Design Flaws...

Over the course of the last few months, we've come up with a number of suggested improvements for certain pieces of field gear. For example, why don't they make neck warmers out of wind-proof fleece? And Rite in the Rain waterproof paper notebooks, why are the covers made out of ordinary, non-waterproof paper?

As the temperatures drop and our fingers freeze, we have a couple of new ones.




Why are hand warmers packaged in such a way that frozen fingers cannot open them?












Heidi attempts to access a rice krispie square (they wrap them in saran wrap at camp)

Cold.That is what we have to say these days: cold.

Winter, it seems, has appeared. We've had to break out the Mustang suits - last bastion against the elements - and to our delight and comfort, they kept us warm. Sadly, they make us look like Power Rangers of the North.

We figure we have begun to really lose it, now. We have moved beyond the relatively-sane world of field songs, and into the realm of field haiku. One of the geolgists here, Mike, takes this as indication that we really are crazy, and need to start spending more time with dumb people. Anyway.

We had a freakishly weak day - Day 65, I believe it was (Day 345 LAC), when we began chanting "go, mitochondria, go!" hoping to boost our energy levels. We each wrote a haiku to that wonder of cellular metabolism, the substance that keeps us all going, ATP.

Heidi's verse:

endless energy
adenosine triphosphate
gone; blown with the wind

Kathryn's:

impulse speed only
adenosine triphosphate
gone; no more reserves

One of our least favourite pieces of field equipment is a small depth sounder that we have renamed the DEF sounder (Device of Extreme Frustration), that seems to take great delight in giving us either blank screen or ones populated only by error dashes. Kathryn has also immortalised it in poetry:

measuring only
the depth of my frustration
argh! three lines of death

Most Innovative Field Solution Ever

Through a Series of Unfortunate Events with whose details we will not bore you, we ended up with a sunken gillnet - disasters led to sunken and/or lost floats, so there we have this ghost net catching fish on the bottom of the lake, and no way to retrieve it.

"It's okay, it's okay," Heidi said, "this has happened to me once before. We need something very hooky."

Hooky... hooky.... Kathryn thought to herself. Something locally available, and hooky...

Caribou antlers!

Luckily for us, at the other end of that lake is an abandoned mine from the '70's. The buildings have all been burned but there remains a pile of caribou antlers that used to be mounted inside.

Now, we are using an inflable boat. And we are wearing puncturable waders. And yes, caribou antlers are very hooky! Especially when they're covered in rusty nails from when they were mounted. It was a nerve-wracking bouncy trip back up the lake. And oh yeah, it was blowing a hurricane.

Well, through a Series of Minor Miracles, our cluster of caribou racks tied to a long rope was successful in retrieving our lost net. And, we had caught only a few fish, and ones that we needed for our study. Whew!

The epic saga of the backpack electrofisher

Context: Backpack electrofishers are devices that run electrical current through the water and stun fishes (or mysids, as the case may be – see previous entry). Kathryn thinks that they were invented for torture during the Spanish Inquisition. The torture part doesn’t come through electrocution, but through carrying the danged thing. In fact, Kathryn can’t carry it because the (external) backpack frame is so long that when the waist strap is pulled tight her legs are cinched together. It’s much more comfortable, however, than the model I became accustomed to in the late ‘90’s, that has a generator instead of a battery pack.

Day 1: Heidi and Kathryn inventory the gear and find two backpack electrofishers (BPEFs). One is set aside for the Fish Dudes, and we lay a claim on the second. All appears well, although we are missing one cable for a charger.

Day 20: We develop the mysid sampling technique. Unfortunately, this requires Kathryn to be completely stooped over to scoop small mysids and her back turns into large knots. I must keep the shocker vertical enough that the safety device doesn’t trip (if you fall in, you can’t electrocute yourself, supposedly) while stooping over enough to scoop mysids. I report a serious searing pain in my shoulder blade (“It’s fine, I’m sure it’s fine”), upon which time we start planning our trip to the spa. Also at this time, Fish Dudes report a serious malfunction in their BPEF and request to share ours. This presents difficulties as we are staying out at the Doris weatherhaven. Much bartering occurs and one sheep is traded between two shepherds, each of which needs his respective wool. A second sheep is requested, but due to shipping costs the request is denied.

Day 40: Fish Dudes depart and we take over sole custody of BPEF 2 (so says the Golder label), and take it with us out to Doris weatherhaven. Unfortunately, two small electrical pins break off in a coupler, leaving the battery with small shards of broken pins (“It’s fine, I’m sure it’s fine”). These batteries, another device from the Spanish Inquisition, are large, very heavy, duct-taped covered cubes that Kathryn’s fingers cannot even stretch across. We have a solar panel for power in the weather haven, which charges a 12-V battery pack that we then use to charge other batteries. Unfortunately again, it turns out that the duct tape conceals 2 12-V batteries – not the one big one we thought – and, (you guessed it, unfortunately), we turn our Canadian Tire Eliminator power pack into a Canadian Tire Eliminated power pack. At this point, we would also like to note that we have been weathered in for a day, and have just enough satellite phone battery left to request a second radio battery from camp (since we just eliminated the eliminator).

Day 41: Sun arrives, and our eliminated power pack rises from the ashes. I call Golder and they agree to send up new pins with detailed instructions.

Day 48: Heidi is crouching over BPEF in middle of tundra attempting to decipher instructions. She and Kathryn remove the bent pins and reinsert new ones using a Leatherman (the wire strippers and soldering iron being kilometres away in camp). All appears to be going well until Heidi muses, “I think polarity matters on this here coupler. What do you reckon 3 black wires and one yellow one mean in terms of positive and negative? And how does that relate to numbers 1,2,3, and 4 on the other end of this coupler?”

Kathryn: “One electrocuted sheep. Burnt wool everywhere.”

Heidi: “That’s what I thought.”

Heidi calls Golder and, from their control tower in the Edmonton warehouse, they take apart a second shocker, in an attempt to provide guidance.

Golder fix-it dude: “Okay, you should have a red, a black, a green, and a yellow wire.”

Heidi: “I have three blacks and a yellow.”

Fix it dude: “Uh-oh.”

Heidi: “That’s what I said.”

We abandon the repair job for the day while Golder fix-it dude completely takes apart the innards of another shocker. Heidi calmly evaluates how it may have been cheaper to ship up a second, working sheep, but chooses not to dwell over lost wool.

