Charr Research 2006- ???

2012-01-07T20:25:00.000-08:00

Our Transportation Plan Backfires on Us (written by Chris and edited by Heidi) (December 10th)

[BANG. POP. Rev….BANG.]

Chris: “Go ahead and shut it down.”

Heidi: “What’s going on? Did I break it?”

Chris: “I’m sure you didn’t break it, but I’m not sure what is wrong.”

We had just finished fishing at a spot that was only about 1mile (1.6 km) south of the cabin and Heidi had driven the snow machine until we came to a stop just at the lake’s edge at the cabin. The snow machine started back-firing and wouldn’t go any further. Heidi made a few suggestions/questions about what it might be and then quickly surmised that Chris needed some time alone with the uncooperative snow machine. She went about the task of hauling gear the 100 m or so to the cabin. Chris raised the cowling and started poking around to figure out what the problem could be. Perplexed, Chris called a friend in Anchorage.

Chris: “Hi, Paul. I’ve got a little problem with the snow machine. Can you help me?”

Paul: “Sure, what…”[dead silence as the sat phone dropped the call]

Chris goes through the 2-minute drill of dialing the phone and waiting for the satellite. This happens three more times.

Paul: “I know. Satellite phone dropped us. So, what’s up with the snow machine?”

Chris: “Well, it was functioning perfectly and then began backfiring and won’t make enough power to move. But it seems to idle okay. “

Paul: “Have you been running in a lot of blowing snow?”

Chris: [Picturing the view we had on the ride back the night before in a 30 knot crosswind when we used the direction of the snow to aim for the cabin – this is actually another anecdote*.] “Uh, yeah, we don’t do much else.”

Paul: “Well, I bet you have carb ice then. “

Chris: “Ah! That makes sense.”

Paul: “What’s the temperature right now?”

Chris: “Hmm…I’m guessing it’s minus 20 today.”

Paul: “Ohh…it’s going to be hard to get that warm enough. “

So, carburetor ice (or carb ice) can block the flow of fuel to the engine, which can kill it. In our case, Paul (who owns this snow machine and one just like it at home) thought that we picked up some of that blowing snow, which was now coating the inside of the carb. Sounded reasonable.

To get the carburetor warm enough to melt the ice, Chris decided to wrap the cowling with his down sleeping bag, build a snow berm to block the wind, and let the machine run until everything got warm enough to melt the carb ice. Then, he put some duct tape (can’t have a bush repair without duct tape) over the cowl openings in the hopes that we could get a little warmer running temperature. After about an hour, his sleeping bag was completely saturated in hydrocarbons (luckily he had a clean one in the cabin, otherwise he would have asphyxiated while sleeping) and the surface of the cowling was warm to the touch. Great. That carb ice had to be gone.

Chris hopped (well, waddled, let’s be honest – he was wearing a LOT of clothes) on the snow machine, gunned it and drove around for about 200 meters, when…

BANG. POP. REVVVVVVV….same thing all over again

[Insert foul language of your choosing that Heidi could hear from inside the cabin]

At this point, Chris came into the cabin for a snack and a warm-up. Heidi was packing. She looked up when Chris came in the door and quickly surmised that asking any questions was unwise. There is a natural division of labour that evolves during field trips, usually based on ownership and/or experience. For instance, Heidi was in charge of all things gill net during the summer sampling. The gill nets were hers, and she nets a LOT. Chris has more experience with motors, planes, snow machines, etc, and the machine belongs to Chris’ friend. When the person ‘in charge’ of a certain piece of equipment is facing a potentially trip-threatening problem, it is generally wise to shut the **** up until your assistance is requested.

Heidi’s brain to Chris’s brain: “Can we bring the snow machine inside?” (This was communicated by Heidi looking contemplatively at the door, not by speaking).

Chris: “I thought of that and measured. No dice.”

Heidi: “Rats and squirrels, as they say.”

Chris: “Let’s pour boiling water on the carb. That will do it.”

No. It didn’t.

Okay, another hour under the sleeping bag and a large tarp.

Nothing. Same problem.

Paul was called again.

Paul: “Wow. Let me think. The carb is attached to a black rubber boot with a spring clamp. You could remove that and look in the carb to see if it is clear or if something has lodged in there.”

