The next day weather was still marginal everywhere, but from the satellite observations it looked as though there might be a hole over our part of the mountains, so we decided to go have a look. We loaded up and flew the low passes that Dirk had flown hundreds of times, skirting the lower clouds and occasional snow flurries. We flew over Arctic Village where the valleys were clear, but as we approached the mountains the clouds began stacking up. We poked our nose into the upper Hulahula Valley, but the cloud bases were at about 6500' and not quite high enough for us to get into the glacier. Danielle reported that the weather in Coldfoot seemed to be closing in a bit, so we decided to head back, listening to a podcast of Sunday's NPR shows that Dirk had downloaded before heading out.

I guess I took one too many photos of Turner.

Not the greatest weather.

Aufeis.

Back to the land of trees.

Here is where things started to get interesting, as is normal. Dirk had essentially come up to Coldfoot early to support our project, not really being sure if we had funding or not, still had his second Beaver in pieces in Fairbanks, and was itching to get back to finish putting it back together so that he was prepared for the regular season which would be starting up soon. The weather forecast at this point was for continued marginal weather. So Dirk and his family loaded up their truck and headed back to Fairbanks, leaving us to hold down the fort here. The basic idea was that if the weather improved, Dirk would drive back up and we would start our shuttling. The issue here is that any breaks in the weather would have to last at least 7 hours, as he would need that time to drive up, load the plane and fly us out there. So it essentially looks like we're here until we get some great weather. In the meantime, Keith is headed to Alaska today from Kentucky. The plan is for him to find his way to Deadhorse where Bob at 70 North would fly him in from the North to meet us on the glacier. Of course we're not there yet, and neither is Bob, who is planning to fly up today from Anchorage. Given the state of things, it looks like we'll have to put off the lake coring until later in the trip, and depending on how things go it might be that Keith is able to fly in before we do, which both complicates some aspects of safety and planning, but would also give us a local weather observer to facilitate the main gear put it. At this point we still have plenty of time for everything we need to do, but clearly some rearranging of priorities will have to take place.

04 May 11 Coldfoot

The weather never improved yesterday. There was also a chilly wind, so we spent most of the day in the office, watching videos, catching up on other work, etc. After a nice dinner of burritos and lightening our margarita load, we enjoyed some kite flying on the ramp. Turner tried my stunt kite for the first time on his own and did great, probably better than I did when I was learning as an adult. Dirk arrived back from Fairbanks about then and we went to bed looking forward to good weather.

We checked weather about 6AM and found things looking up. Coldfoot was clear and sunny, as was much of the interior. Arctic Village was also looking better than it had been, but there were still clouds visible to the North. In any case, we woke early and began getting packed and ready, so that we would be ready to go in case had an opportunity. So at 8AM, that's where we are now.

Kite flying!

Putting some extra english on it.

06 May 2011 McCall Glacier

It was a rocky start, but we're on a roll now.

The weather that morning showed continued signs of improvement. By 11AM we had word from Kaktovik that they could see the mountains, so we decided to launch. We were able to take a more direct route than the first attempt as it was a bit clearer, but as we approached our site there seemed to be a wall of cloud directly in front of us. We circled around to the north over the Hulahula River, where we passed many valleys filled with cloud and had an overcast above us. Until we were nearly on top of McCall Glacier it was not clear that we were going to make it in. Fortunately the glacier was free of fog and we circled a bit to scope things out. From the air it looked like there were a lot of drifts on the surface, but the light was pretty flat so it was difficult to really tell. We located the air strip and made our decent, but it wasn't until we were about to touch down that it became clear that the drifts were significantly larger than normal. We touched down gently, but as we sank in the soft snow we quickly crashed through and over a drift, bounced, then did the same again, before grinding to a halt, preventing us from making a turn. Though it was a bit bouncy and rough, nothing shook loose on the inside and we got out to start unloading.

As we were tossing out gear, Dirk noticed that the right ski had lost its pressure and the wheel was dragging after the second drift, causing us to slow quickly. Memories of the last time we broke a ski on the glacier quickly had me thinking of the many possible scenarios for what might happen next, but it seemed that everything was still attached firmly so we could attempt to take off. The next step was to turn the plane around, which proved challenging. The extra drag caused by the wheel prevented the plane from taxing to make the turn even with full power taking the tail off the ground. So we hooked a rope through the tie down eyelet of the right wing and pulled while Dirk gave it full power, and this time we were able to swing the plane around. Now the challenge was to pull the rope out from eyelet before he took off and without dragging one us with him. Fortunately this went smoothly, as once he made the turn he kept full power on and headed down glacier busting through drifts, trying to stay in a straight line despite the right tire dragging heavily, something only possible by pilots who are one with their aircraft. But after a few tense seconds (at least for us) he was up in the air and we had arrived.

The weather on the glacier was fine, though a little brisk. I headed over to the snow machine, got it dug out, and it fired up on the first pull. I set a track to camp and headed back to start shuttling loads and people. The drifts were much bigger than normal everywhere. Normally when it is windy here, there's not much falling snow, so there's not much drifting. But clearly a storm had passed through recently that coated the glacier and mountains with a healthy amount of snow. We landed just after 2PM and by about 6PM had the cook tent and a sleeping tent up. I headed back down to the glacier to get the last of the gear and start scoping out a new skiway. The light by then had gotten quite flat and even on the snowmachine I was having trouble seeing the drifts. I scouted about quite a bit but everything in the area was marginal. It was getting late by now so I headed back and we ate a quick dinner before finishing erecting the last of the tents and securing our stuff in case the weather turned for the worse, which it showed signs of. By about 11:30PM we were climbing into our sleeping bags, glad to be out of the chilly air.

The next morning we awoke to clear skies. I called in to Dirk to let him know and find out how his skiis were holding up. Apparently the nitrogen recharge held and he planned to head over in the afternoon. I also called Mike and learned that Bob had made it to Deadhorse in the Helio and Keith had also arrived. So after a little camp setup, I headed back down to the glacier to find a good skiway. Even in the good light it was tough to find something smooth and flat, but a bit up from our normal spot towards the lower cirque I found about 900 feet of reasonably smooth area. The upper section was getting fairly steep, so I was more concerned about them being able to climb that in order to get a good take off run more than the landing itself. Just as I was finishing up by about 3PM, I saw Bob circling and gave him the rundown via the air-to-ground radio. He greased the landing but was unable to taxi in his wheel skis, so we unloaded Keith and his gear about midway on the strip. Turning him around proved a challenge and after several different failed attempts, we eventually used the snowmachine to pull on his tail wheel while he put on full power to get sideways, at which point he was able to power around the rest of the way on his own. Unfortunately the turn wasnt tight enough to keep him on the groomed snow, so he blasted his way through the drifts until he eventually became airborne, again not something that the faint of heart or inexperienced can accomplish.

By this time, Dirk was circling overhead and the lower skiway was in shadow. He also greased the landing but was able to keep his speed up on the snow and taxi to the top of skiway and make a 180. This time he had come prepared with a nitrogen tank to recharge his skis if needed, which fortunately it was not. He was able to bring the rest of gear, so that at this point we were more or less fully functional for the next several weeks. Once unloaded, he was able to continue downhill without assistance and hit Bob tracks and was quickly off the ground, leaving the 5 five of us to begin the science we came here to do.

