Last day before heading out - 30 March

Things are basically set to go. I have a few minutes to sit and gather my thoughts. We’ve been in a flurry with last minute activities from all those things that go “bump” just as events start to spin up. Robert has managed to get his glasses repaired. The telecommunications system which never materialized has been modified into a courier service with aircraft delivery of one precious DVD per day with all the relevant communication uplinks to be attached.
One of the scientists from the submarine incident is staying at Jen’s house and recounting the tales to us while the other is en route from home in the UK after getting a couple of days with his family. Mani’s housing is all squared away at the Nordic House and IARC has set him up in creature comfort style so that he can just come and go everyday to work in Jen’s office with all the computer systems up, running, and working away smoothly. The intended buoy array is up and running in its intended configuration (oh, such a lovely sight – see image or complete website). The field scientists are all on their way from all their homes, slowly making their way to the camp. The months of work to write the proposal and the months of work to prepare for this mission are now coming down to this one day before we depart to start on a seemingly short expedition of only 2 weeks. Years of training, months of negotiating, and numerous outstanding and positive people have worked very, very hard to make this all happen. We are at that point where it is the night before the launch of a space craft only this time I’m the one who’s going as one of the cryonauts. All the many months of preparation focused on this time of only two weeks to collect an enormous amount of field data. It will go by.... so.... very.... fast....

Late night: Thought I would just take it easy, pack the last of my things, look out for aurora, and head to bed early. Got a call from the ice camp from Bruce Elder who told me that he and Jackie were at the ice camp. They were told that everything was already flown out to the camp but when they arrived, nothing they needed was there. So I got the call. “Don’t leave Prudhoe until our 6 boxes arrive” he said. One of the boxes has all my camp gear like the parka, bunny boots, sleeping bag and emergency stuff I would need (and require) before boarding the plane. I was also told to pick up a few things that they didn’t have time to get like anti-freeze, a lighter and some tooth paste for Pablo.

I was told to pack a bag with extra gear. After spending 30 frustrating minutes trying to locate gear at someone else’s house, I remembered that I had the phone number to the Prudhoe station, so I called them. Turns out the missing boxes had arrived and all the boxes would be heading out on the first flight that morning to the ice camp.

Return to Fairbanks to Run Around - 29 March

We came back to Fairbanks, picked up the car that Jen had left in the Airport parking lot only an hour earlier as she had just flown out to head to the camp early as the chief scientist. We spent the morning at ARCUS sorting through the diagnostics of the failed communications during the dry run journal transmissions while in Fort Yukon. After lunch, I spent the rest of the day catching up on communications with Mani and getting back into full logistics mode. The time of camp departure was upon us and there were a few thousand details yet undone.

Fort Yukon - Full Day Visit 28 March

Walking to School
I walked to school on Wednesday. Brenda didn’t have a car as such things are quite expensive (more on that later). It was only a mile and I used to walk that distance every day twice a day back and forth from the University of Delaware. The biggest differences were the temperature (-25F), the road conditions (hard packed with snow spread with small traction stones), the bike paths (replaced by snow mobile trails), and I had 4 layers of clothes on. I had my laptop with my talk in my back pack and my camera in hand. I took pictures of the everyday things I saw on my walk to school; things one would normally see in a small rural village in Vermont: neighbors homes (see photos), the approach to main street (photo left), the post office, the radio station, the church, the state office, the country store (photos here and here), and the school (photo right). They were different in some ways, but in many ways there were so familiar to the things I’d see in my little town of West Hartford, Vermont. The more I walked around and talked with folks, the more I began to see a commonality between life in a rural Vermont town and that in an Alaskan village. Places like this don’t look pretty in the post card sense. The land is hard and structures are built to be practical, not pretty. My village has trailer homes with piles of junk cars in front so I was trying to see past the superficial.