Day 49: Golder fix it dude recommends that Heidi use a test meter (when next in camp) to determine the two pairs of common wires. She then has a 50/50 chance of frying the shocker or fixing it.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Well, we’ll probably toast the thing down here, so you might as well toast it up there and be done with it. Just don’t kill yourself while you’re at it.”

Day 50: Heidi requests flight into camp to drop off some samples, etc. Upon bribing the electrician with charr, we think we have determined the polarity of the wires.

“Okay, you ready?”

“Yeah, stand back.”

Power switch is flicked.

Burnt sheep. Battery harness melted. Surprisingly, though, battery itself is not melted. NOTE: Duct tape conducts.

Electrician (totally dead pan while we try to make sure the smoke alarm does not go off) “Well, I guess we got the short end of that 50.”

“Yup, but we know which one is NOT positive.”
Heidi and the electrician reverse their earlier supposition of polarity, fire it up again, and start another smoulder. At which point they discover that there is a loose connection.

THE SHEEP IS HEALED.

Day 50: Heidi and Kathryn happily set off for Roberts Lake. They have seen the charr for 3 consecutive days, and now have a reasonable chance of catching them. The shocker works, and the charr are caught (YIPPEE – they send the bribe back to the electrician).

Day 53: After spending a night in main camp and charging the shocker battery, Heidi and Kathryn cheerfully set off for Roberts Lake with a newly-replenished supply of cookies. We arrive at Roberts Lake and pull our battery out of the cargo pod.

“MERF, MERF AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Heidi suddenly screams.

The coupler (on the battery end this time) is sitting, dejected and completely detached from the battery, at the bottom of the cargo pod, having ripped off during flight.

We have decided to sacrifice our last working mechanical pencil to the gods.

In other news, Spot the wolf ate my waterproof SealLine bag today.

Swanson-Martell Natural Laws of Fishing

1. Anything that can get caught in the net, will be (including, but not limited to, boat handles, anchors, cinch straps, boat grommets, fingers, boat plugs, rolls of spare rope, dip nets, oars, buckets, other nets, and miscellaneous gear)

2. Super Hooker (TM) anchors will hook on absolutely anything (except lake bottoms).

3. Sideline (rope used on nets, anchors, etc) will knot, wrap itself around, entangle, trap, and encumber anything and everything within a 10 m radius (including boat handles, anchors, cinch straps, etc). In particular, sideline, upon encountering itself, will spontaneously, and at approximately the speed of nuclear fusion, become a massive Gordion knot involving 3 times the amount of sideline present within a 100' radius and resembling a Narcisse garter snake hibernaculum.

Laws 1, 2, and 3 act concurrently, catalytically, and catastrophically.

A Sad Tale of 5 Motors and 3 Boats
or, Why Shepherds Need Whiskey (the Art of Small Motor Repair, Part II)

cast of characters:
Heidi and Kathryn, intrepid Arctic researchers
The Golder Fish Dudes, Tim and Paul (lamented in photo and song in a previous entry)
John and Richard - Golder bathymetry engineer and his erstwhile Inuit assistant
Whizzy and Zingy - 15 HP 4-stroke motors
Zippy - 4 HP 2-stroke motor
Pingo and Tussock - 15 HP 2-stroke motors
2 leaky red boats
1 leaky grey boat

key information:
- 2-stroke motors take gas mixed with oil, 4-stroke use straight gas
- inflatable boats of the type we're using get their structure and integrity from floor boards which are held in place by rails that run along each side

Day 5 - Heidi and Kathryn start using Whizzy on one of the Leaky Red Boats. All appears to go smoothly.

Day 7 - We take the second Red Boat out of its box and help Tim and Paul inflate and set it up with Zingy. Unfortunately, the boat comes with only one set of rails so Zingy is handicapped from the beginning. Nonetheless, all appears to go smoothly (leaking like a sieve aside)

Day 10 - Whizzy is damaged in sling between two lakes. Ingenious field repair involving pro-wrap and sport tape (see previous entry) enables us to sample a couple of sites that morning, then we switch to Zippy. Heart of champions, has Zippy, but only 4 - count 'em, 4 - horses; not so speedy.

Day 10 (evening) - we test Pingo and Tussock on our Leaky Red Boat. Tussock turns out to have the run/kill switch broken off (in the run position) - this poses some problems. Ingenious repair job of Whizzy Part II, involving washing machine part and electrical tape (thanks, Paul and Ben!).

John arrives to conduct bathymetry surveys on lakes around here, and is given priority boat. H & K fetch Leaky Grey Boat from bottom end of Windy Lake, whence it has blown and been left abandoned. So now we have Tim and Paul with Zingy (straight gas) on a Leaky Red Boat, John and Richard with Whizzy (straight gas) on the other LRB, and Heidi and Kathryn with Pingo (mixed gas) on the LGB. Imagine, if you will, these three boats jetting back and forth among 15 lakes, with jerry cans and fuel tanks intersecting in the evenings as we each try to get the right fuel in the right tank, and back out to the right boat each day.

Meanwhile, as we zoom about on Golder sampling forays, we are cunningly transporting the gear for Heidi's PhD project, since we are going to the same lakes in helicopters that we will later be visiting on foot. If, for example, we are sampling Doris Lake and Roberts Lake for water quality. Well, we're flying there anyway, so we will take the benthic sampling equipment and one jerry can to Roberts Lake, and some fishing and camping gear to Doris Lake... (planning ahead for which boat will end up where at the end of the Golder work, to get the correct jerry can at each distribution node).

Do you remember that logic puzzle about the shepherd, a sheep, a wolf, one boat, and needing to cross the river?

Day 11. We discover that LGB has no rails for structural integrity - search transects and enquiries in camp reveal that these rails were, in fact, burned during a big garbage purge the previous winter. Yes, burned. Yes, they were aluminum rails. Well, not to be deterred by minor setbacks! We pull a large rusty screw out of LGB's bottom, spend a morning diligently applying 8 patches, gamely mount Pingo, and ship 'er off to Doris Lake to start fishin'. (The shepherd now has 5 sheep distributed on 2 lakes, but still only 1 boat).

Day 12 (morning): We find several suspicously familiar-looking pieces of rubber boat patch washed up on shore next to where we've moored the LGB. It becomes the VLGB (Very Leaky Grey Boat). Not to be deterred by minor setbacks, we head out.