The Helio on fixed-penetration skis.

Apparently they let anyone on those things.

The Beaver was able to turn without assistance.

And holds a lot more.

Camp was snowy.

And the glacier had more drifts on it than usual.

It was a few hours by the time I shuttled the loads up to camp and buttoned everything up before dinner, but the sunshine and calm air made for a pleasant evening. We enjoyed a nice spaghetti dinner and some wine, and Keith and I had a chance to catch up a bit. Though I had seen him in on his 2008 trip out here, we had only a few hours of overlap then. So we chatted about our shared experiences at JIRP and the whereabouts of mutual friends, before heading off to our tents in the late night sunshine. The Nolans enjoyed another episode of the Clone Wars before drifting off to sleep.

The next morning we awoke to perfect weather again. Everyone was in good spirits and we spent the morning getting camp up to full functionality and shuttling our drilling gear to the upper cirque. The snow was hard and the snowmachine prefers cold weather for power, so by noon we had camp in good shape and were ready for a shake-down of the drilling system.

We began by digging out the freezer I built in 2008 and spreading out all of the gear on a tarp. Keith has a tremendous amount of drilling experience, so it was great to get his assessment of things and let him lead the test coring. We set everything up next to where I had dumped it off the sled and after drilling about 4 meters we had a pretty good sense of everything we had forgotten at camp and were pretty confident that we could begin the next day ready to start acquiring our scientific cores. We quit by about 5PM in the hot afternoon sun, bringing back a few hunks of core for the margaritas that would accompany our Burrito Night. During dinner John downloaded the many gigabytes of video he had shot during the day and I attempted to connect to our weather station telemetry (unsuccessfully), and we topped off the evening with fresh cupcakes, covered in blueberries and whipped cream. Turner was especially happy about the desert, getting most of it on his face to save for later. By 8PM we were well fed and feeling sleepy, and by 9PM in our tent watching another Clone War episode, making for a very civilized work day. Tomorrow we hope for a good day of coring, hopefully drilling at least the first of our 3 holes, if not the second as well.

My weather station in the upper cirque. It's never really worked well. I've replaced nearly everything, but I think I'll just have to start from scratch with all new electronics.

Andy's pollen station, before the upgrade.

12 May 11 McCall Glacier

Ice is nice and good for you.

The next day started early but began late. We spontaneously began breakfast and preparations for drilling and were headed down the hill not long after 9AM. Unfortunately the snow machine was uncooperative. We loaded up the sled with gear to head up the hill to begin our first real day of drilling, but after only a few meters it died. By using the primer, I was able to keep it running, but it would not continue on the fuel pump alone. Fortunately I had a spare fuel pump, so we tore the engine compartment apart to get at it and after copious swearing were able to exchange the pump and put it all back together again. Amazingly the machine was still functional afterwards and actually ran. By the time we got to the upper cirque it was after 1PM, rather than 10AM, but we were still in good spirits having accomplished something. The weather was perfect and we set up on our first location and began drilling without further complications. The drilling itself went smoothly, with Keith doing essentially all of the drilling and me doing the logging and note taking. Keith has tremendous experience with drilling, and even more tremendous strength. We were using a hand auger, which consists of a core barrel with cutting teeth attached to a T-handle which one twists to dig deeper into the ice. We extracted about 50 cm at a time, continuing down to about 5 meters. John filmed while we worked. Compared to the day before, we were mostly silent, focusing on the work. But before long we had achieved our goal, relocated the equipment at our next site, and were back at camp at a very civilized 6PM, enjoying a nice dinner before heading to bed around 9PM.

The next morning started largely like the first. We got a reasonably early start down the hill, but the snow machine was again uncooperative. At this point we determined that all of the work 'fixing' it yesterday was probably unnecessary, as it seemed clear at this point that the issue was ice in the fuel lines. After getting it functional the day before, it worked perfectly without issue. But by then it was warm and sunny and likely all we had done was knock the ice loose and get it past the carburetor. This time we couldnt even get the primer to work, and after dissassembling it and barely reassemblying it, we decide rather than mess with it further, we would just walk up the hill, which was easy now since all of the equipment, batteries, etc were already in place at the drilling site. It had been a few years since I walked up there, and I felt refreshed having done it. For the 5 years before we had the snow machine, our only option was walking or skiing, including when we needed to haul heavy loads up there. It only took half an hour, and by 11AM we were drilling again at our next location. This time we drilled to 8 meters, again Keith doing the lions share of the manual labor, apparently without breaking a sweat. Before starting, I called Mike in Deadhorse. They were planning to go scope out some lake drilling sites, so that by the time Andy and Mike arrived, they would have sorted out the best locations for landing. Since those lakes were close by, I asked if they could air drop us some Heat, basically alcohol that binds with water in a fuel tank so that it will pass more easily through the system without freezing. Shortly after Kristin and Turner had walked up, we saw them flying over. Unfortunately they did not see us, and I had forgotten to bring the air-to-ground radio, so I pulled out my signal mirror. I have carried this mirror for 20 years, but until now had never used it to actually signal an airplane. Eventually they saw the flash of light and headed our way, and once over our location dropped our care package in the snow just down from us. The liquid survived the drop, and we looked forward to testing it out. Without a functional snow machine, transporting the ice cores to the air strip would be an interesting chore. Given how dependent our work has become on using the snow machine, I had planned to bring in a second one this season, but due to our delays in the put-in we decided not to fly it in until the ice cores would be flown out. In any case, the drilling went well again and once we reached our goal we moved to our final site, which was fortunately down hill of the current one. Here we drilled another 7 meters, which again went smoothly and we were packed and headed down hill by 5PM. We all walked to the crest of the hill above camp, where John headed down first so he could film Turner and I sledding. It was a pretty wild ride, as it was a small sled and my feet hung over, kicking snow in our faces so that we were pretty much blind. It had been perfect weather again, and the coating of snow we ended up with quickly melted off and we once again enjoyed eating dinner at a civilized hour and enjoying each others' company without being totally exhausted.

Sword fights always end in hugs.

Or Nintendo.

The playpen has turned out to be one of the most useful pieces of gear on the glacier.

Sledding to the store.

Mountain needs something to do anyway.

Pulling up the core barrel.

This is only about halfway down. Only Keith can lift something this heavy.

I'm ready for the ice.

Here it comes.

My makeshift processing table.

That's what we came here for.

If the core comes out in pieces, we have to make sure they fit back together or note any loss.

It's really important to keep good notes on which piece of core came from what depth.

Getting the bag ready. We use ones that come on rolls for vacuum sealing food.

The most important thing when labelling cores is to make sure you remember which way is up.

Our cores are mixtures of firn and ice, and the upper few meters usually comes out in pieces. It's important to get the pieces in the bag in the right order and orientation.

Once in the bag, we vaccuum seal them to keep the cores from moving. The sealer is powered from a battery, which we keep charged with a solar panel. Works pretty well.

A temporary pit to keep extracted cores cold while drilling.

When we're done for the day, we load them on a sled and bring them to the freezer.

The freezer no longer has any compressors attached to it. The cold snow surrounding it is enough to keep them frozen, at least for another few weeks.

