Survivor Ellesmere

I was all set to write a negative post about Toronto yesterday, but my laziness prevailed. When we landed in Toronto, after an uneventful flight home from Edmonton, it was overcast. Driving home from the airport everything was concrete and brown and blech. I commented that this time of year is the most depressing time to be returning to Toronto. It's not white enough to be winter and not green enough to be spring. It's just...ugly.

But then I got some sleep and the Sun came up, and I walked to school today. Things seem greener. The Sun is ridiculously high in the sky. There were birds singing. The place feels more alive today. (I attribute some of this to the fact I was walking along side streets, and not driving along highways.) Also, it's 13C. When I left Eureka it was -46C. When we landed in Edmonton it was 2C. I think a 48 degree in gain in one flight is a new record for me. And a 59 degree gain in 48 hours also seems rather impressive. But don't worry my Toronto friends, it seems I have brought some delayed cold, as the temperatures are meant to dip below freezing later this week...

Pictures are now up on my website. Thanks for reading my ramblings.

Here I am in Edmonton, my latest Eureka adventure almost officially over. I've been ignoring the blog for a few days, mostly due to the fact that I haven't really wanted to write about the fact that I'm on my way home. I get very attached to places, and it's hard to leave a place that has meant so much to me. I'm a different person than I was the first time I stepped off a plane in Resolute, and I like to think my time in Res and Eureka has been a driving force behind that. Eureka and PEARL have been good to me. But there's a bright side to this being my last trip - it means that next year at this time I'll be at least in the process of moving on, and although I have enjoyed my time in Toronto, it is time to leave it behind.

But enough sappy sentimentality! The cable to get my pictures off my camera is deep in my luggage somewhere, so you'll have to wait for pictures, but last night was my last night in Eureka and I spent it very fittingly. A few weeks ago Sal told me about the confluence project, which is a plan to visit all the points where longitude and latitude lines meet on the globe. Since Eureka is located right near 80N 86W, it seemed logical to visit while I was there. We actually cross both 80N and 86W every day on the drive to PEARL from the weather station, though not simulataneously, so it wasn't so long a trek. We headed out after dinner, and after a lot of walking around in circles, found the exact location. Someone has left a geocache there - it had a CD of pictures of the area, some pins, a notebook for us to sign, and now a CANDAC sticker, a Turkish flag, and Tobias' business card. It was pretty cool - albeit geeky - and soon I will submit my pictures to the authorities. To get there we had to drive up a road that is not the main road, and therefore not maintained in the winter. There were some pretty good snow drifts, and we got stuck in one at the top, but managed to push our way out. It meant we couldn't turn around though, so after a successful visit to the confluence point, we tried to back the truck down the hill back to the main road. Just as we got there, one of the wheels went off the side of the road, and after 15 minutes or so of spinning the tires and smelling burning rubber, we called for a tow. I feel this was appropriate for my last night in Eureka. We got back just in time for BINGO, where I had a net gain of 6$ on the night. It's because of my skills in selecting BINGO cards. No luck there at all.

Today we left Eureka in style - somehow the various organisations that require cargo up there managed to get us a 737 to fly (almost) direct from Eureka to Edmonton. We stopped in Resolute to refuel. It took much less time - about 5 hours from the time we left Eureka to landing in Edmonton. (As opposed to a 6 hour flight to Yellowknife and then a 1.5 hour flight to Edmonton.) We were crammed in - with all the cargo they needed to bring up they only had room for the exact number of seats we needed - but it was fun to have a chartered 737. That's just crazy. And to leave Eureka and to not have to worry about a long flight with no bathroom was nice too! Which brings me to Edmonton, and tomorrow if all goes well Toronto and home. To my full closet and my room to myself and vegetarian options and real sunlight and all the other things that I miss when I'm in Eureka. But no ... Eureka.

I'll update when I'm back home, and more pictures will eventually make their way on-line. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time I embark on an exciting adventure....

March has yet again proved to be the sunnier half of Smarch, and we have been busy the past few days getting the new suntracker to work so that I can have direct Sun measurements. Today was our first venture out on the roof with the tracker tracking and my spectrometer spectrometerising. I am happy to say direct Sun spectra were taken, and I may even do something called "science" with them.

Sunday morning before heading to the lab, Tobias and I took a quick walk behind the station to the old frisbee golf proving grounds. We didn't have much time, but I dragged him to a few of the course markers. All ready and waiting for more games. If only I were coming back in the summer. Or if only it weren't so cold that a frisbee would crack in many pieces if it were to accidentally hit the ground.

I'm getting near the end of my trip here and I am in denial. I'm hoping that this is my last trip (because I'll have graduated by this time next year - or be in the process...), and as much as I'm done with Toronto, I'm not at all done with Eureka. The North gets into you, and you start to love it for the very reasons you thought you wouldn't: it's cold, it's dark, everything is white, and you have to put up with the same N people for far too long. I've been lucky enough to travel North seven times with enough awesome people to cancel out the bad. I've discovered that white is much more interesting than it sounds, that brightness is all relative, and that -42 is a fine temperature for a hike in the hills. I've learned that Arctic fox are the cutest things in the world, it's probably best not to see a polar bear up close, and musk ox are both the tastiest and most mesmorizing animals in the world. You'll have to bear with me in the next few days, as I try to bring some closure to my Eureka journey. Leaving here is never easy, and I don't imagine it will be anything less than painful to leave this time.

I think this may be the best picture I've ever taken of sundogs. Look to the left and right of the Sun, and you'll see faint rainbow glows - sundogs. They're caused by ice crystals in the atmosphere. I got out of the lab yesterday for a longer walk down my favourite ridge. This picture is taken looking down into my favourite valley, which I have yet to capture on film in a way that accurately portrays its fabulousness. That's a problem I always have up here - the camera just can't capture the variations in the colours (and the white) that make this the prettiest place I have ever been. It's going to be hard to leave, not knowing when I'll be back.

