybe, but it was actually really dynamic how the ice and water interacted and sounded. And of course all the wonderful aqua blues of ice on the slick looking darkness of McMurdo Sound.
Before we turned around on the 2-1/2 hour trip they rammed the 13' thick edge of the channel a couple times to give us a taste of icebreaking (just try to sleep through that!). The ship rides up on top and the weight breaks the ice, bit by bit by bit. Must've been horrendous when they had 100 miles to break a few years ago.
Seeing actual water is a real change. The area we camped in at Minna Bluff has many tiny ice ponds and a lake. Over our time there, one pond, right by my tent, began to melt. It was really different to see in to water and to see water move in the breeze; the strange normality of liquid water reminded me how 'abnormal' this place is. There was even algae in the bottom of the pool... now that too is a treat: plant life! We get so used to seeing nothing living except skuas looking for people carrying sandwiches away from the galley, that any form of life is really cool (and now whales in the channel).
The open sea absorbs light making the clouds above dark ("water sky" to the old explorer's looking for a route through the ice). Very distinctive and fun to finally see it this year.
Additional Nat'l Sci Foundation budget cuts are amply lubricating the rumor mill. Recently there's been a lot of talk of altering the flow of the year down here next season in order to skimp through until the next budget cycle starting in October, which may not be much better anyway.
This next ice year is the International Polar Year, following the Internat'l Geophysical Year half a century ago, when the US Antarctic Program began. On one hand there's been a build-up of big international high profile projects... but now with budget chopping... we shall see what happens.
Post-ice travel plans are on everyone's mind. Larry and I are working out the details for an extended Arctic river trip later this spring. We're thinking the Anderson, in the NW Territories of Canada, going through a bird sanctuary during nesting season, and ending by paddling along the coast of the Beaufort Sea back to the town from which we flew in. Part of the idea is to go before the seasonal cycle of landscape and animals is further thrown off by longterm warming. Logistics remain to be worked out; we'll see what unfolds.
I'm getting really psyched to climb for 5-6 weeks in Arapiles, Australia again. In case you're feeling nauseated by all the time that I don't work, know that if all my working hours are added up, I work more than the supposed standard for a full time job. I'm not completely slacking! But yes, I do realize that I'm pretty damn lucky, and in many ways.
Love and Light, Susan
January 01, 2007
Blood, Search and Apprehend, sea ice
Hi All,
Despite my expectation expressed in the last message, I made it back to town for the TWO-day weekend of Christmas. AND, I was actually here for the third and final real weekend of the season: New Year's. Today I'm headed out to the field for ten day gig, this one though in actual technical terrain... I'll actually get to use guiding related skills, not just grunt work on the Great White Expanse.
Last weekend Larry and I enjoyed a wonderful ski near town. As usual we rode our bikes there and back, which continues to be a lot of fun. The weather was calm and clear: a real treat and it reminded us of other places that we play in (minus trees, of course). The snow was sparkly and the surface was unusually great for skiing (an inch or two of facets on hardpack)... a superb outing.
Last week I received a call to come into Medical to donate blood. There was a guy with some very serious condition that needed a lot of blood of my type. This program maintains a "walking blood bank", and this is the first time I've heard of it being activated. I gave blood during the drives in high school, but this turned out to be different. With blood drives, I assume the blood will be separated into its components, mixed with a thousand other people's, and then sit in a freezer for months. This time, the pint of warm blood I held in my hand was moments from going through a filter (for clotting) and then directly into the body of someone I might even know. He received six pints before being flown to NZ. The Medical folks seemed pretty concerned about whether he would survive (no update).
I was surprised to find this process involved an emotional aspect: it's really different knowing a part of my body is about to go directly into the body of someone else, someone I might know. My friends in Medical also found this experience emotionally impactful, and they all seemed super grateful to those who were able to help. If I ever need blood here, I think I'd like to meet and thank each person, to know of whose blood was becoming mine. Intimate in a very novel way. Wild.
The other strange event last week was getting called, as part of the Search and Rescue team, to pick up two people who were seen walking off the safe-flagged route on the sea ice and deliver them to station management. They were perceived as also not having checked out as required for such recreational events. The vehicle we took couldn't cross the transition to the sea ice from where we were, so the two of us stood there, waiting for these guys to finish the loop (now they were on the flagged route). It was weird feeling like a cop waiting to bust someone. We decided that we'd been demoted to Search and Apprehend, and wondered if the guys, who must have seen us standing there, knew they were about to get ambushed, walking into a trap, or whatever the right phrase would be from Hollywood.
Turns out they had indeed checked out (we asked before assuming!), and had just temporarily taken a wrong turn to a dead-end flag-line, so taking them back to station management wasn't a drag because we knew they were innocent. Weird part of the job!
The first icebreaker, Swedish, is getting close to town. This year, for the first in four, there's been NO drama around sea ice and ships being able to get in. What a change!
And I finally saw penguins (endlessly entertaining, and the two local species are so different in character!) and seals on a de-flagging trip on the sea ice. The sea ice is officially closed now, mostly because of meltpools and mushiness on the surface near town, not because one will fall through, so we were out pulling the flags out of the routes. The ice is still up to several meters thick in most places, though the first-year ice is only about a meter or so. As the ice itself has warmed it has become less strong, but it's the surface where we drive and planes land that has become inconsistent. Plus if it got really warm for a while, the ice could possibly start to disintegrate or break up and get blown out. We hope for this so we can see whales, seals, and penguins from town, but that hasn't since '99 or so, before that giant berg B-15 wreaked havoc regionally.