The next morning I woke early and went down to the snow machine first thing to see if it was functional. I was prepared with a small stove to heat the engine if necessary, but apparently the Heat we put into the tank the night before did it's job and the machine fired right up, so I came back up for some breakfast. Somewhere along the way I tweaked my back to point where I could barely bend over. Fortunately copious amounts of ibuprofen and midol had me doing the limbo again by the time we setup to continue drilling. On this final hole, we planned to drill to 20 meters. Here we want to acquire ice to compare to our 2008 deep drilling, as the most recent 40 years of record showed some pretty interesting atmospheric pollution signals from Asia that we wanted to confirm was accurate. The drilling went well, but we were having trouble pulling up the core, at times having to re-lower the entire drill string several times to recover the piece we had cored. This was exhausting and demoralizing work, considering how heavy the drill was becoming with 10-12 meters of extension rod. We tried installing core dogs which help to prevent the core from slipping out the end as we pulled it up, but this didnt seem to work so we took them off. But then we still had the same problems, so we decided to put them back on again. At this point I realized I had previously pulled out dogs from our backup drill, which is a different design. So after putting the correct ones on, and installing them correctly, we had great recovery on our last few runs. We decided to call it quits for the day on our 24th run, which got us to nearly 14 meters, and we all felt pretty good about the accomplishments. Once again we finished at a civilized time without breaking our backs or overworking our bodies. Pulling up the drill string at this point takes at least two people, but a third helps in securing it as we pull extensions off the top during extraction. Once again I was amazed at Keith's strength, and enormously positive attitude. A small army of guys like him could accomplish anything. Kristin and Turner spent the afternoon assembling and labeling core boxes, in between skiing, sledding, and playing badminton. They skied back to camp, with us in front in the snow machine, letting John film them. Turner has become a great skier, and even though roped to Kristin, the line was always slack and his face always had a smile on it.

Improving the drill.

... then again I guess he's used to handling such small shafts...

The day was pretty much like the past few. We had been pretty single minded so far on the trip, focusing only on the drilling. Our goal with John had been to make a small film on our drilling efforts, with him flying out with the cores so that he could film them in final transport to the freezer in Fairbanks. And given how perfect the weather had been, clear and cool, it just made sense to knock it all out first thing. The weather this morning had deteriorated, with low clouds and occasional snow flurries. We got an early start again, and by this time John had become a full time driller, setting up the camera in time lapse mode as we descended down towards to 20m. The three of us a made a good team, having fallen into a pattern of roles that led to great efficiency. By about 2PM, we reached 20 meters and were glad of it. We spent the next three hours packaging the cores into the core tubes and putting them to bed in the freezer. It always surprises me how long that process takes, but it was a fun effort with everyone chipping in for various assembly lines. Turner was especially keen to help, which was especially comforting to me. He really has a great attitude about it all, and though at times he prefers to do different things than us, in general he seems quite content to hang out with us and chip in, even though he has little understanding of why we are doing the things we do. The weather remained marginal throughout the day, with snow flurries fairly continual. But it was not uncomfortable and again by about 5PM we had everything packaged up and we heading down the hill for another civilized evening, feeling somewhat proud not only that we had finished all of the drilling without getting the drill stuck but had done it all with using a generator, trying our best to remain consistent with the values of this wilderness area.

That night I talked with Dirk and we made a plan that he would come in the day after tomorrow to bring the remainder of our gear and pull out the ice cores and John. So far it had been a very pleasant and productive trip. Keith not only was a pleasure to work with (since he did most of the work) but also a pleasure to trade insults with. In the real world, most people overhearing our conversations would probably assume that we were about to pull out guns and start shooting, but as it was with my friends from college, insults were really used in the opposite way, signifying a higher form of mutual respect than politely saying please and thank you all the time. I think in a way too it lowers the bar for taking offense, so when you correct someone or suggest doing it a different way it's actually a step up from normal conversation. I had forgotten how much I missed that. Similarly John fit right in with the group, and though he often was hidden behind a camera, he was always ready to quip back or lend a hand in whatever was happening. Turner seemed to take it all in stride and though he politely corrected my use of four letter words a few times, he understood it was only joking. And he has been great at getting involved, as well as keeping himself occupied, though always eager to share what he's accomplished.

I doubt anyone will make a postage stamp for us, but that's ok.

Snack break.

Labelling boxes.

No more extension tubes left, I guess we're nearly done!

Now all that's left is pulling the damn thing out.

Whew!

A nice place to visit, but we forgot our sleeping bags.

We all slept in a bit the next morning, having worked very steadily the past week on the coring. I think I've gotten more consistent full night sleeps here than I have for months at home, and I think the others feel similarly. It still never feels like enough, but it is refreshing nonetheless. The weather was once again perfect, and we made a plan to move the ice cores down to the skiway, so that if Dirk came in early the next morning we would be ready for him without too much scrambling. So I dropped off Keith at the head of the runway where he began digging a pit to put the cores into. The snow here was about a meter deep, and the top of the ice about -10C, so it was plenty cold to keep them frozen for a few days if needed. Then I grabbed John and we headed up to the freezer to begin loading cores onto the sled. We had 41 core boxes in total, largely thanks to Kristin's efficient combining of small and large pieces to leave little open space in the boxes. We loaded 20 cores in the sled, threw the brake rope under it, and I headed downhill to bring them to Keith. Along the way I picked up the scale at our cache on the ice below camp so that we could get a total weight. On the way down, Kristin radio'd me to say that Bob was flying overhead. By the time I got to the skiway he had landed and Andy and Mike were walking around, probably thinking they were a long way from Mississippi. They had landed in Deadhorse the morning before and tried to go out to sample lake sediments for pollen samples, but had to turn around because of too many polar bears. This morning the weather on the coastal plain was not great, with low ceilings and flat light, so they only got to one lake before deciding the weather was too sketchy and decided to come to the glacier. So after turning Bob around and sending him off for another load, I left these three behind to weigh and cache the cores while I went for another load. In the meantime, John had walked down and was filming some of the action.

Kristin and Turner had spent this time organizing and sorting food and gear at our cache below camp, and Turner was now very excited that Andy was on the glacier. He was hiding behind his favorite rock to surprise him, but I explained that it might be a few hours before he was back at camp. So on my way down with the next load of cores, I put him in the back seat to hold on to the 41st core which didnt fit well in the sled. The crew on the skiway was making great progress, so I left Turner with them while I got one last load of drilling gear that we no longer needed to send out with Bob. By the time I returned 30 minutes later, Turner had made a new best friend in Mike, after he learned that Mike had played Mario Brothers as a kid. Not too much later, Bob returned in the Helio with the remaining gear, and after turning him around manually again, we headed back up the hill to reconsolidate. By the time we were back in camp it was after 5PM, so it wasnt the most productive day in terms of science, but still a lot was accomplished. For me, it felt like the first day of the trip, since I had barely unpacked or even thought about my other science goals for the trip. In any case, that night we toasted our success in getting everyone to the glacier, and if things went as planned this would be the only night with seven of us in camp as John was due to leave in the morning.

Throughout the trip, John and I had a number of conversations about film making and art and photography, as well as possibilities for films here and elsewhere in the Arctic. John had spent a few years in Alaska when younger and been back and forth a number of times, and has a lot of experience mountaineering and backpacking. I had the impression that though he enjoys the film making work he is doing now, working in remote areas like ours was a refreshing change. It remains to be seen what might happen with what he's shot here, but it seems like there this might be a useful way to reach a broader audience about the work we do here and how it might relate to them.