The People
Just like in Vermont, folks are suspicious of outsiders. They have their communities, their traditions, their culture, and they like their privacy. They keep hush-hush on stuff that folks aren’t supposed to talk about. But most importantly, they are some of warmest loving souls you’ll ever meet. If you get to sit down and just talk with them about their lives, you’ll appreciate the emphasis they place on the important things in life. Brenda has spent several years in this village. I saw how the locals interacted with her. I could see that she really had earned a considerable amount of trust because of her open and honest form of communication and her love for the students – her tough love as she calls it. These universal impressions left a very warm feeling in me.

The Talks
As part of our outreach Robert and I each gave a one hour talk. I spoke about the SEDNA project and our efforts to understand the changes going on in the Arctic especially that the sea ice is thinner now and there are issues to consider that never had to be considered before - issues like the fact that less ice means more waves and more damage from storms. I also talked to these high-energy students about the fact that these changes will happen as they become adults and through their life time. I asked them to try to think of ways that they could make a difference and asked them to think of ways of channeling all that energy (and frustration) they have into solving one problem in a way that would make life in their village a better place to be.

Robert gave his talk about life in Vermont. He talked about all the things that were similar (hunting, fishing, snow mobiles, lots of trees, sports) and things that were different (maple sugaring). He tried to give them a flavor of what life is like in Vermont and how in many ways the rural lifestyle has a commonality that can be shared between Vermont and Alaska especially in the more rural locations.

Brenda said we did a good job. We had kept their attention for one hour each and she said that was a good measure of how well the talk was received.

Buying Goods
While Brenda was wrapping up her teaching after our talks, I went to the town store to get some supplies for her as she was limited in mobility with her broken leg. The store looked like a typical country store in Vermont and I had to keep reminding myself that I was not in Vermont. National public radio was on the PA system with highlights of the news. The shelves were stocked with a little bit of everything and they even had the 48” long fluorescent light bulbs that Brenda needed for her living room. It reminded me of the saying at Dan & Whit’s in Norwich, VT: “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it!” They had all the latest in technology including the computer screens and credit/debit card systems. The cost of things was the only thing that let me know this wasn’t Vermont. A bag of Doritos costs close to $7 because everything this time of the year comes in by airplane. Gasoline for snow mobiles and cars costs ~$4 a gallon and heating oil was in the same price range. These prices more than anything revealed the remoteness of the village.


Tribal Meeting Event
See Robert’s entry on the PolarTREC website for this incredible event.

Fort Yukon Visit - 27 March

Fort Yukon: originally a trading fort along the Yukon River (google Fort Yukon). Population is a mix of folks with the dominant population being the indigenous inhabitants of the Gwich’in Athabascan tribe.


The Flight
We went to the airport with bags in hand – half full with gifts for the visit (4 quarts of fresh maple syrup boiled the weekend before we left home by Jackie’s husband who owns a sugar maple farm, bottle of wine, 8 T-shirts with the logo that Brenda had helped design – her painting of SEDNA is in the logo). Jen told us the night before that it would be an interesting flight. Frontier Flying Service takes us up there on a small propeller plane that holds about a dozen passengers with the back third of the plane full of luggage for us and supplies for the village. The flight is only a half hour long but there are no roads to connect the village to anything else so everything has to come in by either aircraft or a couple of barges in the summer. Heading to the aircraft was interesting. Unlike most commercial flights, there was no security check in and in fact we were encouraged to wear any type of survival gear that we might have so I strapped my leatherman kit with flashlight to my belt buckle and put my mini med kit around my neck. Boarding the plane was like getting into a long narrow van. There was one seat on either side of an aisle. The pilot (who was also the steward) gave us our safety instructions by kneeling at the entry door (see photo) and telling us that we should locate the oxygen mask hatch by our elbow and how to use the exit over the wing. Despite many years of flying on commercial aircraft, I made it a particular point to listen very carefully to his instructions.



The Arrival
The flight was pretty uneventful but the arrival met us with that start of yet another adventure. We had received e-mail communication from Brenda (our host teacher) that she had slipped and fallen the week before and broken her leg. She insisted we come to visit anyhow and I thought it would probably be a good idea as we could help her out with basic needs given her state. The initial plan was that she would meet us at the airport with a friend to give us a lift. When we arrived, two groups got off the plane into vehicles standing by right on the runway with engines on keeping folks warm. We got off, they left, and we were standing there. The airport terminal was quite small (a one story shelter about the size of a modest cabin). It was a heated shelter and the temperatures were below zero so we thought that would be a good place to think about what to do next.