Imagine, if you will, an inflatable rubber boat, that has no rails to hold its floorboards in place. Imagine these floor boards buckling and bouncing as the boat inchworms across the lake. Imagine the great gushes of water flowing in as the rest of the patches wash off. Picture Kathryn, braced against the side of the boat, pushing down with her legs trying to hold the floorboards in place to lend some stability. Picture Heidi, steering with one hand, navigating using the GPS with the other, and bailing the boat with a third (I don't know how she does it, either!). The boat can't get on plane - the motor leg can't get in the water properly - every 50 feet or so, the motor stalls and we all lurch forward (more great gushes of water come rushing over the bow).

"It's like driving an accordion with a sewing machine," Heidi says.

Day 12 (afternoon): We switch Pingo for Zippy. Zippy, big-hearted, but with only 4 - count 'em, 4 - horses, but a longer motor leg.

"It's like driving an accordion with a hand mixer," Kathryn says.

We put Pingo back on (switching jerry cans and fuel tanks appropriately). And, we create a new measurement for time and space. Although the distance we travel each day is, from a cartographic point of view, not far, in terms of logistical nightmares, wrenchingly difficult decisions made, collapse narrowly averted by clawing your way out by the emotional fingernails, and insurmountable obstacles overcome by sheer ingenuity, makes them equivalent to Lewis and Clark Expedition Days.

Day 27 (Day 67, LAC): Richard and John have their LRB, with Whizzy, out in the middle of Patch Lake. To liven the day, they check the oil... Over the radio, Kathryn and Heidi hear, "Yes. Um. Windy Camp. We need a new motor, and 12 long nails."

We look at each other with bemusement. "They're in an inflatable boat."

A new dipstick for Whizzy is ordered (since Patch Lake is about 20 m deep, and, who knew? dipsticks sink when dropped in lakes). LRB #1 switches Whizzy (straight gas) for Tussock (mixed gas). Unfortunately, jerry cans and fuel tanks are not switched, thus making them useless for Whizzy and Zingy in the future. Tussock still has the run/kill switch busted - posing some problems.

Day 39 (Day 90 LAC): Tim and Paul, out of the goodness of their hearts, switch boats with us. Boy, does Zingy zoom in that LRB! Even with her 2-rails-only handicap, it's like going Mach 8...

Day 40: Carey, one of the helicopter engineers in camp, makes new rails for the VLGB (yay, Carey!) out of left-over floor boards from the (retired) other VLGB (burned last winter). Yes, burned. Yes, it was a rubber boat. With these make-shift rails, theVLGB is down-graded to a LGB, and we can get on plane - no more motor stalling! Yippee!

Day 45 (Day 134 LAC): Zingy, sadly, is injured in a lake-to-lake sling: the gear shift is broken. Ingenious Field Repair #2, involving a hollowed-out willow branch, and duct tape. All is well.

Fish Dudes leave (very sad). Zingy, on LRB #2 and with her straight-gas jerry can and fuel tank, goes to Glenn Lake. Pingo, on VLGB and with mixed gas, heads to Roberts Lake. Tussock, on LRB #1, with mixed gas in the formerly straight gas tanks, is busy conducting bathymetric maps of Windy Lake. Whizzy sits in Windy Camp, awaiting union with her new dipstick (which has arrived), and perhaps a new straight gas tank. Zippy, almost empty of mixed gas, sits on shore at Doris Lake, sadly disconnected from a boat. We spend a few days sampling Glenn.

The shepherd now has 8 sheep distributed on 5 lakes, 2 of them with eating disorders, 1 with an injured leg, 2 wolves, and several leaky boats.

Day 47 (Day 236 LAC): We cheerfully arrive for a day of sampling at Roberts Lake, after a lovely trek across the technicolour-fall-leaves-covered tundra. We discover that Pingo and the LGB have broken free from their mooring... and blown across the lake... with the willows we'd tied them to still attached...

Well, once reunited with the boat, we optimistically revved her up - to discover that she had been damaged in her last sling, has a missing carburetor cap, and is leaking too badly to use.

"Heidi," I said, as she tried to build a new carburetor cap out of (you guessed it, pro-wrap and duct tape), and I was trying to remember the various locations of (working) motors, (relatively non-leaky) boats, jerry cans and fuel tanks with which type of fuel, and how to bring the correct combination together at Roberts Lake with a minimum of hiking and helicopter time, "Heidi," I said, "even Hercules only had 12 trials. And Hercules was a demi-god."

PS We don't know what those 12 long nails were for, either.

Day 46: In which Heidi and Kathryn hit the wall

The exhaustion wall, that is. A memorable moment when we both stalled half-way into the boat: beached on the inflated sides, with no juice left to pull ourselves in the rest of the way.

"Heidi?"

"Yes?"

"I am not self-propelled today."

This exhausted state may have been exasperated by today's foolish attempt to kick the cookie habit...

We have spent the past few days gathering lakeshore invertebrates. These are all veeeeery wee creatures and for contaminant analyses, Heidi needs at least 10 g of each species.

Now, most people collect these critters by kicking up the bottom, and then scooping everything up into a net. Using this technique it would, as you can imagine, take a very long time to gather the required weight. Well! We have discovered that it is much more efficient to use an electrofisher. Yes, an electrofisher. As Heidi says, "this has never before been done in the history of the world".

As Kathryn says, "Ha ha! Your advanced nervous system is your downfall! Mwa-ha-ha!". Okay, yeah; we did mention it's day 46, right?

We are mostly collecting 3 different bugs: Gammarus and Mysis, 2 types of freshwater shrimps, and Star Trek-esque marine isopod that has invaded these lake systems. Mysids are tiny, see-through shrimp (see photo) that come up in great clouds as we electroshock. Hence, our latest field song - to the tune of My Girl:

I've got crustaceans, on a cloudy day
When it's cold outside, I've got Mysidacea*

I guess you'd say,
what can make me feel this way?
Mysids... mysids... mysids
talking 'bout, mysids (mysids mysids ooooh)

I've got sooooo many shrimp, the trout envy me
I've got more invertebrates, than the charr out in the sea...

* for entomologists and other pedants: yes, we know that isn't the real family name; give us some poetic licence, here!

