We were up at 5am. We had to stop by at Mani’s to pick up the first round of images to bring to the camp. We had all our stuff packed and at the door, ate breakfast and were out the door by 6am. We arrived at Mani’s (Nordic House) at 6:15 and he was awake (a credit to his dedication and excitement about this project). We spent a half hour transferring data and then Robert and I headed off to rendezvous with Alice at 07:00 so that we could transfer the use of Jen’s car and house keys to Alice who would in turn transfer them to the house sitter.
We then went to the airport, did the loading up bit and proceeded on our way. When we arrived in Prudhoe, we were met at the luggage station by one of the APLIS logistics fellows. He hurried us over to the building next door and told us to get into our Arctic gear for the flight as per requirements. It was then that I mentioned that I was the one who called last night about the box that needed to remain in Prudhoe.
“Oh, you’re the one. Could you make that label any smaller?!” I relayed that I was not the one who packed the boxes and I was curious to see not only the label but the gear inside. Sure enough everything I needed was in that box and I was relieved. We got ready, got on the plane and headed out. I even got to ride in the co-pilot seat (a first for me). We had a very enjoyable flight. We had a clear view of the landfast ice, but the first year ice close to shore had been smashed around a bit by a recent storm so it was full of leads and buried in fog. A few miles out (~10 n.m.) the fog began to clear and we cold see all kinds of sea ice structure. We were flying at 3000 ft with a clear view of the surface. I took the opportunity to make a series of shots because this was a flight nearly due north from Prudhoe to the camp. Since I was sitting in the co-pilot seat, I was able to get a really good look at the navigation GPS right between the pilot and co-pilot. So after each shot (or sequence of shots) I took a followup shot of the GPS screen so I could catalogue that transect of pictures (see photos). I even took a short 30 second video with voice commentary so it will be interesting to see how that came out over the roar of the engine noise.
I asked the pilot to make a circle about the camp and took a bunch of pictures as he came in for the landing (see photos). We arrived and stepped off the plane to be greeted by 5 faceless or frozen-faced folks. One of them was Pat Mckueown (Jen’s husband, one of the divers and logistics guys). I had met him several times before but I could only recognize him because his name was written with a black marker on the left breast pocket of his insulated coveralls. His eyebrows were thick with ice and his cheeks were bright red. He had been here since March 1 setting up the camp and it was obvious that he had been doing a ton of work here the last 4 weeks.
We loaded up our gear onto the snow mobiles and walked toward the camp. I met up with Jackie and Bruce. We stood out in the cold for about 20 minutes exchanging messages and I got a crude briefing from them on where my hooch (hut) was located, when meals were served, and what they were up to. I also got a 30 second briefing on where the outhouses were and how to use them (as I really needed to after 6 hours of flying). I found my hut, picked a bunk, dumped my gear, changed into something more flexible than that Goodyear blimp parka outfit and proceeded to find my working gear, tool box, and other basic necessities. After a half hour of this I went into the command hut (location for all communications and the basic working hut) and proceeded to find out what the status of everything was. Robert came in about as disoriented as I did and about one hour after we landed I found him very comfortably sitting in the mess tent chatting with some of the key logistics guys about how the camp works. I can not tell you how nice it is to take a teacher into the field and have full confidence that he is not only a good teacher but also a very competent field person.
After chatting with the logistics guys myself (and getting more oriented through their insight), Robert and I headed over to the logistics hut where we set to work putting up his work station and getting his antenna mounted on the hut roof. It was a pretty smooth operation and we have the week and a half of training and practice to show for it. Within a couple of hours, we were able to make the first call and I got to be the lucky one to call my family. It was so good to hear Hans’ voice after all this travel. Years ago when I used to do field work, I would basically fall off the face of the earth for weeks at a time because ship-to-shore communications was strictly limited to critical messages. So this is a new experience for me to know that I can “ET phone home” anytime I really need to. The whole PolarTREC experience is very comforting in this regard.
I spent the rest of the day trying to get camp set up including arranging the rifles, emergency tents, and helping Jen to prep the GPS for the high resolution study. After dinner, I helped Robert out with the first journal transmission which went smooth as butter and we were just absolutely psyched because it was the first day of camp and all those hard 10 days of spin up were finally paying off. Robert had the biggest smile on his face when he was able to just push the button for each pre-composed message and watch happily as each message uplinked. Hi-fives all around.
I went back to my hut and spent a couple of hours finally getting the chance to unpack my personal gear and get settled into the hut before bed.
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