To the Ice: ONR/MIZ Camp 3

Finally, after a little difficulty we managed to get to Sachs Harbor.  We spent just one night there, in the house of the owners of the guest house as the guest house was full. Jackie and Roger were really nice to let 4 of us stay there, our last real beds for a week, also the last chance for a shower (which I failed to take).

The camp were were going to on the ice is part of a research project called the Marginal Ice Zone Project and involves researchers from the US, UK, France, Canada. and includes the US Office of Naval Research.  The camp managers/logistics operators were from the University of Washington Applied Physics Lab in Seattle., a couple of guys, Adam and Jim , I know from CFS Alert where the joined the Operation Switchyard Project. Adam is an engineer working with underwater gliders, and his dad is actually a rocket engineer and has had rockets go to all of the planets in our solar system (HOW COOL IS THAT).  Adam is also very involved in outreach (lucky kids in Seattle, he has such cool stories and projects).  He was also one of the people onboard a Twin Otter that crashed through the ice in 2010 North of Alert, the first year I was in Alert, but I digress


We were up early the next day, ready to head to the ice.

The sun rising while we are loading the plane. Chris Hiemstra is waiting patiently.

Because of the time of year and Sachs Harbor's latitude, we had hours of this wonderful pinkish light during sunrise sunset, and loads of "blue hour" and "golden hour" light, very pretty.

Loading the Ken Borek Twin Otter to take us to the ice.

The Twin Otters we use in the Arctic are probably my favourite smallish plane. They can carry a lot of equipment for their small size due to large wings and overpowered engines.  They are also able to take off and land on incredibly short runways, such as sea ice floes.

We had a 1.75hr flight west from Sachs Harbor to Camp 3 where we would spend a couple days maximum doing some measurements before heading to our main site and Camp 2.

Views of Sea ice

Sea ice

As we approached Camp 3 the visibility steadily decreased but lucky for ice another Twin Otter from the British Antarctic Survey had already landed, and the runway was marked out with garbage bags.

First Sight of Camp 3

We landed and right away dumped our bags off and started doing measurements.  We were hoping to only spend one or maybe two nights at Camp 3, depending on the progress of the team that was at Camp 2.

Chris started out taking snow depth measurements with the MagnaProbe, an automated snow depth tool that logs your readings automatically and has a GPS antenna integrated.  I won't get into the details of how it works but all you do is turn on the logger and gps, stab the probe into the snow and press a button and wait for some confirmation beeps.

Bruce was drilling holes in the ice and taking measurements and Christian and I were taking measurements of the snow surface elevation using a survey laser. We shared this job because it goes much faster with two people.

Christian holding the laser detector.

While surveying we noticed a crack was starting to form in the ice that we were crossing. After watching the crack for about 5-10 minutes, we decided to keep measuring on the other side of the crack but to return periodically to check on the crack. Luckily the crack was not developing very quickly and even when we left the next day was still less than 1m across.

A crack in the ice developing along our survey line. The markings on the tape are spaced 1m apart.

We finished one line of measurements and then stopped for a snack before completing a second line of measurements across a different ice floe.  The first measurements were done going out from the end of the runway and the ice was regular first year ice, very flat and rather boring.  The second line crossed MYI and also included a couple of ridges. 

When we came back from our second survey line there was a problem, the heaters in all of the tents had gone out and another guy who was spending the night with us was unable to get them going again.  I finally realized that there was a gap between the fuel and the stove in the fuel line, and that the fuel barrels had not been vented and had created a large vacuum as they worked.  I went out back and vented the barrels and after a bit more work we got the first stove lit.  In the next tent, where I was sleeping, the camp setup people had left some paper under the stove, and when we were warming the bottom of the stove up before lighting it, we caught that paper on fire, again I quickly snatched up the paper in my gloved hand and threw it outside.   

That evening we moved our gear into our tents where we would spend one night.

Bruce and Christian's tent

 Mine and Chris's tent.

These Arctic Oven tents from Alaska Tent and Tarp were GREAT! They were strong, spacious and we had them luxuriously appointed with cots, cot pads, sleeping bags, overhead nets and a diesel drip stove.  With the stove, the tents were downright hot.

Usually when I head to the Arctic in May, 24 hour daylight is pervasive and all you notice is a bit of dimmer light at night, now though, the sun was fully setting so I had my first spectacular sunrise and sunset over Arctic sea ice. 

Well that concludes the Camp 3 blog post.  We move on to Camp 2 in the next post.  Here we spent a few days so perhaps there will be a couple posts on that sight.  Heck, maybe even some data plots.