Tomorrow, we head out again to our peaceful weather haven, until after the Labour Day weekend. The weather is changing, with a cold north wind chilling us even with the sunny days, and although it still never gets truly dark, we have deep dusk from about 10 o'clock onwards: in fact, we're losing 9 or 10 minutes of light at each end of the day, now. So, we are very pleased that the Windy Camp site super, Glen, put in a new stove out at Doris Lake for us, and put up a tarp to help keep out most of the wind and rain from the haven. The stove is currently stocked with Jet B airplane fuel so it burns like a hot damn; we'll be toasty, indoors anyway.

The bearberry have become a bright red, the blueberry bushes are a deep burgundy, and the willows coat the tundra with gold and amber. The bog cranberries will be ripe soon - morning frosts these days - and the geese are starting to head south in great, honking, staggering flocks. The camp siksik are frantically pulling pink insulation out of the buildings and packing up their burrows to accommodate their increasingly-obese bodies for the winter. We're excited to be back out alone to watch the seasons change and gather the last of the year's blueberries, sorrel, and (hopefully!) fishes for the study. Hope you're all warm and happy heading into fall, and as content to be where you are, as we are to be here.

Day 41: We continue to ponder the anchor dilemma and lament the loss of Tim and Paul

Well, today was one of those days when you periodically look at the sky and shake your head. We got a lot done so it was very productive, but a bit trying at times. We think the departure of Tim and Paul this morning threw us off of our game. Just as the helicopter was landing to pick us up, I realized we had forgotten the oxygen probe and went galloping off to the enviro-tent to retrieve it (while wearing waders). Our motor, zingy, was



Paul happy to see a trout and Tim doing a headstand on the tallest outcrop around

not so happy today and I regained my sailor mouth on a few occasions attempting to start her and lock the tilt. Grrr. I fell in the lake at about 10 this morning while attempting to get the cargo net around the boat to sling it to the next lake. There is this particular mixture of silt and boulder that sucks you in up to your ankles. You then trip because you can’t SEE the boulders while the silt is all stirred up. Long story short: Heidi is wet and clammy for the rest of the day. This happened to Kathryn about 3 days ago. Nothing like wet bum all day.

On the topic of anchors and tundra imponderables: how is it possible to have an anchor so heavy that you cannot lift it into the boat yet not heavy enough to keep you in one spot? We have now attached a large bag of rocks to our super-hooker (NOT SO HOOKY)!

Lamenting the loss of Tim and Paul. Tim and Paul from Golder have been here for a month and left today. They caught fish for us, helped us process samples late into the night, entertained us, laughed at our geeky jokes, brought us grapefruit, gas, and other supplies to the weatherhaven, picked up our samples, took our safety calls every evening….in short, Tim and Paul are fantabulous. And today they left. Sigh. We decided to write a song in their honour.

Ahem.

(To the tune of Hey Jude – Beatles)

Fish dudes
Where have you gone?
You’ve made us sad today
By leaving Windy camp
Remember, when you brought us all of those charr
And we stayed up la-ate, processing samples
Da na na na na na na na na na YEAH!
Da na na na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na
Fish dudes
Da na na na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na
We thank you
Da na na na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na
Fish dudes
Da na na na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na
We miss you

Ah, Tim and Paul, we hope that you are drinking beer for us as we write this. Tim, you also had other instructions. You can multi-task with beer if you like. And Paul, if you can pull it off, give ‘er. For us, because we can’t.

Heidi is lying face down on the tundra because of:

a) a particularly tasty blueberry patch

b) a particularly devilish tundra tussock

c) sheer exhaustion

d) all of the above

Anchors and Such Useful Devices : In which Kathryn and Heidi discover that if you laugh hard enough, you stay warm

When we go water sampling, we have a number of bottles to fill with water taken from different depths, at a specific location on the lake. This naturally involves the need for a good anchor. I believe past entries have alluded to our issues on this front.... well, the other day, we achieved new heights in our ongoing drama of anchors.

There is another fisheries crew here right now doing some baseline surveys for the EIA, and they're sampling some of the same lakes as us. Tim and Paul have been a fantastic help over the last weeks, catching fish, helping us process them, bringing us grapefruit out at our Doris Lake haven... Well a couple of days ago, they set up a Fyke net in one of our study lakes. The tarp and mallet were left neatly folded on shore. The rope was very efficiently, and unfortunately, rolled up and stored in the boat - their boat. So when we went to take down the net (in which we had caught about 8,000 ninespined stickleback; okay, so it was only 552 but Tim and I had to measure each little 2" one of them), well, no rope to bundle it back together with.

No worries, we would just poach some rope from our anchor line. Seemed like a great idea.

Until we got onto our next sample lake the next day and I realised we had forgotten to put extra sideline in the boat.

Let me digress for a moment, to explain the cantankerous nature of sideline. This is thin nylon cord used for most fisheries stuff. I've decided the critical non-tangling lenght for sideline is 2 inches. It sees itself and gets into knots. Tight knots. That you cannot undo with your bone-chilled fingers, in the rain, while trying to get your nets in and out. Oh yeah; sideline will also tangle around anythign and everything within a 10 m radius.

Anyway. So we are doing our usual cruising around in circles trying to find our waypoint (yes, I know there are about 1000 satellites up here; somehow, our GPS still never works properly).

"Heidi," quoth I, "how deep is this lake?"
"Oh, about 15 m."

Ah.

"Let's take stock. We have a 15 m deep lake. We currently have a 7 m anchor line. We have no spare rope. We cannot find our waypoint. In other news, our GPS batteries are dying."

What we did have, fortunately, was a secchi disk. This is a black-and-white disk used to measure visibility in the lakes.

Meanwhile, Heidi was excavating for the spare batteries in the bottom of her bag. She found 3 pairs of spare gloves, some scarves, spare pens, emergency Clif bar, trail mix from 2 months ago... and eventually, the batteries. Which prompted my next rant. Why is everything always on the bottom of a bag? Is there, in fact, no top to a bag? Do bags consist entirely of bottom???

"Heidi," I said, when we finally found our waypoint, as I prepared to toss overboard our anchore, tied to the secchi disk, whose rope was spliced to the anchor rope, "you realise that if this fails, we will lose our anchor, our secchi, and our position?"

Did I mention that it was blowing a gale out of the north and that all of the other crews had already been pulled and gone back to camp, because the "Irish mist" was so thick and low that the chopper pilots were worried they couldn't fly?

We found ourselves blowing clear across the lake and every now and then, I'd pull in the anchor, we'd fire up the motor and teh GPS, and try to find our waypoint again for long enough to take another water grab to fill a few bottles.