The next morning we woke up to perfect weather once again, and having talked to Dirk learned that it was also great in Coldfoot, so we planned to see him about 10:30. John was awake early, needing to pack and consolidate his gear. Mike was also up early, tending the stove and melting snow. The other drifted in and by about 9 AM we were were shuttling loads down to the bottom of the hill and by about 10:45 the entire group was assembled at the skiway awaiting Dirk's arrival. Before long he crossed the ridge into our valley and came in to land at our bumpy strip. The Beaver was stuffed with miscellaneous gear, including a backup snow machine I had bought earlier in the winter. Once offloaded, he tried to reposition himself at the top of the runway before we reloaded, but in the end took off and landed again, getting a little assistance to in the end from Keith and I to get him aligned. Then we began the now annual assembly line to load him up with ice cores. Next came John's gear and John himself, and soon it was just the six of us, ready to start the next phase of the trip.

"We're not in Kansas any more"

One of our steam drills.

The backup snowmachine came in handy later in the trip.

One last Nolan family shot for John.

And then there were six of us.

See a view clips of the video John shot, arranged by Tom Veltre. This is not a finished or polished piece, just gives a flavor of things to come.

By now it was lunch time, so we got some food and made a plan for the rest of the day. Keith wanted to hike up to Ahab to get the view, considering there was a not a cloud in the sky. Kristin and Turner stayed in camp to rearrange the cook tent and sort some gear. Andy, Mike and I headed up to the upper cirque to work on dataloggers. Andy has plans to revamp his pollen station, adding several more traps and raise it up above the accumulating snow. I was eager to see how my 8 various dataloggers in the upper cirque had fared over the winter. Most seemed to survive OK, but there were a few sensor failures and one of the dataloggers seems to have gotten fried, but all about par for the course. Andy and Mike dug out their station and found the datalogger and sensors functional, and the traps filled with pollen. We spoke with Keith over the walkie-talkies, and he was enjoying the view, being able to see all the way to the Arctic Ocean. He also confirmed that the reason why this station was no longer reporting via telemetry was that the battery was dead and split open. Fortunately I had brought in new batteries for all of the stations this year, though unfortunately someone is going to have to lug one up the hill. In any case, by about 6:30PM we were all back at camp and ready to start dinner. Turner decided tonight was spaghetti and meatball night, followed by brownies for desert. I called it an early evening so I could catch up on these notes, and the Nolans ended the evening with the next chapter in Turner's dinosaur DVD, this time about dinosaurs in North America.

14 May 11 McCall Glacier

The weather changed the next day. The wind picked up substantially over night, and it seemed like we would get some storms. The sky remained clear though, and the temperature rose. It was a sluggish morning, but we were out on the glacier by about 10:30PM. I headed down glacier to download dataloggers and check the state of things. There was almost no wind there, but clouds began appearing and it was clear that they were moving fast. Kristin and Turner remained at camp, and reported that it was consistently windy there. The others went to the upper cirque to revamp Andy's pollen trap station. Here he wanted to install several additional traps to compare designs, as well as raise up the instruments so they would not get buried next winter.

The downloading went well. It was nice to get out on my own, the first time on this trip. Most of the dataloggers were functional and by early afternoon I had them all downloaded and working with fresh batteries. The snow was noticeably getting softer through the day. As is usual, the lower glacier had a lot of bare ice exposed, making snow machining a challenge, though I worried a bit that a few days of melt would increase this challenge significantly. The noise of rockfall was continual, and occasionally I would catch sight of one. It was nice working independently. With the second snowmachine, I was relieved of being group chauffeur, which increased overall productivity substantially. I heard on the radio Keith heading back to camp for supplies, something that would take several hours on foot but only several minutes by machine. Once finished with the downloading, I installed an anemometer and a combined air temperature and relative humidity sensor on our camera station at the skiway, so that in the future if this is the only station functional then we would still be able to get the most important information necessary for landing logistics. I also installed a new battery, a better one that last year, so hopefully the station will survive longer this time. It's not clear to me why the battery failed over the winter, but I suspect there is a hidden load on the camera. In any case, I left the station up and running, confirming that it was acquiring data and transmitting to Kaktovik via a portable radio unit.

Once finished with all this, I headed up to the upper cirque to check on pollen station progress. A lot of work had been completed, with several new traps installed and much of the station raised. Andy was waiting on final modifications until May 15, when the automated system was due to open the trap remaining from the original configuration. He had a lot of bad luck with the automation the past few years, but it seems now the bugs are worked out as over the past year they have been responding correctly. He now has at least a year of airborne pollen collection, divided into winter and summer traps. The general idea is to assess the types and amount of seasonal airborne pollen, and then compare this with what gets trapped in the snow, such that ultimately we can figure out whether or how much pollen is transported along with surface meltwater into the subsurface. This information will give us a better idea of how the ice core may have been affected by similar processes in the past. By the time I got there, they were nearly finished for the day and we all headed back to camp by about 5PM.

Once back at camp, it was clear that the windiest weather had eased up a bit, so Mike decided to have a quick run up to our Ahab weather station on the ridge behind camp. However, I loaded him down with a 70 pound battery to replace the failed one in the station. This slowed him down considerably. After an hour or more of slogging it up the hill, he ditched it and headed back, fortunately getting it nearly 3/4s of the way up. The weather at camp remained nice, and significantly warmer than we had previously experienced in the trip. While waiting for Mike to return, we had broken into the booze and several tins of canned fish for hors d'oevres. Once back, we had a nice dinner of Thai peanut chicken along with a movie. For desert, it was hot chocolate and brownies. By the time the movie was over, I was headed out the door to relieve my stomach of its highly-mixed contents, some of which exited through my nose. So it was an early night after that for me.

One of our shallow thermistor strings on the lower glacier.

This site has been the most problematic, I think because the highest winds on the glacier occur right here.

This is the most treacherous part of the glacier to snow machine on, because the ice under the thin snow is super slick.

The camera station, now with anemometer.

Digging out the pollen station.

Adding new traps.

Wasting my tape ;)...

Would you buy a used weather station from these guys?

If so, better not miss a payment fuckhead...

The winds had picked up again overnight, but by morning it was another calm, clear beautiful day, this time much warmer. Keith and I decided to head up to Ahab, picking up the battery on the way and hopefully reviving the station. We split the job of carrying the battery up to the station, with my contribution being the last few feet from his pack to the logger box. I asked him about halfway up whether he wanted to switch carrying the battery up, after watching him fall with a mouthful of curses several times, and he responded by saying something to effect of "Ah, no, a fat old fuckin' white guy like me can use the exercise. Though if fuck-knuckle hadnt have carried it up so far yesterday, it might be dinner time before I got it up here." He's 15 years older than me, but I would feel lucky if I had half his strength in the 15 years. For that matter I would be happy to have half his strength now...