There was a lunar eclipse last night, that we were able to catch the end of (after the Moon came out from behind Blacktop Mountain). There was about a dozen people trying to take pictures of it out the window. Zoom lenses were the most successful. My trying to use binoculars to get a better zoom ultimately resulted in this photo. I'll try to steal a better picture off someone else. It was still really cool to see the eclipse.

It got down to -49.7C last night - luckily while I was warm in my bed. -45C is normally the worst we experience in a day, and when it gets any colder than that (including -46C) it feels so much colder.

We had a bit of Sun today for the second day in a row. And for the n-th day in a row it was colder at the lab than it was at the station. And mildly windy. (-40 is really not so bad until the wind blows - then it's bitterly cold and frost bite inducing.) (Best quote from the campaign: it's better to get frost bite than bear bite.) In the mid-afternoon I was going a bit stir-crazy, so I braved the temperatures with a few other crazy types and went for a quick walk. We were smart enough to walk into the wind on the way, so that the wind was pushing up back to PEARL on our walk back. I snapped this picture before coming inside. (Apparently it was obvious that I had written this on the building. Really, I think Clive is a much more obvious culprit.) (Ok, if you know Clive, that was funny. If you don't...take my word for it!)

I've been a bit stressed the past few days. I submitted a paper back in September, and re-submitted after one round of reviews in January. The day I spent on a plane flying from Edmonton to Eureka, I got round two reviews back. I have to have responses to them, and a revised draft of the paper, in by March 7, at 9:31:01 UTC. (Yes, two seconds past 9:31 is too late.) I haven't had much time to work on it, because I've been looking after three instruments and trying to analyse the data enough to know that they're all working okay. But this deadline has been in the back of my head the whole time. I finally sat down with everything Sunday, and now I think things are almost done, but it's not fun to have important deadlines while you're on a field campaign! I'm also trying to get another paper submitted by March 15 (it's almost like I want to graduate...), but luckily the deadline for that is most likely going to be pushed back a bit.

In final news, today marks the first day of the International Polar Year. It's a year (okay, two years) of intensive research into all aspects (and not just science - anthropological as well) of our polar regions. The UN is sort of coordinating it, and different countries are funding their different projects. It should be an exciting two years, and hopefully by the end we'll understand these regions a bit better. How fitting to be in Eureka for the start of this.

In shuffleboard, the most number of points you can score with one puck is 5, if it lands hanging off the corner of the board. This is very hard to do. Last night I threw such a puck, only to have it maliciously knocked off the board by Tobias. (You only get points after both people have thrown 4 pucks each.) I am the shuffleboard queen. (And despite Tobias being the meanest person ever, the fluffy pink bunnies continued their domination of shuffleboard in the High Arctic.)

A few days ago I lamented the hot weather we've been experiencing here, and I have been rewarded with the temperatures falling to a reasonable -37C at the lab, which is actually a bit cooler than the station which is at -34C. This is nice in that I no longer overheat when I go outside, but bad in that the lab is now *freezing*. I am glad to be wearing so many layers today. I have also been forced to drink hot chocolate made out of the super-pasteurized milk that takes forever to go bad. That stuff is nasty, but the station has run out of the good milk, and I am COLD. The cold and wind has yet to bring the Sun, although it did tease us this morning with a clear sky that completely clouded over just as the Sun rose above the horizon. Think sunny thoughts for us.

Only CANDAC operators can drive the trucks up here, and one of those two people has Sundays off. So we had to have a smaller group of people at the lab yesterday. Since my instrument is automatic, I spent the day at the station, sleeping in and catching up on some work that needs to get done soon. Since it was Sunday, the Sun decided to make its second appearance of the campaign and its first appearance at the station since October. (We see it a day or so earlier at the lab since we're 600 m above sea level.) And so here's the first sunrise at Eureka in 2007. You probably won't be able to make it out, but this is taken from the beach of Slidre Fjord. (After years of showing pictures of the Arctic I know that it takes a special eye to be able to determine where the frozen water stops and where the ground starts.) (Melissa had been invaluable in sitting through hundreds of pictures of white while I learned this fact.)

While we were out sunabathing, we were visited by a very fast moving bunny, who we watched run at us from the station and then past us out on the fjord. Whenever I see Arctic hare run, I think they look funny, since they're not hopping like other bunnies. They look like horses when they run. Except when you look at their tracks, they are perfectly bunny-like. So maybe I'm just not capable of identifying hopping. We we also hunted by a fox, who circled us a couple of times, and then cautiously headed downwind, where he seemed to be deciding if he should attack us, or if we were going to attack him. The foxes are such adorable balls of foxy fluff. And the one that lives at the station is so fat and roly-poly it's even more adorable. I'll try to get better pictures.

Today we awoke to stronger winds, gusting pretty heavily, but made our way to the lab anyways. Halfway through the morning it was decided that we would head home for lunch, since the snow was blowing pretty heavily and that can blow in the road. The problem when it blows isn't so much visibility (though that can certainly be reduced to zero) but the small little snow flakes that get blown around and packed really hard. When this happens on the road, you end up with what is sometimes an impassible drift. Then you have to wait for the front end loader to come out and plow the road. And that (a) can take a long time, and (b) costs a lot of money. Of course, once we made the decision to come down, the weather got a bit better, and all the people that need direct Sun to do measurements spent the afternoon looking longingly at the slivers of the Sun that we could make out on the webcam images from up at the lab. Hopefully we'll start to get better weather soon, and I can go out and take pictures of vaguely different colours of white for you all to enjoy.