About the 4th or 5th time we were zooming back across teh lake, having blown 200m off our position in 10 minutes, I turned to Heidi.

"Heidi," I said. "I didn't pull the anchor in that time."

We looked behind us, to see our anchor - and secchi disk - surfing cheerfully along the surface behind us.

Heidi’s first night of reflection

It is day 9 of our little sojourn on the tundra and this is the first night that we are not up until stupid o’clock processing fish or painstakingly plucking mysid shrimp from small trays. We only have 2 days left out here and then it’s back to the hustle and bustle of camp to do our water sampling. This makes me sad; it is beautiful and peaceful in our little camp. We are staying in a small weather haven on the north end of Doris Lake. Doris haven is slightly decrepit: the seams of the tent tarp are ripping out and where the poles touch the tarp we have mini skylights. A few repairs with enviro-matting, vapour barrier, and tuck tape have done wonders. It certainly helps that the weather has been absolutely unbelievable. In my time here in 2004 and 2005 (approx 8 weeks in total) I experienced 5-7 days of nice weather (spread out over those 8 weeks). This summer, the weather thus far has been fantastic. Clear, sunny, never-ending skies and 20 degrees make for great working days, especially when the sun sets at midnight and rises again at 12:30.

Our camp is nestled at the bottom of the Doris mesa, a flat-topped red-tinted mountain with many clefts and ridges. On clear nights, the sun sets behind the mesa and the view is ethereal. A few nights ago, we got a view of the ocean with all the islands and mesas just before twilight, when everything becomes very calm and quiet. We still have plans to climb the mesa to watch the sunset over the bay but we’re usually processing samples. Hopefully we’ll make it up before the end of the summer.

Sometimes I feel completely overwhelmed by how privileged I am to be here. Our life here is very simple. Gather water, filter water, eat, do dishes, work, check-in with main camp every night, attempt to plan the next day. The sampling has gone slightly slower than I had hoped, but I don’t have a ton of experience collecting benthic invertebrate samples and it takes a LONG TIME to collect 10 g of invertebrates in Arctic lakes. Kathryn bought a book on Arctic plants in the Yellowknife airport and I am slowly learning some of them. The red bearberries and blueberries are ripe right now so sometimes when we are walking through the hummocks we will suddenly collapse to our knees and forage for a few minutes in a particularly good patch. There are also crowberries and lingonberries, but apparently the lingonberries aren’t fully ripe until after the first frost. We also tried eating sorrel the other day. It is packed with vitamin C and, as advertised, tastes like rhubarb! Botany is all about the edibles (you may recall our earlier lichen experiments)! The small plants and animals are always full of surprises, and I will be busy for the foreseeable future trying to sort out the ground-cover plants and keeping the sik-sik from stealing all of our tent insulation.

The landscape here reminds me a bit of the prairies. The sky is limitless; you can almost tell the earth is round when you look at the horizon. The ridges, bedrock outcrops, and mesas are dramatic and imposing but the tussocks and vegetation are subtle in the extreme. Kathryn remarked that everything here feels young, and I agree with her. It feels raw, edgy, and pure. The hot concrete of the city in summer feels a million miles away. This is not to say that we would not enjoy a margarita on a patio right now!
It was strange the other day, though. Lots of time one has to endure field work. It’s often snowing, rainy, cold, excruciatingly windy, or a combination. The other day we were driving to the outflow of the lake and I thought, “What would I like to be doing right now?” I wasn’t tired, so I didn’t want to be sleeping. I wasn’t hungry (this is a miracle). I wasn’t too hot or too cold. I came to the conclusion that where I wanted to be was here, exploring a part of this world that few people get to see and discovering that these lakes have caddisflies, mysids, and tadpole shrimp, not to mention emerald shiners (HELLOOO range extension).

The wind blows through my hair that is currently long enough to be in my eyes and not long enough to be in a ponytail. I tromp around camp in my too-big Columbia pants (they were out of women’s sizes), a dirt-streaked white sun shirt, a ball cap from the Fishin’ Hole, and my rubber boots. There are black flies crawling up under my sunglasses and bouncing off my eyeballs and I am glad to be grounded. Here.

- Heidi

How to Poo on the Tundra

Step 1: Acquire permit. No, really! Our research permit details specific requirements for latrine construction.

Step 2: Scout appropriately wind-swept tundra location. ( windy is good: keeps the bugs away). Preferably, choose a previously-disturbed site. Since most of this area has been drilled at one point or another as part of the explorations, finding disturbed sites is not hard. Actually, most of our "yard" at the Doris Lake weather haven is disturbed.

Step 3: Assemble implements. Trowel, ziplocs... you get the idea.

Step 4: Dig hole.

Step 5: Dig new hole. Our attempts to dig a multi-use latrine were foiled by permafrost. I dug a lovely 2' deep pit; by early the next morning, it had filled with water. Stupid tundra bog.

Tundra wagons in action!


We are now back in Windy Camp after 2 weeks on our own in our peaceful Doris Lake weather haven, about a 3 hour hike from here. Putting our tundra wagons into action was an adventure!

First foray with the wagons: we made it as far as the machine shop at the edge of camp, where we stopped to do some upgrades and adjustments...

Then we were off to the races! Here you can see Heidi at the edge of camp, and heading for the hills.

Julie Andrews and the Art of Small Motor Repair

We started today bright-eyed and, in Kathryn’s case, freshly-shorn. Hair getting a little scraggly, and naturally, Donovan has a barber set. The muskoxen will no doubt approve of her new ‘50’s bob. When Donovan was done putting away his hair clips and scissors, Kathryn asked, “so, do you have any other tricks?”

“Get me a banana.”

We’ll leave the details to your imagination.

So, fashionably coiffed, we set out cheerfully for our day. Why so cheerful, you ask? : only two lakes left to go in this round of sampling! We’d be done by early afternoon, and ready to get started on Heidi’s research (finally).

Ah, fools we be.

For this sampling, our boat is slung by helicopter from one lake to the next. This involves a net around the boat, carried on a long line under the chopper. One of the ongoing problems we’ve had with our boat (other than the leaking….) has been finding an anchor that will keep us in one place while we’re sampling – we just drift if it’s at all windy. Our burlap bags full of rocks are only moderately successful, since if they’re heavy enough to hold us, we can hardly lift them back into the boat. Anyway, we finally found a thread rod grappling hook that we’ve attached to our burlap bag of rocks.