For the next 30 minutes we went through several levels of “what do we do next”. The fellow working at the airport said that Brenda had broken her leg and had gone to Fairbanks to get some more x-rays. After Robert and I got over the jaw drop from that information we started to think from first principles. Who are we coming to see?.... Brenda. Why are we visiting? ... For PolarTREC outreach. Where does she work? ..... The school. ... The SCHOOL! I looked around and saw a pay phone (thank goodness they still have such things). Next to it was a small pile of phone books. We located the one that said local directory of Fort Yukon. We found the number to the school and I dialed the pay phone. A funny answering machine came on so I left a message. Then I tried to call Brenda just in case. The same funny answering machine came on. I hadn’t been in touch with Brenda for a couple of days. We asked if we could use the office phone line to make an 800 dial-up computer call to check e-mail for messages. The link was too unstable but the attendant told us to make the phone call on his phone as the pay phone was acting funny lately. – Confusion in my brain -

After a few phone calls we slowly sorted out the reality of the situation. Brenda was actually still in Fort Yukon at the school (not Fairbanks). Through a few message relays she finally reached us (called us on that misbehaving pay phone) and told us the school was about a half mile down the road. A fellow was just coming in to pick up some supplies and offered a ride in his truck to the school. Things slowly returned to normal and we got back on course, shaky as the start had been.

The School
Except for the fact that the school was standing on stilts to keep it above the permafrost, it looked like a school you would see just about anywhere in the rural US. It was small but clean and tidy with a principal’s office and a note for guests to sign in upon arrival. The entry hall had the US and State flags prominently standing in close proximity to the glass case with all the sports trophies. It was a K-12 school with the little grades down one wing, middle school down another, and high school down a third. The principal told us to walk down to Brenda’s class and we headed right into an algebra class in session. After the huge hello and inspection and cast signing of her broken leg she set us to work one-on-one with the kids doing their math exercises. We did that for the remaining 3 classes that day.

School was only half days this week because it was spring carnival with dog races, snow shoe races, and the carnival queen and princess competitions. So after dropping off our gear at Brenda’s house we caught a ride down to the snow shoe and three legged races. There was a fresh shoulder of moose meat on the wood fired grill. Except for the details of the type of meat and the fact that it was way below zero, it felt like your typical small rural village event like the kind we often hold in Vermont in the summer. The people were a very close-knit group and everyone looked out for everyone’s needs. The kids were goofing off and the parents were catching up on the latest events in town. The similarities in behavior and customs to those in rural Vermont were more striking to me than the differences I was seeing.

Brenda’s Cabin
When we returned to Brenda’s very cozy cabin (see photos), we just took it easy. She had a broken leg and a friend had given her a 5-wheel office chair for her to take the weight off her leg. She was getting around great and in good spirits about our visit. The cabin was small but had all the creature comforts including indoor plumbing, an oil and wood furnace in the living room, a shower and toilet, and a nicely laid out kitchen. Robert and I used this time to prepare our talks for the next day and to test journal uplink capabilities. It was quite something to call home from a satellite phone! We hit a number of glitches with the uplink which were frustrating. I told Robert to write down everything that is going wrong and then we’ll chalk this up to a pre-field dry run. In the meantime, we had a great visit with lots of good food (fresh moose stew with rice, smoked salmon with potato and bacon chowder, etc) and wonderful company.

