Images of

THE ARCTIC

Flying In

Photos © 2005 Seth White

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For this trip, the goal is a bit different than the past few times. At Summit Camp, they were going to have a relatively large drilling project this summer. That didn't happen, so instead it was decided to devote some manpower to moving the main camp buildings. The buildings at Summit are not elevated, and therefore if they are not moved they will eventually end up buried as the snow accumulates. This winter had a lot of accumulation, and some of the buildings were literally completely buried. So this summer the main task is to move them out of their holes and up onto the current level of the snow. The Green House is included in this move, so Biospherical needed to completely uninstall their instrument before the building could be moved. The Green House is not just something you can hook a bulldozer up to and drag it along. It must be disassembled into several parts, moved, then reconstructed....not a process which is friendly to a precision instrument installed in said building. So Jim and I came up here for a short visit to perform some calibrations and put the system away in storage until July, when it will be reinstalled. Here is something at the ANG base in Scotia NY that I had overlooked last time - a painting of an air drop from the LC-130.

This got me to do a double take - it's not a REALLY bad parking job, just a 130 in for some work.

Monday, May 16: onto the plane for the flight to Kangerlussuaq.

Some of the planes have new artwork on their sides, such as this one. The things on the duck's back are JATO (jet assisted take off) bottles, which are sometimes required at Summit for the planes to take off from the skiway (like yesterday, for example).

The earplugs issued upon boarding the plane have flames on their sides for extra speed. We got in yesterday, after a days delay in Kangerlussuaq due to fog. It took Jim and I exactly 1 day to complete the uninstallation...which is faster than I anticipated. Part of the reason is that neither of us was nearly as hard-hit by the altitude as we were the first time. I have no idea why, but it was nice. Last time, my pulse rate was up the first few days, and I felt sluggish and flushed most of the time. That, and I was peeing constantly. This time I felt a bit tired but that was it. My blood pressure was up a bit compared to normal, but overall I felt great. In fact I had a beer my first night here, whereas it was at least 3 days after I arrived last time before I even felt remotely like a brew. So we arrived about 3:30 yesterday, and after a short orientation we got right to work. I even felt good enough to stay up and play some cribbage with Katie later on. It's kind of a shame that we're only here two days this time. There are some good people here - Dave, Katie, Toby, Larry, and Geoff from last August, and some guys from Pole that are here to work on moving the buildings. Jason, a guy I met at Pole in 2004, is also here is also here as a science tech. Toby is now the camp manager, and he commented to me that this is the best crew he's seen. For my part, I liked the group in August a bit better, but that's probably because I was here for a month and got to know people somewhat more. Either way, that's high praise. Al is also here. He's a fellow I spent the winter with at McMurdo and also saw again at Palmer, and is one of the most unusual people I've met so far. He is a pretty capable guy from what I hear from people who work with him, and he's in pretty high demand in the polar programs. He's really nice and softspoken and is one of the most experienced guys around, with years and years of ice time. But he's not what you'd call gregarious. For example, it wasn't until July until I even saw him at McMurdo...halfway through the winter. And I just happened to be walking through building 155 at about 3:30 AM when I noticed a guy I hadn't seen before. To understand this, you need to imagine spending 4 months on a little rock with 196 other people. Here, you begin to recognize EVERYONE just by the way they move, even from a glance out of the corner of your eye. And now, 4 months into the winter I see someone I had NEVER seen before. What, did a plane come in that I didn't know about?? My friends Jen and Dave in the power plant mentioned this guy they worked with named "Al" every now and then, and so I started to wonder if I'd ever actually see this mystery man. So when I saw an unknown figure typing some email in the middle of the night, I figured that this must be the guy. I stopped and said "you must be Al?!". "Yep", he replied, "and you are?". So we chatted for a bit, and I headed to bed. I think I saw him 2 or 3 more times that whole season. I ran into him again at Palmer Station, where he was the power plant mechanic in June 2004. And now he's here. I was waiting for the plane to come in an hour ago (see below) and happened to talk with again. A pretty good guy. And definitely one of the most extraordinary characters (among many) that I've met on the ice.

Our flight from Scotia to Kangerlussuaq had a lot of cargo, and with the winds it was necessary to stop for fuel along the way. We landed at Goose Bay, Canada (a former US Air Force facility) for about 45 minutes to take on 13,000 lbs of fuel. The passengers and crew got off the plane, went into the terminal, drank coffee and milled around for a while. This is the plane getting fueled up.

Another at Goose Bay.

And one more. There was a corporate jet parked nearby, so here are some guys in sharp suits heading back to it, back to doing whatever it is they do.

On the approach to Kangerlussuaq, we passed over some rugged country on the coast of Greenland. Here is a view out the window.

Another one out the window of the plane as we approached Kangerlussuaq. I'm sitting here Thursday night, May 19, getting ready to make some coyote ice cream with Katie, Pete, and Jack. This is chocolate ice cream with cayenne pepper - quite excellent, actually. The RAMAS system didn't quite work as well as they PI's had hoped so it is being pulled out this summer for some rework, hopefully to be reinstalled at some point in the future. But the liquid N2 plant it uses is staying here, which will allow the ice cream manufacture to continue. So that's the plan for tonight: ice cream, beer, and hanging out. I just came back in from outside, where I was waiting for a plane to land. I wanted to take a few pictures of the "combat offload" where the cargo is pushed out the back of the plane as it slowly taxis along. But some serious fog rolled in between the time it left Kangerlussuaq and when it arrived here, so the pilot decided not to land. There are no navigational aids here at all, and so it is an entirely visual process. With fog in the air, the air becomes very indistinct from the ground...so the pilot decided to try again tomorrow. They flew over the camp about 6 times but did not find a good opportunity for a landing. The fog was such that most passes I could not see the plane at all, even though it sounded like it was only a couple hundred feet up. On the last pass, it flew directly in between us and the sun and appeared out of the fog like a ghost. It disappeared just as quickly, leaving some light contrails behind. Awesome. It took about 10 minutes for each pass, so I was standing out there for about an hour. But that last sight made it worth it.