Well. An unfortunate incident involving the grappling hook, the sling, and an unbalanced boat tore a tube from our motor.

9 am. Arrival at PO Lake. “Let’s take stock,” Heidi said. “We have one non-functional motor. We have no anchor. We have a GPS that rarely functions. Excellent.”

Not to be deterred, we examined the broken piece – a random grey tube that connects to a seemingly dead-end screw-cap.

9:15 am. “Let’s take stock. We have no tool kit (yes, we know we should have a tool kit). We have some duct tape wrapped around Kathryn’s water bottle.”

9:27 am. “Let’s take stock. It is raining. Duct tape does not stick when wet. What else do we have?”

We remember that we have sport tape and pro-wrap, randomly tossed in Heidi’s pack after taping up Paul’s sprained ankle yesterday (yes, we know we should have a full first aid kit).

9:35 am. "Let's take stock. Turns out that sport tape works much better than duct tape when it’s wet." Meanwhile, Heidi has deduced that the random grey tube, since it goes nowhere, must somehow create a vacuum for the motor. We must recreate this seal.

10:23 am. Ingenious field repair complete: sport tape, a latex glove, a layer of prowrap (since sport tape doesn’t stick to latex), and then some serious sport tape wrapping. Voila! MacGyver, we miss you.

Okay, okay, so the hose did leak and smoke. But hey, it got us around the lake. For a while, anyway.

Did I mention the pouring rain?

Our day ended as we carried the 80 lb motor up a hummocky, steep, clay-slick slope to lurch it into the chopper. We have a new repair system now, though, involving a piece of washing machine, and a drywall anchor. Don’t ask!

Today’s field song, to the tune of “My Favourite Things” from Sound of Music. Ahem.

Sunshine on tundra and not being bitten
Zippers that zip up and warm woollen mittens
Brown paper packages sent up by mom
Days that I don’t have a wet, itchy bum! (ever gotten wet while INSIDE neoprene waders?)

When the fly bites,
When the motor calves,
When everything’s messed up
I simply remember my 10 lbs of chocolate
and pour some spiked coffee in my cup*

Chocolate rice krispies and smores with marshmallow
Batteries that charge up** and lipbalm with aloe
Outflows he’s marked with some bright orange flag***
Donnie, our medic, the dancing Newf gag!

[chorus]

Silky glove liners and peppermint tea
Warm sunny days when we sample the sea
Anchors that hold us in the deepest spot****
Veggie bean curry in my camping pot!

[chorus]

Shelters that heat up and Sharpies that write*****
Tents that don’t burn down and choppers in sight
Neoprene waders and warmers of fleece
Motors that start up and stay in one piece!!!!

When the fly bites,
When the motor calves,
When everything’s messed up
I simply remember my 10 lbs of chocolate
And pour some spiked coffee in my cup!

* actually, we’re dreaming here: it’s a dry camp
** actually, we’re dreaming here: even with charged batteries, the radios can be a tad spotty. Although we still love our radio.
*** dreaming, again; we have spent a lot of time walking along creeks trying to spot a piece of blue rope to mark the sample site
**** see comments above
***** dreaming! the danged things don’t work in the rain

Ah, well, summer was nice.

Apparently, I should not have gloated quite so much about our luscious weather lately; we had a sudden switch this afternoon. Very quick - from hot and sunny to ripping wind and rainy, in the space of about 10 minutes. Remember when Ernie would sing in the bathtub? Well, today's field song was

Rubber jacket, you're the one
You make field work so much fun
Rubber jacket, I'm awfully fond of youuuuuuu
(boop, boop, boo-doo be-doop)

Due to an unfortunate zipper event, Heidi was forced to alter this song:

Rubber jacket, I hate you
You crapped out and it's only week two
Rubber jacket, I'm awfully mad at youuuuuuu

So, we were all layered up for water sampling on an Arctic lake in a hurricane: wool toques, neck warmers, fleece, rubber jacket, gloves... and somehow between finishing our sampling and getting off the chopper back at camp, it warmed up again. We looked rather foolish as we headed for our tent in the camp's 20C with all of our woollies on!

We did have one other small field crisis today: the bag of snacks somehow got left behind. By 5:30, we were running out of juice. Kathryn got stalled with the anchor 1/2 way back in the boat... back on shore, Heidi (face down in the tundra) suddenly asked, "Can you eat lichen?"
(the answer: yes; but it is particularly tasteless. We picture the poor caribou, saying to themselves, "Crispy. That's all it is: crisp. No matter how much it rains on this freakin' tundra, this stuff is always crispy.")

Meanwhile our medic, Donovan, became very concerned by his falling ratings on the HotOrNot website – it was time to update his photo. Well, naturally we offered to have a photo shoot! Donovan flew into a bit of a panic: “oh, I’ve not done my hair for days!” but showed up an hour later, coiffed, and with a suitcase of wardrobe options in tow. “I loves having my picture taken!” Apparently one of the new photos is now up to an 8.7 rating, with 56 votes cast so far. We await further results with baited breath…

Well, it has been a busy but lovely past week on the Arctic coast! We’re currently running about water quality sampling as part of our Golder contract. Part of this is sampling along the outlets for the lakes, which are usually marshy, twisty, and very buggy.Yesterday, we just couldn't face a 600 m trek across teh hummocky tundra, in our neoprene waders, carrying multitudes of heavy, irregularly shaped sampling equipment, from where the lake became too shallow for our motor. So, we paddled 'er in! We sang several happy voyageur songs...

We have had phenomenal weather for the past week – clear, sunny, and warm, with only a few showers or gusts. We even went skinny dipping in one of our lakes today. Heidi claims that she has never before seen such lovely days up here. [she took this picture of the Arctic Ocean and Roberts Bay, exclaiming "it has never been this nice and calm here in the history of the world". This prompts Kathryn to wonder if we are using up our entire season’s quota of nice days now, while we’re contracting, instead of having them for later, when we’re dragging 200 lb wagons across the tundra?

Other memorable moments lately have included when one of the helicopter pilots accidentally sent our boat out across the lake with the wind from his rotors (after he had dropped it there for us; it went sailing away, still wrapped in the transport webbing). Reactions on shore included panic, rage, disbelief, and hilarity as he (futilely) attempted to blow it back using his tail rotor. Kathryn has now adapted an age-old favourite humn:

Pierre, blow the boat ashore... Halleluja...