Meeting with the First Elder
When we last communicated with Brenda (Friday 23 March), we asked her about meeting with the village elders. That evening, she invited one of the elders (Nancy) that she knew quite well to her house. We talked for hours about global climate change and what impact it was having in this area. Nancy spoke mostly of the big changes. She spoke of the warm fall, the colder deep winter, and rapid warming spring (just like we had in Vermont this year). She spoke of the change in the taste of the salmon because they are coming up rivers that are changing. The salmon are eating different things now and that changes the way they taste. We talked about our upcoming experiment, where we would be going, what we would be doing, who we would be working with. Since we were visiting Fort Yukon for the sake of education outreach and to help out Brenda with a broken leg, it made the whole situation feel very comfortable. We had no agenda to engage in any type of research in this area, we were there to talk, listen, share, and compare our lives in Vermont with the lives of these folks in rural Alaska. The elders of the village were mostly women. Brenda was born and raised in the pan handle of Florida and I spent my formative high school years in Upstate New York in a rural farm community. We were like a cackling bunch of hens with Robert chiming in talking how things are here and there. We even got into the classic conversation that older folks do about how kids these days ......

The following evening Nancy invited Robert and me to join her for one hour in the home of a second elder (Hannah). Their friend and fellow elder Annie was also there. They shared dried moose meat, smoked salmon, and wonderful stories. It was like the visits I used to make years ago with my family during the holidays when we used to go from one relative’s home to the other. Stopping by for some food and chatting with others to see how their lives were coming along. It was a special event and Robert and I feel honored to have been asked to meet with them.

Way Station - Jen's House 25-27 March

On Sunday at noon (25 March), I left the PolarTREC training early to hook up with Jen so that she and I could synchronize on field camp preparations. She had been running at least as hard as I had to get issues sorted out and organized. We went to get some lunch at a place which had an internet café so she could catch up on vital e-mail communications (dial-up only at home). She had been going full tilt and I could see that my first job as fellow PI was to help her decompress, get something to eat, and work out a plan for dealing with the next couple of days.

One of the more difficult issues was the fact that Mani (UD Ph.D. student - see team list) had a flight delay already in Philadelphia so he was not going to make his connecting flight. As a result we were thinking about how to schedule the day since he would now arrive at 02:00 of the next morning instead of the scheduled 16:30. Basically we knew we were in for a very, very long day. So we start making our lists. One thing I have noticed about the synergy of this team is that all three of the lead ladies of this expedition are fastidious about keeping lists (post-it queens!) and this has been a huge asset. So when Jen and I started to sort out strategy, we also started to make our lists including sorting out housing issues for Mani, finding the polar gear for he and Scott (second UD student), and meeting up with Jen's student Alice (see team list). We ran around tending to several of the one million details that remained incomplete while Robert finished up his communications training. We finally "decompressed" (as Jen likes to call it) by heading to her home and getting ready for an informal dinner party with 4 of her friends. It was the first real dinner Jen had made for herself at home in almost a month so we really needed to take these few hours to just relax, enjoy a meal and talk to some colleagues. It turned out to be quite effective as these people would also be around for the next three weeks while my student Mani was in Fairbanks as our high-speed logistics and relay node so I was able to work with Jen to ensure that he would have enough friendly folks to look after his well-being while I was in the field.

We left after that to get Mani at the airport (yet another flight delay). For Mani, the adventure had been full of flight delays (several hours overdue in each airport). He walked off the plane worn and tired but with this incredible smile on his face because he had never been this far north before. He was amazed at the mountain ranges he had crossed on his flight and since he arrived in the middle of the night he was welcome by the northern lights as we drove to Jen's house at almost 02:00. Mani grew up in western India so for him, this felt like coming to another planet.



Bright and early at 06:00 on Monday 26 March (we were in bed with only three hours of sleep), we had to wake up, get ready and prepare for more training. We picked up Robert from the PolarTREC training and proceeded to Joe Nava's house on NRA Way for an experience called "Bear Training". Roughly nine of us (Jen, myself, Mani, Robert, Alice, Andrew, Bill Simpson, and a couple others fellows - see team list forthcoming) all destined for the ice camp sat through a 4 hour training course on how to deal with bears. This included a video and the use of shot guns including the operation, safety, and firing range practice of 12 gauge shot guns (see photos). It was such an amazing experience that I forgot my backpack at Joe's house and had to spend a good part of the day figuring out how to get back there to retrieve it. The afternoon was spent chasing down yet more of the million details (Robert's glasses had broken and we needed to find an optician that could fix them). So Robert and I dropped off Jen and Mani to work on setting Mani up with his computer at her office while Robert and I spent 3 hours driving from store to store in search of those last minute things that we were still missing. We ended the day by hooking up with one of the PolarTREC administrators (Janet Warburton) for one last dinner as she was a long-time friend of Robert’s. In nearly every event we encountered someone knew someone from long ago. The more the events unfolded, the smaller the world and shorter the time.