At this point, Chris was stressed. Here they were with a snow machine that did NOT machine over snow. He had to fix it so they could take it back to Lonely. Tomorrow. And we still had to move a bunch of fuel and equipment over to the other cabin. Also, the machine was borrowed! We couldn’t just abandon it at the cabin until Spring. Although, Chris thought, if he didn’t get it running, he might just have to do that and arrange for us to get picked up here. Oh…that was not good. [Heidi edit: This would be a MAJOR loss of Alaska man-points. Also, we left the CONEX at Lonely looking locked, but not locked because the lock had frozen solid and we were too frozen solid to thaw it out and lock it before we left. Also, our snow machine helmets were there. We couldn’t get them on when we left Lonely, because they were frozen solid. Heidi chose not to remind Chris of this.]

In order to take off the carb boot, Chris had to work bare handed. That meant, he could do a few minutes at a time and, then, had to revive his hands in his jacket. Off came the boot (being VERY CAREFUL not to lose the spring or any of the other small bits in the pitch dark). Chris stuck his head in the cowling and eased the carburetor over to look inside. Nothing. No ice, no foreign objects, just a perfect looking carburetor.

Damn.

Dejected, Chris went back to putting the rubber boot back on the carb. The boot was attached between a black plastic box and the carb. As Chris was reattaching the spring clamps, he realized that the black box was held together by two bolts that also held a solenoid to the spark plug and one of the nuts was missing and the other was very loose (resulting in a faulty ground to the solenoid – and hence the misfiring which resulted in the backfiring.) ARGH!!!! Why didn’t he notice something so obvious? [Heidi edit: Seriously? You think this was obvious? Please.] Chris rummaged around and found a wing nut on one of the ice fishing tip-ups. With that in place and the other nut tightened…everything ran perfectly!

We ended up losing a day due to this little incident. However, it happened within 100 m of the cabin. Clearly, karma was on our side. The day before, we were over 20 miles from the cabin and it was -30 with a 30 knot wind. The day before that we were 20 miles from the cabin and Heidi got so cold that she had to stamp up and down a patch of ice for 20 minutes while singing Christmas carols to herself. This could have been MUCH worse.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
*Anecdote. Driving back from fishing on that day (we refer to it as “that day”, as it was colder and windier and scarier than any other day), Chris stopped for the 20 millionth time and said, “Heids, we’re just not making any progress. The GPS won’t run for any longer than 10 minutes, and there is no good light today and no landmarks. We’re all over the place. It worked okay when you were sitting backwards and could steer me by staring at the moon, but you can’t see that anymore, either.”

Heidi: “Wait for the GPS to warm up. Then when we’re running again, memorize the angle that we’re crossing the blowing snow at. Memorize where it’s hitting your face. Then hold that angle. Hopefully the wind doesn’t shift.”

Chris: “Ah, blonde Inuit, how in the hell did you come up with that?”

Heidi: “Driving on the south Saskatchewan prairie. When it’s blowing snow, which is 4 months of every year, and it’s night, you often can’t see the road for a few seconds at a time. But the road is straight, because it is the prairies. So I memorize how the snow looks to avoid the ditch.”

Chris (working his frozen thumb back into the trigger position): “Huh. Sounds reasonable.”

Good grief.

2012-01-03T21:38:00.000-08:00

A typical day fishing (December 6-9, 2011)

[Slam goes front door]

Chris: “I think it might be warmer outside. I took my hands outside of my mitts to refuel the stove and they don’t ache. My hands, that is.”

Heidi: “Sweet. Let’s catch some fish!”

[15 minutes of dressing later]

[20 minutes of packing later]

[1.5 minutes of last-minute babybel-cramming later]

[30 minutes of snow machining later]

Heidi (yelling): “All I can smell is exhaust. Also, I’m starting to lose feeling in my right foot, despite foot warmers and these $200 boots.”

Chris: “Same here.”

Heidi: “They’re supposed to be good to -100C or -148F.”

Chris: “Thus, we can only conclude that it is below -148F. I hate it when that happens.”

[2 minutes later, after Heidi does windmills, karate kicks, and otherwise stomps around to get warm, and Chris warms up the GPS, we resume our positions on the snow machine]

[Repeat 30 minutes of snow machine, 2-6 minutes of warm up, several times]

Chris: “We’re here. Let’s drill some holes. Of course, this would be easier if we hadn’t broken the auger. I was told not to buy Eskimo augers.”

Heidi: “Why did you buy one, then?”

Chris: “They didn’t have any Jiffy augers in Anchorage. I would have had to go to Wasilla.”

Heidi: “Where the heck is that?”

Chris: “It’s where Sarah Palin is from.”

