I am writing to you from balmy CFS Alert on the northern tip of
Ellesmere Island.
We arrived here yesterday and spent the evening preparing for a
potential flight today. Unfortunately the weather was not good enough
for flying out north and landing on the ice. Luckily we have borrowed
3 skidoos and sleds and decided to go to our fast ice site today.
Landfast ice is just as it sounds, frozen to the land and does not
drift. It can be stable for a couple years or can break up (depending
on the year). The reason we are deploying on the fast ice is because
it will not drift, and because it's snow and ice regime are different
from the pack ice farther north.
We took the skidoos out to our site of interest (along a Cryosat
track). In the end we did not get right on the track but only because
of wanting certain snow conditions, not due to inability to access it
or navigate to it. We deployed two corner reflectors just over 500m
apart from each other on the ice. A corner reflector acts as a strong
reflector of radar signals and can easily be identified in the
airborne data that will (hopefully) be collected in a few days time.
We will then at some point before leaving go back to the site and
revist it and do intensive surveys of the snow and ice properties at
the corner reflectors and between them.
The skidoo ride today was nice, a bit tricky at time and not without
problems but we all made it safely. But it is such a fun way to
travel, takes some work/effort, but gives you some nice scenery too.
We missed supper but someone here was nice enough to arrange for some
leftovers for us when we got back at 8 or so. It is now 11:30pm here
and well time for bed, I just need to take out some other things yet
but nothing special.
I will eventually post some photos but I need sleep desperately.
Goodnight to you all (or good morning for some of you).
Justin
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