Robert's journal entry.

We finally unpacked Robert's gear from the car late that evening and then proceed to load up Mani's gear and get his stuff to the Nordic House which is a visiting faculty house where he would be stationed for most of the expedition. To the delight of both Mani and I, the place turned out to be just super. Mani has been sticking with Chandra and me through some pretty thin funding years and it has finally paid off so I tried to include those little extra specials for him for his years of can-do effort to make sure that his accommodations during this trip would be, as they say in Norway, the Viking way - dry, warm, and comfortable. He and Scott (fellow Ph.D. student and team buddy) would share a cozy upstairs floor with two rooms in a house with shared bathroom and kitchen with other visiting scientists. It was a real treat for Mani and the UD contingent felt very happy about the setup we had managed to coordinate. I got to bed about 02:30 that night with the next adventure just around the corner.

Ice Park 23 March

On Friday evening we took a weekend break. Dinner was covered by PolarTREC at a lovely Italian restaurant in good company. Then we proceeded to the ice park for an evening stroll in the cold weather to test out our clothing layers. It was about -18F (-23C). I had on Under Armor, flannel lined Carhartt pants and a shell on the bottom with a pair of liner socks and hi-tech socks inside very thick high alpine hiking books. On top I had on Under Armor, a thick polypro, a thick Norwegian knit sweater and a shell jacket. On top I had a hat and turtle fur. Since it was below zero I could feel the hairs of my nose freezing as I breathed in but it didn’t feel that cold at first for two very big reasons: 1) absolutely no wind in Fairbanks (typical), 2) extremely dry desert conditions with very little snow (~ 6 inches total on the ground all winter). If you stand there and start chatting you start to get cold because it feels like a 20 below ice box. Without the wind or the humidity it felt only like near zero on a very calm night in Vermont. I think that is why there are so many large towns up here and they can survive in relative comfort. I am sure that if the wind were to blow, it would be extremely difficult to keep houses here warm enough.



As for the ice park, that was very special (see photos). Each year, Fairbanks puts on an international ice carving exhibition with participants coming in from all over the globe including Russia, Japan, and China. They use ice carved from a nearby quarry pond which produces beautiful high clarity ice. Groups of folks with chainsaws and hand saws carve out many blocks of ice and place them at stations around the park. Then the competition begins and each group spent several days carving the ice into sculptures using chain saws and carving tools. Prizes are awarded and the whole scene is just magical with hundreds of sculptures and even a children’s play area built out of sculpted slides and ice block tunnels. The displays were amazing, some as high as 2-3 stories (30 feet/10 meters), some from one block of ice, some from multiple blocks of ice. At night the sculptures were back or front lit with colored lights. Contrast was added by filling hollowed sections with tightly packed snow (e.g. to emphasize some writing). The displays were beautiful but the cold did soon get to us so we only lasted about 2 hours in the cold given the clothing we had on. We all returned to our rendezvous time 11pm and commented about what we learned that day from our survivor teacher Tuck about "circulation and insulation".

Robert's journal entry.

PolarTREC Event 22-25 March

We arrived at Fairbanks pretty much on time. Robert had volunteered to be one of the van drivers for the PolarTREC group so we were able to pick up a rental van to haul all of our gear. It was one of those large 15 person passenger vans with all the seats in it. The van was "plugged in" to keep it warm. It was a bit old with rear wheel drive and slightly bald tires so it was an adventure to drive it especially when it wasn't heavily loaded. We arrived at the Princess Hotel (see photos) which indeed sounds like an odd name being located in Fairbanks. It has that name because of the Princess cruise lines which run around Alaska in the summer including excursions to the interior (Fairbanks). It was rustic with the big beams and hardy frontier look with a big cozy fireplace when you walked inside. The rooms were typical hotel but with local charm like the "hand-carved looking" entertainment center (see photos). There was wireless available near the hotel lobby so we spent many of our off time hours near the lobby trying to catch up on e-mail.