Heidi: “Okay, well, we have most of an auger. And we can operate it, as long as we divide the labour into holding the auger and operating the throttle.”

Chris: “This would also be easier if my thumb wasn’t permanently frozen.”

[After drilling holes, Heidi and Chris stare at each other]

Heidi’s brain to Chris’ brain: “So……who’s going to take off their mitts and put the bait on the hooks?”

Chris’ brain to Heidi’s brain: “Someone also has to operate a pair of pliers. This will be next to impossible.”

Heidi’s brain and Chris’ brain: “Both will take mitts off.”

[35 minutes later, all tip-ups are set, and Heidi is jigging. Chris is going from hole to hole and slushing. Holes tend to freeze up quickly on this lake (quelle surprise)]

[20 minutes later, Heidi and Chris switch, without saying anything. Repeat several times.]

Heidi: “I think I’m hungry. All of my snacks are frozen in my pocket. Also, I don’t want to take off my mitt to get into my pocket.”

Chris: “I think the lake trout have been extirpated from this lake.”

Heidi: “Time to cut bait and return to the land of zucchini casserole and a stove???”

[Repeat most of first half of this post. Substitute playing tag for windmills and karate kicks]

2011-12-31T19:11:00.000-08:00

First Day at Tesh (December 5, 2011)

8:00 am – BANG…..bang….clang……whoooosh.

Heidi: “Sounds windy.”

Chris: “I’m going outside to fill up the snow bucket.”

[Bang goes door]

“HOLY *****!!!” [Muffled yell from outside]

[BANG]

[Crash]

Chris comes in, panting slightly.

Chris: “The wind whipped the bucket right out of my hand. I can’t stand up out there.”

Heidi: “Yikes.”

Chris: “We won’t be working today. I’d also recommend that you pee in a bucket.”

Heidi: “Yuck. I’ll take the risk on the spray zone. The key is orientation.”

Chris: “The key is staying upright!”

Hangin' in the cabin on a windy day

2011-12-30T20:38:00.000-08:00

Leaving Lonely for Tesh (December 4, 2011)

Chris looking a trifle frosty

Sounds straight forward…..17 miles, a few hours of daylight, 3 GPS units. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, we woke up frozen. Heidi, particularly, was slow off the mark and even when she did manage to get up and into her super-suit (long underwear, down pants, long underwear shirt, merino wool, micro puff, giant Canada goose jacket, 3 toques, 2 pairs of mitts, 2 pairs of socks, Baffin boots, etc), she had to stomp up and down the 5000 ft runway several times before feeling returned to her extremities. She was essentially useless. Chris started to get things ready, and then had to take his own warm-up break. Basically, we used most of our ‘light’ (twilight) getting ready.

And so we started.

Problem 1: The GPS units were pretty much all popsicles and did not function well. We had to keep putting them in our jackets to warm them up.

Problem 2: There are NO landmarks and NOTHING to point toward when the GPS arrow is not arrowing.

Problem 3: We could see Lonely for over an hour. [Demoralizing.]

Problem 4: Not much snow on tundra = very slow progress. We were slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter.

One hour into the trip we stopped to stomp around and warm up.

Heidi: “Let’s take stock.”
Chris: “The GPS’s are barely functioning. We can point toward the sun-ish for about another 10 minutes. We can still see Lonely. I’m uncomfortable. Do you think we should go back?”
Heidi: [Thoughtful for several minutes]. “Probably. But I don’t want to. The lure of a warm cabin is simply too tempting.”

So, onward we forged. It was painful. We saw the tail lights of another snow machine going goodness knows where. Other than that, we saw very little. We lost some bags off the sled and had to backtrack. Heidi did step aerobics on the tundra while waiting for the retrieval mission to return.

The Borough cabin at Teshekpuk Lake is right beside the only feature – some cliffs. (A bank in any other topographical setting). Seeing those cliffs elicited a feeling of indescribable relief. Four hours after our departure, several stops, several course corrections, and 1 retrieval mission, we arrived. And the stove started.

SUH-WEET!

2011-12-30T20:00:00.000-08:00

Arrival at Lonely (December 2, 2011)

So, after waiting a day or two in Deadhorse, Chris and I headed out to Lonely on December 2, 2011. Chris had flown out with Bob the day before to drop gear at Teshekpuk. They also flew over the route that we would be snow machining (Lonely to Teshekpuk).

Chris (yelling to Heidi over the noise of the generator as we were madly flinging gear around the hangar): “Just to warn you, it’s a little eerie. Flying, that is.”

