Out and About

Today is May 3, didn't have time to post yesterday because we got in late and the internet connection was slow last night.
So on Saturday we did not end up walking to the town of Resolute Bay, so no pictures of that. I went and walked part way towards the bay, it was incredibly warm (ice was even melting off the roof of the building).

On Sunday we decided to go for a skidoo trip.  We planned to go to Griffin Island to the southwest of Resolute and then follow that south towards the open water.  I've created a Google Earth track file, it plots all the points we travelled (taken every few seconds for the duration of our trip). Below is a downsampled synthetic aperture radar image from April 16, on which I've plotted the track.   You can see different brightness which reflect different surface roughness (with brighter being rougher).

 ENVISAT ASAR image showing our track from yesterday.  Image courtesy of European Space Agency and Dr. Christian Haas.

This ended up being a 7 hour trip, but was alot of fun. We stopped upon arriving at the shores of Griffin Island to climb some rubble.  We then followed the coast line of Griffin Island south for quite awhile.

Christian Standing on Ice Ridge near Griffin Island, near Resolute Bay, NU

Me relaxing out of the wind on the same ridge.  Photo Courtesy of Stefan Hendricks.

While driving the snowmobiles we conducted ground based electromagnetic induction measurements of ice thickness with two EM instruments that have different antenna lengths. As our group has six people we borrowed three skidoos (demand for skidoos limited us), and so we doubled up and took turns driving and being passenger.

At one point we stopped to do a more detailed comparison of the two EM instruments measurements but doing drill hole measurements of ice thickness, measure snow depth and pull the two instruments to the exact same place.  We had some bad luck here as we lost 2m of drill flights, on the first of 20 holes (dropped down the hole into the ocean...our bad), and then after measuring the thickness of the that holes, and the measuring tape was pulled out, the T-end broke off the measuring tape.  The T-end, pictured below is lowered through the drill hole, once it reaches below the ice it pivots to block the hole.  When you apply force by pulling on the tape, it fold the T up again.

So we had some problems but alot of fun.  Today we may go out this afternoon to do more drilling and a more careful comparison of the two EM systems. We will see.  As we didn't plan to do this, we are relying on the availability of equipment that others may have reserved.  The great thing about the scientific community is the sharing that happens.  We borrowed sleds that someone else had reserved yesterday, but they didn't need them that day so we could use them. We were planning to leave a drill tip behind, but since we lost ours down the hole, we need our spare now.

Well if I don't post tonight it may be a day or two until I have time.  Tomorrow morning we leave for CFS Alert.  It will be most of the day to get there, plus we'll have to unload and move all the equipment and get settled in. From now on there will likely be fewer pictures (and they will be smaller) as I will have to post to blogger using a mail client.

Hope you are all doing well.