The first thing I did was check in with Hans and that's when he told me that there had been an incident on the Submarine at the camp and that I should read the mail and my blog where he had loaded up some press release links. I read it all very carefully trying to take in all the issues that would now add complications to our field planning. It slowly began to dawn on me that this might be the end of the trip before we ever got started (see press releases). A couple of days of uncertainty followed where all we could do was proceed as if things would continue and then hope in the back of our minds that they would. All the planning in the world could not have prepared us for such a situation. In addition to this press release, Hans relays to me the news that "Anderson is coming back" for a Stargate episode to be filmed on our ice camp during the classified Navy section (see press release). This is the camp period that Jackie, Jen, and I had negotiated with the Navy and NSF for months to try and get some of us onto the camp so we could collect our scientific data and deploy our buoy arrays. There were other teams too who tried to do the same. I can not tell you how bizarre it feels to be bumped from two weeks of scientific data collecting due to such political maneuvering by those with higher powers (i.e., $$$$).

We were absolutely amazed when we found out that the British crew, in the midst of this tragedy, managed to get nearly a full survey done below the ice before the event and so their mission was basically a scientific success. They let our UK science colleagues off at the ice station where they were. Peter was flown home to see his family instead of via submarine. His colleague Nick remained in Fairbanks as he did not have family to see and didn’t see the point of spending 6 days travel home and back just to see his flat. Jen (chief scientist - see team list) helped Peter get a flight home to the UK. She was amazed how calm he was through all of this. Having known Peter for almost 25 years I knew that he was just that sort of private fellow who would use the focus of his work and his family to keep him going in the midst of this tragedy. A couple of days later this incredibly resilient man was contacting her about the next phase of the experiment and confirmed that both he and Nick would be joining us at the ice camp following a few days rest in UK. He asked if Jen could find Nick a place in Fairbanks and she offered her home immediately as she had planned to use her house as a crash pad for anyone coming through on the way to the ice camp. The whole sub incident just set the tone of the whole experiment at a very serious level that gave everyone pause for thought at how seriously we would have to consider safety on this mission.

In the meantime, we had to wake up the next day bright and early to begin our 4-day long PolarTREC training at 08:00 on Thursday 22 March. I was the only research scientist able to make the event. It was intended for the teachers as an orientation, but since it was so close to our field camp departure date, I thought it useful to attend and I was so very glad I did. The ARCUS team (see link as non-profit organization) is incredibly organized with a long track record for organizing and coordinating teacher training and several other coordination efforts. Never before in my career of 20+ years had I been able to get such formal training so I really enjoyed the experience for my own personal development. In addition, the teachers chosen were just absolutely outstanding. There had been 200 applicants and only 15 chosen. They were not only outstanding from an academic standpoint but also in their positive attitudes, outdoor capabilities, and willingness to work very, very hard with a positive attitude. We basically worked in formal lectures from 08:00 to 18:00 every day and then had to spend 2 hours after dinner every night doing our "homework."

Robert's journal entry.

The first day was an overview of PolarTREC, the responsibilities of the teachers, and a conference call with the researchers. The second day was survival training with a "learn to return" fellow named Tuck Brouhard from LTR Training Systems (see photos) who targeted the class toward all the things we were most likely to encounter. He covered basic first aid, how to dress in layers for the cold, how to ensure the integrity of our primary shelter (i.e., ourselves and how we kept our bodies protected with clothing), and how to be careful out there. His presentation on frostbite left clear images in our brains as to why we needed to take care of ourselves especially our feet and hands to prevent them from getting cold. Pictures of frost bite are some of the most horrible things to look at especially when we realize that it is self inflicted because we are caught unprepared. The images of these pictures were clearly burned into our brains as he made it very clear how to follow certain safety rules to avoid having our feet and hands look like the ones shown in those those photos. Shudder, shake, brrrr!!!!