In any case, the station sprang to life immediately once the new battery was installed, with all the sensors functional. Fortunately I had installed a small backup logger last August, and this remained functional throughout the winter. Some minor differences are likely between the two types of sensors, but there is enough overlap between the records that we will be able to assess this and I think we can claim that we still have a continuous air temperature record here. We chatted a bit about life and science on the way downhill, and then split up as I wanted to take some panoramas. I hung out on a large rock in the warm sunshine for a while as I ate my lunch and smoked my pipe, and soon enough the complete cloud layer that had rolled in an hour before was gone and I set up on the outcrop I had eyeballed earlier. From here I could see the stations in the upper cirque and the lower cirque, as well as a bit downglacier. The weather held for the next hour or so while I acquired about 400 photos that I will stitch together into a single mosaic back in Fairbanks. Hopefully it all worked out, but it's tough to tell until I actually try it. It was about 4PM by the time I got back to camp. Kristin and Turner had gone down to the cache on the glacier to sort some gear and bring back some new food, alternating with various games. It was a treat to watch them play, and a pleasure to see Turner enjoying himself so much. About this time Andy and Mike returned from a day of setting up new pollen traps in the lower cirque and near JJMC. By 5PM or so we were all back in camp. This time fuck-knuckle was determined to see the view from the top, but no amount of cajoling would convince him to take the frame pack up so that he could take the old battery down. We still have a week to work on him though...

We laid off the canned fish waiting for him to return, but it was only an hour or so before he returned, at which point we enjoyed a nice dinner of mashed potatos and bratwurst, followed by cupcakes covered with semi-frozen blueberries. Dinner conversations often have a thread of how people can claim climate change is not real and what can be done to educate people. Often the conclusion is that people cant be educated if they dont want to be, but today we discussed what goes through the brains of the leaders of these movements. Keith wanted to put them to work in field camps to see how long it would take them to permanently succumb, or at least challenge them to make their own field measurements that would counter nearly all of the scientific evidence being gathered by the scientific community, rather than sitting in their air conditioned offices making up bullshit. I thought that would make a great documentary, comparing where and how these guys worked compared to where and how we work, and let the public decide who really has the motivation to make stuff up.

Me, installing the battery.

As far as I know, this is the highest weather station in Alaska, and certainly the Arctic, and even if it isn't, I'm sure it's longest continuously-operated weather station at this elevation. Not that I'm bragging...

Keith's always looking for ways to save on toilet paper...

Full Moon over McCall Glacier. Keith is a man of few words but clear in his meanings.

16 May 2011 McCall

The next day we decided to head down to the terminus, something I later regretted. The weather was fine, though occasionally foggy and breezy, and after some scrambling to get gear ready we headed downglacier. I was the tour leader, stopping along the way to point out things that might be of interest to glaciologists. It was after 1PM by the time we got off the snow machines to walk down the steeper part of the ice. Kristin and Turner were planning to ski down, with the idea that I would pick them up on the way back. I kept them updated to not leave too early, but was hearing the clock tick in my head too, as I had wanted to do the mass balance survey today and had hoped to be starting that by now. So I was getting increasingly stressed, and realizing that I had forgotten some gear and was not really ready to do what I needed here didnt help. We descended to the valley floor through the fog, me first in a hurry. Andy and Mike hauled a sled full of their pollen trap station, while Keith ambled between us.

I had two weather stations here to download, install a pressure transducer in the stream, and set up a time-lapse camera. The downloading was really frustrating, as it kept cutting off after only a few percent of the total transferred. Then it took 30 seconds to reconnect, then try again. It was a process that should have taken 5 minutes that took over an hour. The other datalogger was equally ornery, but only took 15 minutes instead of 2. In the meantime, Keith was helping install the pressure transducer in the stream. Unfortunately the stream was choked with 1.5 meters of snow, unlike last year when it only had 20 cm of ice. I had brought a shovel with us, but left it with the snow machine, so Keith was resorting to hacking a hole with a ice axe and a piece of conduit. I had planned to raid a mounting structure for the time-lapse camera from an upper site, and even though we stopped there and I fiddled with it, I got distracted and forgot to bring it along, so had to rig something hokey. So after an hour or more of such screwups, I was pretty frustrated. Added to this, Andy decided to install his trap not where all of my equipment was located, but somewhere closer to the terminus which I still couldnt see due to the fog, and I was cursing myself for not sticking with my plan of knocking out the mass balance this day and leaving this lower priority stuff until later, and further cursing myself for getting frustrated in the first place. We all finished up about the same time, and Kristin radio'd about that time something incomprehensible due to the distance, so I just packed up and hiked as fast as I could back to the machine to figure out what their situation was and hoping to head back and have a few stiff drinks. It was almost 4PM by the time I got there. I hadn't looked back on the way up, and it didnt matter much anyway since it was so foggy, but by the time I was ready to go the others had caught up so we headed back together. It was the first day of the trip where I had let myself get thoroughly grumpy, but I guess on the bright side this was day fifteen of the trip rather than day one as in many other trips. But Keith was always good for a laugh, whether intended or not. As we about to get started, Mike asked whether he should put on the brake for the sled, and I hesitantly said 'well, we probably dont need it going uphill', to which Keith translated 'fuckhead!', and I added that 'you could if you wanted', to which Keith added 'yeah, why dont you just wrap the fucking thing around your neck and we'll drag you!'. Such was the normal state of conversation.

I headed up to camp when we returned to get the GPS ready so that the next day I could do both the mass balance and GPS together, while Andy and Mike headed to the upper cirque to continue working on their main pollen station. I plugged everything in, made some test measurements, and everything seemed to work well, so I was encouraged by that. About the time I had finished with that, it began to snow, and not long after that it began to get windy. It seems that east winds are the main ones that bring both wind and snow, and within a few hours there was significant accumulation and drifting. We enjoyed a nice tuna steak dinner during the storm, and talked a bit again about science, politics, and public insistence on believing in stupidity rather than reason. Mike was particularly interested in figuring out how he could best help society. Nobody seemed to buy into my suggestion that the best thing he could do for society was to kill himself, else he would per force be part of the problem. Reiterating that occasionally through the remainder of the conversation didnt seem to sway any opinions.

Off to storm the castle...

Ditching the snow machine to head to the terminus.

It's tough siting in a time-lapse camera when you cant see the target.

Finally a little GPS action.

The storm raged through the night, rattling the tents, and making drifts through camp, but by morning had largely subsided. We all slept in a bit, but by 10AM I was itching to get going on the baseline measurements. It was still windy, but the sky was largely clear. By the time I actually started, fog and snow had rolled in, and by the time I got to the second set of poles just down from camp, visibility was zero and the old snow machine tracks were completely obscured. Heading to the terminus in such conditions is a recipe for disaster, as the substantial bare ice there is hidden by this dusting of snow and flat light, such that the snow machine tends to spin in circles unexpectedly, and getting off to walk has similar frictionless results. So I headed back to camp, resuming my frustrations from yesterday and wishing I had already finished all this rather than have gone to the terminus. Part of it is probably an ingrained need to be frustrated occasionally, but part is also being so close to the end of the trip. Usually I only get an afternoon to myself to take some photos or hang out, and it seemed this trip would be no different despite it being over 3 weeks long; plus I had already had my afternoon on the way down from Ahab and so had nothing further to look forward to. So here it was Monday, knowing that by Friday we would be packing up, and still having all of the mass balance and surveying to do and not yet having even opened up the ice radar. In any case, I headed up the hill to find Turner and Kristin about to start watching a movie in our tent as part of some compromise deal they had worked out, so I joined them rather than sit in the fog and be grumpy. By the time the movie was over, the skies had cleared so I headed back to the glacier. By the time I reached it though, we were once again in fog, so I headed back to camp, where I tried downloading the weather stations outside our tents only to find them fried. But after a while dealing with this, another break in the weather opened up, so I headed back down.