Perhaps it's the heat, but we've been coming up with a number of new filed songs. Today's most popular one was (to the tune of "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...")

I've got a lovely bunch of mosquitos
There they are, buzzing in my net
Big ones, small ones, some of them full of my blood....

Yeah. Well. It's hot. It's buggy.

From wrasslin’ trout to nearly burning down our tent, today was eventful.

As one way of paying for the project, we’re doing some contract work for Golder Associates while we’re up here. Golder is currently conducting baseline and environmental impact assessment work for Miramar Mines, who is in the permit process for a new gold mine. (It was while working on this project that Heidi had her wonderful, awful idea that brought us here this summer).

An exploration drill near camp.

Well, this work brings some luxuries: such as, staying in the Miramar camp at Windy Lake for portions of our work. A heated tent! A cook! A crazy gay Newfie medic! (feel the magic, Donovan). A heated tent, you say? How is it heated, exactly, when you are far above treeline? Ah, the wonders of diesel. Fumes and environmental impacts aside, we are not displeased with our diesel stove and insulated tent – it has been hovering around 4 C and rainy for much of the time we’ve been here. Unfortunately, our stove proved to be a wee bit on the not-so-happy side… Fortunately for us, someone happened to be walking past and heard the smoke alarm, and turned our red-hot-and-smoking-madly stove off before any real damage was done, so we have not lost our warm woollies, our data, or – heaven forbid! – our weeks of dehydrated food. The gods have thrown so many obstacles in Heidi’s path that Kathryn sees this near-miss as an endorsement for the project to proceed (else the gods would have burned our tent to the ground).

This work with Golder and Miramar also puts us at a fish fence monitoring charr movements between Robert’s Lake and Robert’s Bay (youngsters moving out to eat at sea, adults moving back to spawn). Boy, there are some big fish around here! Fiesty, too. We have rather an amusing video of Heidi wrestling a 28 lb lake trout onto a measuring board (perhaps I should have been helping instead of filming?).

We also, today, discovered a fascinating new type of field conditions. Now, we’ve all been out in the rain. We’ve all been out with lots of bugs. Today, we discovered rainy, WITH BUGS. And I mean lots of ‘em. In fact, once it started raining, there were MORE mosquitos than there had been before. We can report that rubber jacket with bug shirt is not a comfortable combination; we tried a few variations – Heidi preferred rubber jacket with bug shirt on top. Kathryn opted for rubber jacket on top. After several hours of testing and analysis (spreadsheet available upon request : we are, after all, scientists!), our recommendation, should you find yourself in this unusual heavy rain with heavy bugs situation: get indoors. Quickly.

Note the heavy swarms all around!

Gargantuan thanks!

In mounting this extremely improbable project, I often thought, "wow, I've had a lot of pie-in-the-sky ideas, but most of them don't get this far." The jury's still out on whether this is going to turn to be a bad idea or a good idea, but I'm leaning toward good. There are a lot of reasons why we have made it this far and some are listed below. The rest of you - all of my friends and family that have put up with "Heidi the insane stressball" over the last couple of months - THANK YOU. You have calmed me down over the phone, come up to Edmonton to celebrate my birthday, and generally kept me sane. I can't thank all of you enough - this wouldn't be happening if it weren't for your donations of time, energy, equipment, and good ideas!! I have the best friends and family in the world!

Travel
- Guy Wight. Guy, we would not be up here without your help, THANK YOU SO MUCH for getting us to Cambridge.
- Fred Hamilton (runs the charter company out of Cambridge Bay).
- Frank in Cambridge Bay that found us a place to stay, some food, and white gas.

Wagon construction (the bane of my existence for the last three months)
- John Dunn and Sandy Briggs (the idea and many helpful hints)
- Harvey Thiessen (design, helping me buy the materials, cutting and drilling our pieces)
- Kelly Colwell (welding - for free!)
- Ed Bouffard (enduring many emails and being super helpful with pole construction)
- Walter (Thea's dad who lined up Kelly Colwell)
- Steph Neufeld, Gary Neufeld, Ian Miller, Dustin Miller (initial chassis design)
- Erik Allen (drilling all of our pole pieces and final construction)

Food preparation and dehydrating
- Selma Losic, Stella Swanson, Jason Swanson, Kathryn

Loans/donations/ equipment discounts
- Vince St Louis (shotguns, survival suit)
- Gary at Wholesale Sports
- All of the staff at Fishin' Hole West Edmonton Mall and southside
- Bob at Track 'N' Trail

Logistics
- Mike Braeuer. Mike, what can I say? Without you, we have NO gear and NO project. Thank you.
- Golder Associates Ltd and Miramar Hope Bay Ltd
- Greg Newhouse. Greg, thank you for trooping all over Vancouver in an outboard motor search for a second cousin (once removed)?
- Kent Kristensen

Funding and in-kind support
- Miramar Hope Bay Ltd
- Golder Associates Ltd
- Northern Scientific Training Program
- NSERC
- Canadian Northern Studies Trust

Special recognition
- Karen Kidd. There are only a few supervisors that would actually let me try to pull this off.
- Erik Allen, Stella Swanson. Thanks for helping us pull this out of the fire in the last two weeks.
- Steph Neufeld, Selma Losic. Thank you for listening to me RANT for the last 2 months.
- Kathryn - The Intrepid Research Associate (cue trumpet fanfare). Perhaps you didn't know exactly the gong show to which you were committing yourself, but you had a pretty good idea. And you know, there's just not a lot of people who will quit their perfectly good day job to take an extremely low-paying temporary job in the Arctic for a summer.

And NOW, we must find some charr (cue military march).

- Heidi

a view of Little Roberts Lake


a beautiful prickly saxifrage










woolly lupine - even the flowers here have a dense coat of fur to keep warm!









a plover nest (the danged silly birds just plop their eggs down in the middle of the tundra - hard to walk around without worrying about squishing some)


and some more lovely flowers...

lupines and saxifrage








paintbrush (Castilleja sp)

les fleurs du printemps...




mountain avens and other beauties





few-flowered lousewort

Arctic lousewort

Arrival!

With only a few glitches... such as finding our charter pilot, Fred. Heidi's technique of wandering the Cambridge Bay, NU airport calling "Fred! Fred!" turned out to be quite successful. The lady from the airline counter came over asking "are you looking for Fred Hamilton?" Well, yes, actually - and since she was his niece, she called around to all of his various haunts until she tracked him down for us.