Robert's journal entry.

The last two days were intense training on the use of technology. There were several pieces of hi-tech equipment that each teacher was given and their job was to learn how to operate this equipment to submit daily journals, photographs and podcasts for the PolarTREC website. The teachers each received a laptop computer, an iridium satellite phone, a high end digital camera, a James-Bond-looking mini tape recorder, and a back pack to carry all this stuff in. One of the teachers even learned how to run this stuff from a fold open solar panel system since she would be on the coast of Greenland on the go with no power supply. I was just amazed at how much cool gear and high level training they received in the operations of these very sophisticated systems. There was an enormous amount to learn in those two days. I sat in on those meetings to make sure that Robert has a back up technical person (me) who would also know how it all worked. In an emergency, it was highly likely that the PolarTREC teacher would have far more communications equipment than all of the scientists put together on this camp.

We left the PolarTREC training feeling like we had just had someone open our brain and pour a bottle of knowledge into our head. The meetings were separated by very enjoyable meals and lots of bonding sessions so that the teachers got the chance to really get to know one another. Overall it is an intense enjoyable memory.


Robert's journal entry.

Departure Day Tuesday 20 March 2007

I had packed days before with weeks of post-it notes to remind me of the million details that needed tending to. My family was incredibly patient with me as I went into hyper packing mode with lots of bags of every size and piles of different clothing types. Two of everything was packed (see packing list). I tried to think ahead knowing that on the last day it would hit me that I was leaving my family for nearly a month (March 20 to April 18). I knew I would have to have everything ready the day before I left so that I could spend the afternoon before I left with Katya (my 5 year old daughter) after she came home from school. I still had some things to work on last minute but I wrote them on one of my millions of post-it notes and did them alternately with special projects she and I wanted to share before I left. We wanted to bake cookies (a special time for us). I knew there wouldn't be time to actually bake the cookies but there was that one hour I had set aside to stand with her at the counter and just spend the time slowly mixing up cookie dough one careful cup and spoonful after the other. When it was done, we carefully wrapped it up and put it in the fridge for her and Papa (husband Hans) to finish up as a continued project to transition across the departure day. We had just finished without rushing when Papa came home to take me to the bus station. At that moment, the last few things flared up in my mind and I raced around again (like I always do just before a journey starts). I had to finish up those last few things and check over the lists. Then I walked down the stairs with my backpack, small pack, and pillow case, breathed deeply and started to load up the car. Whatever I had on me was going to have to do for the next month and the packing had to stop.

As is typical, those last minute flurries set us behind a bit in the schedule so we felt rushed getting to the bus stop. Robert Harris, our sponsored high school teacher (see PolarTREC link and team list), was already standing there waiting. His family had already left so that his daughter could make it to basketball practice. We arrived with enough time to get the ticket and calm down. Hans had dropped me off and then he unloaded my gear out of the car while I ran in to get the bus ticket. He moved the car and got Katya out. She had such a full day with me that she had fallen asleep in the car and was now happily curled up in Papa's arms. The bus arrived and the departure felt so surreal. With Katya fast asleep the only thing I could do was give both of them a big group hug and head onto the bus. Robert and I knew that we were leaving very busy lives behind us to do this and that was the most difficult part. The greatest comfort for both of us has been knowing that we are blessed with incredible soul mates that are with us 100% in this journey.

The bus left at 1720 out of Lebanon, NH headed for Boston. We needed to stay overnight in a hotel because the flight left at 0730. We arrived checked in at about 2000 and basically headed right to bed because we knew that we'd be up again at 0400 to get a shower, pack up, catch a shuttle and start the long process of checking in luggage and airport security. While I had shipped ahead some of my larger gear (parka, bunny boots, sleeping bag) Robert had brought everything with him. So he had two big Army duffle bags, a backpack with all the hi-tech equipment that PolarTREC had given him and a Pelican box with an Iridium satellite phone (more on these nifty toys later). Basically he was really weighed down with gear so we had to take it really slow and caravan gear to the airport and through the check in.