I went straight for the terminus first before the fog returned, not wanting to get stuck on the slippery surface with no visibility. My old tracks were gone, and on the last and trickiest hill I had some interesting mobility issues, again wishing I had finished this the day before rather than getting trapped under a snow machine on my own, but in any case made it down without incident. As I was standing on the handle bars of the machine to get the GPS antenna on the lowermost pole, I noticed the fog quickly coming up the valley, and did my best to get moving upglacier as I didnt not want to try to drive up the trail I just came down but rather pick a better route. Unfortunately the fog won, so I was committed to following my track back up with predictable results. The ice beneath the thin snow was incredibly slick, and once sliding backwards on it there is little to do beside try to keep the machine upright and hope to find a thicker snow patch that the track will catch on. But eventually I did crest the hill onto firm snow and was able to survey all of the poles on the glacier below camp. The entire process took less than 3 hours and I was back in camp by about 7PM. The others had already been back a while from their work finishing up in the upper cirque, so just before dinner I downloaded all of the GPS data I had just collected to ensure that everything worked out. Predictably it didnt, and I got caught by the bug that shuts off the GPS base station at midnight UTC time, which is 4PM our time, which is 10 minutes before I left for the survey. So all of the GPS data I had collected this evening is essentially useless. It didnt really phase me much though, as I felt it was just rewards for not keeping my sense of humor in tact. We still have plenty of time to do everything I had intended too, provided I stop acting like a fuck-knuckle and do what I do best. Whatever that is.

Storm days are a good time for gear repairs.

It's hard to stay grumpy around this family.

19 May 2011 McCall Glacier

The next day I was able to complete the mass balance and velocity survey. I woke up about 6AM, got my gear organized, and was walking down the hill just after 7, my earliest start yet. I figured it would take less than 2 hours to repeat the GPS survey, so I would be back by the time the others were waking up and having breakfast. Unfortunately the snow machine was nearly out of gas, so I headed up to the upper cirque to fill up. We still had no pump with a filter, so I pumped into a 5 gallon can, then added Heat to it as I filled up. By the time I got to the bottom of the hill it was clear that something was wrong, likely some ice in the lines. I had planned to go to the terminus first, but figured that I should work more locally until the fuel issue had sorted itself out, as the last thing I needed was to not have power trying to climb the last slippery hill that had given me problems the day before. I cruised through the lower cirque and confluence, but I could never get the engine to really open up. I decided therefore to switch machines, which meant setting up the GPS on the back of it and moving gear over. In any case, these delays in total cost me an hour, but I was back at camp at about 10AM to confirm that I could successfully process the data, which indeed I could.

The next step for me was the upper cirque. There are nearly as many poles here as on the rest of the glacier, plus more snow pits to dig. The rest of the crew came up as well, as Andy and Mike wanted to fiddle with their station a bit and Keith wanted to dig out the freezer and get it up onto the surface. By the time I had finished all of the pole measurements, they had given up on the freezer, which seemed to be securely stuck into an ice layer at the bottom. Andy and Mike decided to climb to the col to see the view of Hubley. By now clouds had moved in and were moving quite fast just above us. I dug snow pits at our drilling sites, while Keith sorted the drilling gear for storage. By the time we were all done, Andy and Mike had tried unsuccessfully to sled down the hill, and we ended up back at camp around 5PM to enjoy a mexican night with margeritas, as this was to be Andy and Mike's last day in camp. The plan was for them to head out in the morning to do some lake coring and base out of Deadhorse until they were finished. So in all it was a productive day, and all that remains for me is some cleanup work and the ice radar project.

The next morning I woke up early to check weather and hopefully finish up some of the clean up items. A light wind had developed, which at first I thought was just a local reorganization, but seemed to be getting stronger. I called Mike at 70N about 8AM and told him I would call him from the skiway in an hour to see how conditions there were. Unfortunately the winds continued to strengthen, blowing about 10mph at an angle down the runway, so we decided to hold off flying for a few hours to see what the weather would do. I headed up to the upper cirque to see if I could fix my main station there, which had been giving me fits for years and was now completely dead. This time it was the battery, as even after jumpering in a new one I could not communicate with the logger. The wind was blowing snow here, changing to nearly every direction, so first I had to rig up a tent around the logger box which I could crawl into and work on the electronics without it getting covered in snow. I pulled out the old logger and installed a new wiring, rewiring all of the sensors. In all of the years I've run weather stations, this is the first time a CR10X has failed on me. In any case, it seemed as though everything was functional now, so I headed back to camp, where the others had begun schlepping gear up and down the hill as needed, something that would save Keith, Kristin and I a lot of time and stress at the end of the trip, and keep me focussed on science. The winds were still strong, and seemed to be getting stronger. Fortunately they were from the south and quite warm, so it wasnt unpleasant to be in them particularly. We enjoyed a nice lunch of quesadillas, after I called Mike to tell him that the winds here were still too strong for flying. Afterwards I went down the hill to bring my ice radar up from the cache to start prepping it, and when I returned everyone had gone to their tents to nap or read.

I worked outside, using a pile of boxes as a bit of a shield against the wind. As I was sorting through the gear and trying to remember how it worked, I heard the familiar sound of an outhouse tent soaring over my head. I dont think it even touched the ground as it went zinging over the GPS and out of sight down the steep hill to the glacier. Kristin and I peered over the edge but couldnt see any sight of it. A similar thing happened to me in a storm in 2008. After finishing up a bit more preparations, I headed down the hill with the radar to give it a shakedown and search for the tent. I dropped off the gear and headed around the corner downglacier to look for it, and found it at the base of the hill, in what would be a small river in summer at the connection between the glacier and mountain. I drove as close as I dared, knowing there were small crevasses along the glacier margin here, and predictably stepped from the snow machine directly into one, but fortunately it was not much wider than my foot. I probed my way over the tent, managed to fold it up in the wind, and got it back to the base of the hill below camp, where I then started in with the ice radar. I got some of the physical rigging sorted out, but when I went to try to use it I discovered the small laptop I had planned to use with it was out of battery, so I head to head up the hill to find a spare, then back down to try to use it. Mike was helping out by this time, and we made some tests first dragging it by hand, and then by snow machine. Given the somehow hokey setup and lines, it wasnt exactly clear whether I was seeing the bottom or not, but at least everything was more or less functional, and this was about as far as I had hoped to get today. By now it was after 6PM, and the winds showed no clear signs of letting up, so we decided to bag any flights for the day. It was getting downright hot, and the snow was the mushiest we had seen it yet, with tons of loss from the rocks and lots of ice exposed in the steeper areas. This wasnt so much by melt, as there was little meltwater, but rather by sublimation, as the warm air simply carries away the surface moistures. That night we enjoyed spaghetti and meatballs with a movie, as the tents shook around us, hoping for better weather in the morning.