My upcoming field stint involves geologists gathering samples from outcrops above snow/ice slopes, some of which are above a heavily crevassed area. It's also with my two favorite researchers (the Erebus people) and their new-to-Antarctica grad students. Should be fun. This group has their own contract mountaineer, a Brit, but the terrain dictates that they have another mountaineer, from our dept, out there as well. I taught their glacier travel course Saturday and it went well working with their mountaineer (who has been down with the British Ant. Survey) a number of times.
Other news is that Larry's elbows have been hurting enough that he has decided not to go to Arapiles to climb with me post-ice. Bummer! I will go without him (easy to find partners there), but am waiting to hear what else he plans... that might make it harder knowing he's on some other cool adventure! We are concocting a northern trip together for May-June. More on that later.
Anyone interested in incredible cragging with me in March? Search "Mt. Arapiles" (Australia) and get a better idea of how amazing this place is, in many respects. I have all the gear, both camping and climbing, so all you need is to fly to Melbourne with your personal climbing gear and I'll set you up with transportation to Arapiles (4 hours by car). Once there, it's super cheap.
Love and the most splendid year we can hope for, Susan
Despite my expectation expressed in the last message, I made it back to town for the TWO-day weekend of Christmas. AND, I was actually here for the third and final real weekend of the season: New Year's. Today I'm headed out to the field for ten day gig, this one though in actual technical terrain... I'll actually get to use guiding related skills, not just grunt work on the Great White Expanse.
Last weekend Larry and I enjoyed a wonderful ski near town. As usual we rode our bikes there and back, which continues to be a lot of fun. The weather was calm and clear: a real treat and it reminded us of other places that we play in (minus trees, of course). The snow was sparkly and the surface was unusually great for skiing (an inch or two of facets on hardpack)... a superb outing.
Last week I received a call to come into Medical to donate blood. There was a guy with some very serious condition that needed a lot of blood of my type. This program maintains a "walking blood bank", and this is the first time I've heard of it being activated. I gave blood during the drives in high school, but this turned out to be different. With blood drives, I assume the blood will be separated into its components, mixed with a thousand other people's, and then sit in a freezer for months. This time, the pint of warm blood I held in my hand was moments from going through a filter (for clotting) and then directly into the body of someone I might even know. He received six pints before being flown to NZ. The Medical folks seemed pretty concerned about whether he would survive (no update).
I was surprised to find this process involved an emotional aspect: it's really different knowing a part of my body is about to go directly into the body of someone else, someone I might know. My friends in Medical also found this experience emotionally impactful, and they all seemed super grateful to those who were able to help. If I ever need blood here, I think I'd like to meet and thank each person, to know of whose blood was becoming mine. Intimate in a very novel way. Wild.
The other strange event last week was getting called, as part of the Search and Rescue team, to pick up two people who were seen walking off the safe-flagged route on the sea ice and deliver them to station management. They were perceived as also not having checked out as required for such recreational events. The vehicle we took couldn't cross the transition to the sea ice from where we were, so the two of us stood there, waiting for these guys to finish the loop (now they were on the flagged route). It was weird feeling like a cop waiting to bust someone. We decided that we'd been demoted to Search and Apprehend, and wondered if the guys, who must have seen us standing there, knew they were about to get ambushed, walking into a trap, or whatever the right phrase would be from Hollywood.
Turns out they had indeed checked out (we asked before assuming!), and had just temporarily taken a wrong turn to a dead-end flag-line, so taking them back to station management wasn't a drag because we knew they were innocent. Weird part of the job!
The first icebreaker, Swedish, is getting close to town. This year, for the first in four, there's been NO drama around sea ice and ships being able to get in. What a change!
And I finally saw penguins (endlessly entertaining, and the two local species are so different in character!) and seals on a de-flagging trip on the sea ice. The sea ice is officially closed now, mostly because of meltpools and mushiness on the surface near town, not because one will fall through, so we were out pulling the flags out of the routes. The ice is still up to several meters thick in most places, though the first-year ice is only about a meter or so. As the ice itself has warmed it has become less strong, but it's the surface where we drive and planes land that has become inconsistent. Plus if it got really warm for a while, the ice could possibly start to disintegrate or break up and get blown out. We hope for this so we can see whales, seals, and penguins from town, but that hasn't since '99 or so, before that giant berg B-15 wreaked havoc regionally.
My upcoming field stint involves geologists gathering samples from outcrops above snow/ice slopes, some of which are above a heavily crevassed area. It's also with my two favorite researchers (the Erebus people) and their new-to-Antarctica grad students. Should be fun. This group has their own contract mountaineer, a Brit, but the terrain dictates that they have another mountaineer, from our dept, out there as well. I taught their glacier travel course Saturday and it went well working with their mountaineer (who has been down with the British Ant. Survey) a number of times.
Other news is that Larry's elbows have been hurting enough that he has decided not to go to Arapiles to climb with me post-ice. Bummer! I will go without him (easy to find partners there), but am waiting to hear what else he plans... that might make it harder knowing he's on some other cool adventure! We are concocting a northern trip together for May-June. More on that later.
Anyone interested in incredible cragging with me in March? Search "Mt. Arapiles" (Australia) and get a better idea of how amazing this place is, in many respects. I have all the gear, both camping and climbing, so all you need is to fly to Melbourne with your personal climbing gear and I'll set you up with transportation to Arapiles (4 hours by car). Once there, it's super cheap.
Love and the most splendid year we can hope for, Susan
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