The flights were long but relaxing. I ended up sleeping about 2/3 of the way on the flight from Boston to Seattle just because I needed to decompress after all the weeks of preparation and the recent short nights. Our arrival to Seattle airport was very nice because the air was fairly clear with only a few clouds and a pretty good shot of Mount Rainier that I took out the window of the aircraft (see photo). It had been cloudy the whole way across the US so it was amazing to suddenly see good ol’ rainy Seattle under fairly clear skies and great mountain scenery out the aircraft window.

We worked our way from Seattle to Anchorage to Fairbanks (see travel schedule) pretty much on time and mostly in a daze as we slowly began to realize that we were finally headed out after months of preparation for this adventure.

Robert's journal entry.

Packing List
============
Clothing
2 Pair Light, medium, & heavy long johns
2 pair pants (1 flannel-lined Carhartt, 1 Merino Wool Aussie Army pants)
2 thick Norwegian wool sweaters that I made some years ago
2 Vests (one fleece, one goose down)
2 pair super thick Norwegian wool knit socks
1 pair each of bunny boots, La Cross books, heavy hiking boots, sandals
4 pair liner socks
2 pair medium wool socks
3 pair hi-tech socks
3 pair merino wool glove liners and 3 pair poly glove liners
2 pair Norwegian wool knit mittens
3 pair wind shell mittens of different sizes
1 pair heavy gloves
1 pair
1 cap, 1 thin fleece bomber hat, 1 leather hat
2 turtle fur
2 pair goggles
2 balaclava
20 pair undies, 5 bras, laundry bag
1 pair shell pants and shell jacket
1 heavy Eddy Bauer parka and snow pants
1 insulated coverall

Gear
Leatherman, hunting knife, tool box with basic tools and soldering kit
Sleeping Bag, 2 Fleece liners, Therma-rest, Small Travel Pillow
Stainless Steel Thermos, Hot water kettle
1 case of vegetable broth, ginger tea
Toilet Kit, Glasses, Contact Lenses
Small First Aid Kit
Ipod & Bose head set (psychological support)

Treats
Presents for Fort Yukon (T-shirts, 4 quarts maple syrup)
2 dark chocolate orange balls
pack of loose ginger w/ lemon grass tea and tea net

Travel Schedule
===============
3/20 1720 (EDT) Dartmouth Coach (LEB)
2000 Holiday Inn
3/21 0750 Flight 25 Boston, MA on Alaskan Airlines
1200 (PDT) Seattle, Washington
1524 Anchorage, Alasak
1623 Fairbanks, Alaska
3/27 0820 Fairbanks, Alaska on Frontier Flying Service
0855 Fort Yukon, Alaska (no roads between Fairbanks and Fort Yukon)
3/29 0920 Fort Yukon, Alaska
1010 Fairbanks, Alaska
3/31 0906 Fairbanks, Alaska
1115 Barrow, Alaska
1210 Prudhoe Bay, Alaska

On Standby for next available Twin Otter to 74N
Overnight as needed at Logistics tent.
Sleeping bag, parka, fleece pants, and La Cross boots in pickup shipment

4/1 Ice Camp near 74N

4/15 one of the last twin otter flights that day
overnight in Prudhoe Bay tent
4/16 1742 Prudhoe Bay, Alaska on Alaska Airlines
4/17 Human Day in Fairbanks to get a shower
4/18 0125 Fairbanks, Alaska
0845 Seattle, Washington
1710 Boston, MA
1855 Dartmouth Coach
Late PM HOME!!!

Introduction

Cathy is realizing her dream and is in fact on her way to the ice in the Arctic ocean. This is in the framework of a sizeable scientific expedition, the US part being sponsored by the National Science Foundation. It is happening this spring as the initial contribution to the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-08. The three leading investigators are women, hence the nickname "women on ice."

Naval submarine excercises are the origin of the camp on the ice that the researchers will take over next Sunday, April 1, for two weeks.

Cathy is very excited about the expedition!