Heidi: “What do you mean?”

Chris: “Well, it’s kind of like being inside a dimly-lit ping-pong ball.”

Heidi: “Surrounded by white…..sounds good. Can you see anything – textures in the snow or tundra?”

Chris: “Nope. Just white. Until you get to Lonely. Then you see a big radardome and a giant hangar.”

So off we flew. An hour later (Heidi was a Heidsicle), we landed at Lonely. Bob, not wanting the plane to sit for long at -30, quickly threw the engine cover on and we tossed stuff out of the plane. Bob took off.

And there we were. Lonely is an odd, odd place. It was quite pretty right when we landed. The sky was pink (as light as it ever got), and we could actually see a horizon of sorts. Lonely is an abandoned DEW line site and has supposedly been ‘remediated.’ I’m going to go ahead and call it random. In one building, which we called ‘disgusto building,’ there would be a wall ripped out, insulation down, light tubes taken out, and then a case of unopened Comet, a nightstand, and a closet with hangers in it. It was pretty eerie. The place was silent with the exception of a persistent and very rhythmic, “Clang……clang…….clang..” It sounded like an empty flagpole.

Chris: “Phew. This is like being in a creepy sci-fi movie.”
Heidi: [Surveying the scene] “What this adventure needs is a little more cowbell!”

Our first task was to find Chris’ colleague’s CONEX, unpack it, and extract the snow machine. This turned out to be a little more time-consuming than anticipated (as is everything at –stupid degrees Celsius), and started with the lock being frozen solid.

Heidi: “Too bad we don’t have a propane torch. Not that it would work at –30.”
Chris: “We’ll have to light the MSR stove.”

Turns out, matches don’t like -30, and white gas doesn’t like -30. Heidsters also do not like -30, but we knew this in advance and planned for it.
Several minutes later, the lock was thawed out.

Heidi: “Let’s take stock.”
Chris: “I am going to hold up this ridiculously heavy door and frame. You grab that 4x4 and wedge it underneath bit by bit as I lift the frame higher.”
Heidi: “Good plan. Wait. What if we get crushed?”

We were not crushed, but we could have been by the leaning tower of field gear Pisa that threatened to avalanche out as soon as we had the front open. After about an hour of meticulously removing a jumbled jigsaw puzzle of action packers from the CONEX, we could see the snow machine, and lift it out. AND it started on the second pull. Clearly, higher beings were on our side.

Until, of course, the snow machine refused to move anywhere. Turns out, the belt does not engage when the machine is that cold. Apparently higher beings enjoy amusement. We spent 20 minutes trying to start the machine for the second time. By the time it was running and moving and the sleds were hitched together, it was getting dark. We decided that it would be better to stay at Lonely than to snow machine in the dark to the cabin.

Ah, fools we be.

Chris recounted the experience to Mike via satellite phone later in the week.

Chris: “Yeah, we have a plan that will avoid the need to stay at Lonely another night.
Yeah……that was TERRIBLE!”

The good parts were: 1) zucchini casserole; and, 2) hand and foot warmers. That was all.

Waking up dark-circled and chilly on the morrow, we found that our sleeping bag torsos were covered in ice from breathing inside the bags (yes, we know, winter camping instructors). At this point, Heidi allowed that yes, wearing part of a dead seal and a dead otter on her head was indeed warmer than not. Chris was pondering at this point if it would have been: a) more comfortable; or b) less comfortable, if we had lit a bunch of pallets on fire in the hangar and attempted to sleep there.

2011-12-13T04:14:00.000-08:00

And so it began…….Mike, Bob, and Jesus H. Dog

We can’t make this up. 70N Aviation, who flew us from Deadhorse, AK, to Point Lonely, AK is composed of Mike, Bob, and Jesus H. Dog (all pictured below). Upon arriving in Deadhorse and phoning Mike for a ride, we were enthusiastically greeted by a golden lab that we recognized from the summer.

Chris: “What’s the dog’s name?”

Mike: “Jesus H. Dog.”

Mike has a long beard, hip glasses, and lives in a seacan (CONEX for you Americans out there) beside the unheated hanger. Bob (owner) lives in a Winnebago parked at the back of the unheated hanger. Jesus H. Dog LOVES playing fetch with sticks. Sticks are thin on the ground up here (particularly in winter), but this dog can find the smallest sticks imaginable.

Mike and Bob are great. They managed to get us out to Point Lonely, AK, and back. Thank you, Mike, Bob, and Jesus H. Dog.