Movie night -- Transformers 2

21 May 2011 McCall Glacier

The next morning the weather was better, though warm and a bit windy. The winds were coming from the south, bringing the warm air to us. I worked on the radar down by the skiway, both because it is was a nice long flat area and also so that I could keep an eye on the winds. The radar was problematic. I couldnt get it to trigger properly, and it seemed to me that there might be multiple problems. Having no direct experience with radar, it was difficult to troubleshoot and it occurred to me that some of the components may not even be functional, since they were brand new and never tested. About noon I gave Mike a call to let him know that conditions were the best we'd seen -- no down glacier wind and good visibility, so we decided to check back in an hour to make sure the trend was staying that way. I headed back up to camp to have some lunch and make sure the travellers were ready, then head back down to groom the runway a bit and fool with the radar. About 3PM I brought everyone down to the runway and we waited for a while until we heard Bob flying overhead about 3:30PM. He tried landing long on the skiway so that he would get maximum takeoff run and then tried taxi'ing further but only got a few feet. His skiis are wheel penetration skis, which means there is a hole in the skis that the wheels partially penetrate through such that you can land on pavement too. The problem is that these create a lot of drag on snow, especially mushy snow like we had now. In any case, we unloaded his cargo, a bit of lumber to make a snowmachine platform and a fuel pump, and then turned him around. We ran downglacier on the snowmachine to give him a view of what conditions were like, then loaded up Andy and Mike and their gear.

In his past take-offs, Bob was off the snow in 200-300 feet, but it was clear here that the mushy snow was not going to permit that, and was balling up on top of his skiis, weighting him down. By the end of the marked runway, he was still barely moving and decided to call it quits. By this point, he was at the top of our usually skiway, which we had abandoned this year due to large drifts. In this case, though, the drifts seemed like an advantage as the snow was much harder there. So we kicked out the passengers and gear, got him lined up with the old skiway, and watched him slowly gain speed and get airborne. We were glad of this after this several hour ordeal, as it would have complicated all of our lives to babysit the plane on the glacier until conditions improved.

At this point we changed plans for our take out. The general idea was that Andy and Mike would fly out first on Sunday with Dirk to Okpilak Lake where they would meet Bob and take a sediment core. Then Dirk would fly the rest of us out to the lake and shuttle any remaining gear, and hopefully everything will fit into the two planes, which would fly back to Coldfoot. It's all weather and conditions dependent of course, but the good part about it all is that we would have more manpower to pack up camp and finish all of the little remaining tasks, and that I could have another day to concentrate on the ice radar.

The radar project is attempting to finish up what we started last August and to gear me up for future work. Our main goals on McCall Glacier is to map out the transition between warm and cold ice, which we demonstrated last August that it does pretty well. I bought my own system this spring, which only arrived a few days before we left for this trip, so I didnt have much time to do anything besides plug everything in and make sure I had all of the pieces. The radar transmitter is tiny, and it sends out pulses through a long wire. Another set of wires is attached to the receiver, which consists of a oscilliscope hooked into a computer. The computer controls the acquisition rate and stores the data from the oscilliscope, which is plugged in through a usb port. GPS data is also acquired and stored simultaneously through a usb port. My goal was to make it single-person operation towed by a snow machine, so that we could get better spatially coverage efficiently. I had a lot of problems getting a good signal, which was complicated by my lack of experience with it and not really being sure whether the components were functional since they were all brand new and not tested. My primary goal this season was simply a shake-down to get it operational, so that next August we could fly to other glaciers in the area and get a survey of ice thickness and ice temperature. So far I was having no luck.

The complications with Bob's landings chewed up the rest of the day, so I woke up early the next morning to get a head start on the day, as it was the last I would have available for science. I plugged everything in at the bottom of the hill, using the same settings and setup as the previous day, and it seemed to work properly right off the bat. So I loaded it all up and headed down to the skiway to check conditions there and try some profiles. It was still warm, with south winds, with air temperatures over 5C. The snow on the skiway was hard, but still mushy elsewhere. I talked to Mike at 70N about our new take-out plan, and he agreed it was a good one we should plan on. So I continued on with the radar and actually got a good bottom profile, and after some fiddling with settings learned that I was also seeing the warm-cold transition. Unfortunately at this point I had some trouble with the antennae themselves, as apparently they were not secured properly in their housings. It took about two hours to sort this out and hack something together that might work, but afterwards I was able to spend a few hours collecting profiles in the lower cirque where we knew there was a lot of interesting things going on with ice temperatures. In those few hours, I probably collected more profiles than we had last August, with two teams of two people for 10 days, so I was glad that the shake-down was successful and that it seemed we got some good, useable results.

In the meantime, the others had begun working on the old snowmachine. It was still suffering from a lack of power, after I filled it a few mornings earlier when doing the GPS velocity survey. By the time I got there, they had changed the fuel pump back to the original one, but this did not solve the problem. We had a new pump with a water blocker and filter, and had pumped the gas out of the tank into a jug and pumped it back into the machine, and this also did not solve the problem. The mechanics seemed functional, as one could drive it normally by using the primer to pump fuel directly into the carburator, but as soon as this ran out the fuel pump would not keep it going beyond idle. When you worked the throttle, the engine just when blah and would not fire. Priming more fuel into it would bring it back to life. So it seemed that the fuel was fine, there was just something wrong with the main fuel supply. We pulled off the fuel tank, examined the fuel filter, and reassembled everything, and still did not solve the problem. Our next thought was perhaps it was something to do with the oil mixing system, as the oil level seemed to drop more rapidly than it should have. So we disconnected that and poured premix into the tank, with no luck. So at that point we were out of ideas. I had hoped to continue the radar survey into the upper cirque, but unfortunately when I tried to turn the system back on, the radar transmitter would not turn on and after some troubleshooting I gave up on this too, as it was after 7PM. So it was a disappointing day in some respects, but very successful in others.

Unloading supplies.

Are we having fun yet?

"Well, they think they are going somewhere..."

Loaded up and pointed the right direction.

Suckers...

"Told you so."

He also liked exploring for dinosaur bones.

The next morning, today, we are packing up camp and getting ready to leave tomorrow. Most of the cleanup necessary is my science gear. In some respects I feel like the trip never really started, as the starting seemed to happen in waves. I never had the chance to organize my gear and get into an efficient mode, having focused initially on only the ice coring and as soon as that ended the others showed up and it became a blur of activity organized as needed. As I began to feel more and more behind, I began working earlier and ending later, and in the past three weeks I've only had at best a few hours to myself on the way down from Ahab where I took a panorama and sat on a rock for lunch to take in the view. It was nice having such civilized working hours during the beginning, but I think to keep that up we needed a few more days to really do the best job and have some free time, or just leave the take-out date open ended so that we can proceed without the stress of a hard deadline and finish all jobs to full completion. All of our science goals have been met, but the things that get cut are the QC that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that it was all done fully and correctly. The ice coring part of the trip seems like a lifetime ago now, but looking back on it all we really got a lot done, having fixed a number of weather stations, maintained a bunch more, got the mass balance and velocity survey done, and collected a lot of radar data. In addition to this, Andy installed 5 or more new pollen traps and revamped his main station to survive a few more years. So there's nothing to complain about, it just feels a little rushed at the end and with a few more days I might have left with all of the data reduced fully and double checked for accuracy, as well as gone for a picnic or hike.