Next challenge: getting our sleds and gear into a rather small plane. We'd been expecting a Beaver - but were getting a Cesna - thank goodness most of our sampling gear had already been shipped up.

Well, and at least I felt secure during any turbulence!

Where the heck are we going?

We're establishing small, remote camps on the Arctic coast and will be living there for 8-10 weeks during summers 2006 and 2007 (July-September). The nearest communities are Umingmaktok (65 km west) and Bathurst Inlet (110 km west). Because the tundra is sensitive in this area, we will not be able to use any motorized vehicles on land. We will be flown into our campsite by a chartered float plane from Cambridge Bay and moving between our research sites on foot with tundra wagons and backpacks.

All of our scientific and communication equipment (small freezer, digital camera, computer, radios, satellite phone) will be run/recharged from solar panels.

Our camp will be located at 68°10’18.95’’ N, 106°33’36.35’’W. Summer temperatures (July-August) range from 30°C with substantial blackfly and mosquito populations to -15°C with driving ice pellets from the coast (no bugs when it’s cold, though!).

We are transporting our zodiac, motor, and fishing gear between lakes with backpacks and tundra wagons. There are healthy populations of wolverines, grizzly bears, and Arctic wolves in the area so our camp and sample processing sites will be protected with electric fences.

Mounting the Expedition - Step Two - Creating the Carts

Have I mentioned that we'll be fully self-propelled for this research? At least, on the land-based portions? As in, no helicopter support.

This is where Heidi's wonderful, awful idea comes into play. A wagon, she thought to herself, a lovely little light-weight, heavy-duty wagon to pull behind us. Surely someone else has attepted to trek across sensitive tundra in the summer with lots of gear; a cart design must already exist? But of course, that's how Heidi got the idea for this insane project in the first place; the fateful in-flight magazine. John Dunn and Sandy Briggs had rigged up the whizziest carts ever on one of their many Arctic expeditions. It couldn't be that hard, she would just google these guys, email them, and be off to the races. HOWEVER, the University of New Brunswick email server didn't see fit to forward Heidi the note from John giving instructions on sled design (she found this out two months later, BURNING FIERY PITS OF DEATH!). That's okay, Heidi should recover in about a decade.

One month, 34 trips to the hardware store, 2 trips to a welder, 1 trip to Montana, 4 trips to specialty nut & bolt stores, approximately 47 internet search hours, a final email plea to John Dunn (from Heidi's yahoo account!) and many very loud expletives later, we had: a prototype.
(this lovely sketch was done by Heidi's friend Ang's father; the chassis was welded by her friend Steph's brother's girlfriend's dad's acquaintance (cousin, maybe?))


Roleez (C) wheels - lightweight, low-impact wonders! And boy, is aluminium light...

We tried a few different attachment systems - the first idea, courtesy of Ed Bouffard, was to have flexible joint at the sled end, a stong yet flexible pole, and then hook into the waist band of a pack. You'll note that the system on the left in this photo involves duct tape: we ultimately decided that it is unwise to have duct tape as part of the primary design...

At the end of the day, we have two designs: one, a modification of ski pulk pole design by Ed in Minnesota, with rotating ball joints at the sled end and strong flexible fibreglass poles (I won't even bother mentioning how hard it was to find a machine shop in Edmonton that would thread fibreglass; and does anyone know where to find 5/16-13 to 1/4-20 reducing couplers???); the second system, courtesy of John Dunn, has aluminum poles, webbing, pvc pipe, and a few bolts...

Mounting the Expedition - Step 1 - Dehydrate 6 Weeks of Food

3 home dehydrators running 24hours a day for a month... Since we're carting all of our gear with us on foot (including a Zodiac, outboard motor, nets, water quality and fishing gear) we wanted to be using as little fuel as possible (it is also frequently unpleasant or danged near impossible to cook up north near the coast, given the propensity for either driving ice pellets or malicious mosquito swarms). Backpacking meals have been forever transformed by our discovery of the book "Backpack Gourmet", with delicious and nutritious meals we pre-cooked and dehydrated - honestly, what could taste better on the tundra than multi-mushroom stroganoff cooked with plenty of red wine? Even if the rehydration step doesn't go quite as smoothly as we'd like?
(we won't mention the dehydrating experiments gone awry, such as cottage cheese...)


"Gee it's a good thing we're both small and don't eat much"
Each bucket will hold (in theory) one week's food. Minus snacks, of course, and boy were we excited to find 2 lb blocks of Lindt dark chocolate in a specialty kitchen store! Heidi is, once again, on the phone with the Firearms Licencing Centre folks as she sorts trail mix. Who knew that the folks at Miramichi, NB wouldn't have a clue what a courier way bill is? And would somehow confuse the name "Heidi Swanson" for "Robert Courchesne", of Bowman, QC, and courier us the wrong licence 2 days before we were scheduled to fly to Nunavut with our borrowed shotguns?

This research expedition is field season #1 of Heidi Swanson's PhD research in Eco-toxicology through the University of New Brunswick. In summer 2005, while doing some consulting work in Nunavut, Heidi started wondering about contaminant levels in Arctic lakes, and ecological tranfer pathways - about how salmon on the Pacific coast bring their contaminant-laden bodies upstream, and deposit not only their eggs and spawn but also the metals, PCB's, and other toxins that have built up in their flesh. Are sea-run Arctic Charr also taking contaminants from the ocean, and bringing them into freshwater and terrestrial systems when they return to spawn? And how could an under-funded graduate student go about answering this question? Without helicopter support?

On her way back from the Arctic that summer, Heidi came across an article in the in-flight magazine about a photo expedition through an isolated arctic park. Entirely human-powered, these men spent 2 months trekking across the tundra with their gear in specially-designed sleds they pulled behind them.

And so Heidi had an idea. Heidi had a wonderful, awful idea. Involving a fisheries research study conducted without any air support. In the high arctic. The gods threw many obstacles in her way - cleverly disguised as personnel with various research councils, Canada's Firearms Registry, funding agencies... Never one to shrink from challenge (some would call her pathologically stubborn) the wonderful, awful idea coalesced into this summer's expedition. Her friend Kathryn quit her job to run away to the Arctic for the summer. Her boyfriend endured the clutter as we launched an Arctic expedition from their one bedroom Edmonton apartment...