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...