The latest finding as of about noon is that the trouble with the black snowmachine now seems clearly related back to fuel. Last night we had filled up the yellow machine from the same barrel. I ran it a bit then and it seemed fine, but today it is experiencing the same symptoms as the black one. This complication could blow our take out plans, as manhauling the remaining gear is problematic in the soft snow. Fortunately with the extra manpower, we have some options. The others are hiking to the upper cirque right now to get the barrel we have some confidence has good gas, as both machines seemed to operate fine with it during the trip. Hopefully there is enough there to get both machines functional again to point of assisting with the takeout, and in the future I think we'll just have to plan to bring in fuel for each trip. We only used about 15 gallons this trip, so this shouldnt be too big of a chore. We had only been storing it here because a year or two ago, a miscommunication ended up with a number of empty barrels being sent out and coming back full. It seems like the problem with it is more than just some water getting in, as the water blocker on the fuel pump should have solved that, but not sure what else it could be other than loss of volatiles. I had thought my biggest screw up of the trip was not bringing in Heat and misplacing the fuel pump, but it seems at this point that this would not have avoided the problem; rather my biggest screw up occurred last year by not stabilizing the gas or bringing in fresh. But it's still not clear what the problem actually is, as every time we think we've got it figured out, something else comes up. So we'll see what the rest of the day brings.

Not far away, we found the lid to one of my battery boxes that had blown off over the winter.

Keith was always trying to be center of attention.

Service with a smile.

"Just cleaning the glassware mate"

27 May 2011 Fairbanks

Well, the problem with the snow machines was clearly related to gas. We pumped some different gas into the yellow one after draining it into a waste can and it fired right up and worked fine. The others spent some time on the glacier moving gear around for final disposition before coming back up to camp to help break down tents. I spent the morning and afternoon sorting through my science gear and getting it ready to ship out. In the meantime, Kristin and Turner packed up the inside of the cook tent. After a nice dinner, we hauled everything out and took the cook tent apart. It was a nice evening, and everyone was in exceptionally good spirits, probably in part thanks to the spirits we polished off to reduce our take-out loads. After it was down and everyone went back to their tents to work on personal gear or sleep, the Nolans took a nice family photo in front of the camp weather station, which had died irreparably over the winter.

The next morning, our take-out date, started with clear skies, but the wind had picked up around camp after Dirk launched to pick us up. The clear sky overnight had solidified the snow so that walking on it was once again easy, and hopefully the aircraft would have an easier time of it too. The general plan was for Andy and Mike to leave first with their gear, flying to Okpilak Lake where they would meet Bob and take a sediment core for pollen. Unfortunately the weather in Deadhorse, where Bob was, was foggy and he could not leave. Further, when Dirk arrived he reported that the entire coastal plain was in fog and that Okpilak Lake was ringed by water already. His flight limits prevented him from doing two shuttles back to Coldfoot, so we sent Andy and Mike back to Coldfoot and planned for another day on the glacier. By noon when they left the snow was softening up and the air felt quite hot, and our pace slowed down given the lack of rush required. It was 2:30PM by the time I got back up to camp. Kristin and Turner went down to the glacier to pull some food and supplies from the take-out load, and I took a nap as some clouds had moved in and I was behind on sleep. By 5PM, the skies had turned clear again and there was not a trace of wind. We enjoyed a nice picnic dinner in the open air, where the cook tent had been set up, and relaxed and chatted in the outstanding views surrounding us. It reminded me a bit of the weenie-roast we had on the Jago River last August, with the stress of the trip mostly over and just some time to enjoy the company and location.

The next morning started much like the previous one, with clear skies and some wind. The wind wasnt awful, but it doesnt take much to bring the apparent temperature down and add to the drama. Things like setting up tarps in the wind become a several person job, and it just makes things feel a bit more desperate than they are. But by noon we were all packed and on the glacier when Dirk arrived. Deadhorse was still in fog, and we gave up on the sediment coring project and focused on just getting out. The snow was still not exceptional, so we reduced our individual loads, getting as much weight forward, and sent Kristin and Turner out first to Shrader Lake, where we would meet up in a few hours. Keith and I cached the snow machines and were barely done by the time Dirk returned. The weather was still great, and soon we were reunited on the lake, which had by now lost nearly all of its snow. The valleys were also nearly empty of snow too. It was unclear how much there was to begin with, but the recent warm, windy weather from the south had clearly caused most of it to disappear. The main rivers were open, and many glacier creeks had started flowing too. McCall Glacier had probably 50% of its surface exposed with ice, with very little remaining below the confluence of the cirques. It will be interesting to see how the USGS stream gaged fared on the Hulahula River and what data it has to share, as this is its first full year of operation.

The flight home was uneventful, and soon we were back in Coldfoot and reunited with the others, who had spent the night there. We enjoyed hot showers at the Inn and a meal before packing up our cars and heading for Fairbanks. We stopped at all of the major attractions on the way for photos and leg-stretching, and even met Mike from 70N along the way, driving his minni-winnie to Deadhorse for the season. Along the way I daydreamed about driving the road in the future just for photographs, and maybe combining these with air photos along the same route, for some sort of coffee table book. It was nearly 3AM by the time we got to our house, though still bright out in the midnight sun. We wound down, found everyone a place to sleep, and crashed.

On the lake, reuniting and reorganizing.

And refueling.

Our sleep was short-lived, as Turner was up early, as did some of the others. All were due to leave today on flights home. We repacked and headed out, stopping first at Fred Meyers for souvenirs to take home, then enjoyed lunch and beers on the deck at Pikes. Tourist season was clearly ramping up, as old folks wearing safari gear were milling about looking for an Alaskan adventure in the hotel lobby and there were many tour busses on the road. We said goodbye to Andy and Mike at the airport hotel they had stashed gear at, and the rest of us went to see an art show where I had donated some photos for a show hosted by the Northern Alaska Environmental Center on the Arctic Refuge. It was nice to get some cultcha, and I was happily surprised to see that one of my prints had been sold for $350, the proceeds going to the Center. We swung by the airplane to see how it had fared in our absence, and Kristin and Keith taxied around a bit to test the new wheels, as the weather looked a bit rough up high. By this time it was nearly dinner time, so we headed back to Pikes for another dose of the deck before dropping Keith off at the airport. And then it was just us again.

Victory lunch.

I think Keith nearly had a heart attack when a pretty girl offered to use his camera to take our picture.

"I wasnt proposing to him..."

I thought this visor made I made from nearby garbage was pretty clever, but Kristin didnt think so.

Still in one piece.

The gear from the trip was just stacked in piles in our driveway, but we had no motivation to deal with it. Though we had been together for the past month, we really hadnt had much time to ourselves. We started one of Turner's new movies, but I think we all fell asleep during it and spent the night together on the couch. It's now two days later, and Kristin and Turner are at the laundramat washing gear to get ready for our next trip, which starts next week. I checked email, and was pleasantly surprised to find only 100 emails in my inbox, one of which was an award letter for a new grant to expand our studies at McCall Glacier to include glacier-estuary interactions with a group from Texas. That was the only good news really, as I found there were plenty of new fires to put out over the next week. We did manage to have a picnic in the park in the meantime, where Turner was very excited about being able to run in a straight line without having to rock-hop or slip on ice. But now its back to work again. It's Memorial Day weekend, which is going to slow down preparations as most sane people are out enjoying themselves, but the work we have planned was expected and a small price to pay for the benefits we get out of it. We have a long and busy summer ahead of us, but so far we are still managing to make it all work for us and take satisfaction in the studies we are able to accomplish together.