Seriously?

2011-12-13T03:17:00.000-08:00

The plan

So, some of you may be wondering what in the heck was up with field work on the north slope of AK in December. Back in July, a group of us, including USGS folks and Nancy and I, went to Teshekpuk Lake, AK to catch lake trout. We were foiled. Big time. Those nefarious LKTR completely evaded our attempts to capture them. So, we had the bright idea that we should try ice fishing. Part of the problem with Teshekpuk Lake is that it is HUGE, and it is difficult to get to some spots on the lake from where the research cabin is located without a lot of fuel, a pretty big boat, and a lot of luck. Travelling on the ice would surely be easier, non?

Ah, yes.

The easiest thing we have ever done.

The plan was for Chris (USGS) and I to charter from Deadhorse, AK, to Point Lonely, AK. Point Lonely is an old DEW line station with a nice airstrip, and some other USGS folks have equipment there that they kindly allowed us to use. The plan was to snow machine from Lonely to Teshekpuk and go ice fishing. Why now? In the dark? Well, we thought there would be too much ice in April. Like, a LOT too much ice. And the ice was late coming on this year. Hence December instead of November.

'A' on the map is Deadhorse. 'B' is Point Lonely. 'C' is Teshekpuk.

Easy, right?

What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

I should mention that this plan was a lot easier than earlier iterations of plans, including 60 mile snow machine rides and self-propelled transport.

2011-09-21T06:15:00.000-07:00

The Exploding Toilet

So, living on the Arctic Star (barge) involves what Nancy and I call 'suction plumbing.' It sounds like an airplane, but much louder. The first time Nancy took a shower and the suction plumbing kicked in, she was so startled and jumped so high that she hit her head. When you hear the sink valve trip, you brace yourself for an almost deafening noise.

A couple of weeks ago, I was eating dinner while Nancy went to take a shower (having previously eaten, of course). With a spoonful of corn halfway to my mouth, Nancy came running in.

"HEIDI!!! COME QUICK!!"

This was all she said before blasting off down the hallway. Turning back she yelled, "Heidi, FASTER!"

Upon arrival in our room, I saw that the toilet was about 0.5 nm away from overflowing.

Heidi: "What did you DO?"
Nancy: "NOTHING! I didn't even pee - it just started doing it."

Quickly turning the water off, we rushed back to the kitchen.

Nancy to room in general: "Who takes care of the toilets around here??"

Keith was the person to look for.

Heidi: "What does Keith look like?"

"Oriental. Or Native."

Heidi: "This is not entirely helpful."

Nancy ran upstairs to find a person yielding a shop vac outside a bathroom and quickly ascertained this was the person we were looking for.

Nancy: "Our toilet's exploding! Are you Keith?"

Keith: [Throws down vac] "ANOTHER ONE?"

Apparently, the lines had been flushed that day and some of the valves had gone. After fiddling with some things for a bit, Keith left and then came back.

"I just checked the system and she's right pinned. This whole line is running at 60 PSI."

Nancy: "60 PSI??? The TOILET is running at 60 PSI?"

Yes. And this is why it exploded.

Last day of fishing today - Nancy is back down south and Chris has been in for a week. Wish us luck catching spawners in a boat that floats.

2011-09-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

EPIC....E-PIC

So, September 8, 2011 was epic.

Arrival at site. We go to land beside our aluminum boat and zodiac.

Nancy: "Don't land...DON'T LAND!!!"
Pilot: "What?"
Nancy: "Lots of bears, LOTS of bears."
Pilot: "Where?"
Nancy: "THERE! In our gear!! There are....1...2... THREE bears."

Landing not being an option, we reassessed. Coming back later, doing a big bear sweep, and seeing no bears, we also employed a strategy where the pilot waited for us to launch our boat with all of our gear before taking off. We then moved all of our gear to the side of the lake where the bears don't seem to hang out.

H: "To the ESCAPE POD!! Ha ha!! Look at the escape pancake (zodiac looking flat)! Good thing we don't have to inflate that while the blades are turning!"

So, while our pilot sat on the ground with the blades turning, N and I hucked stuff into the escape pod and got out onto the lake, at which point the helichopper could safely leave. We didn't have time to change into our waders during this panic, and I went over my boots. LOVE going over my boots at 9 am. Safely changed into dry stuff on a bear-free beach, N and I set the nets, and then went to bear-free beach #2 for a snack and warmup walk. During the time, a siksik ate ANOTHER of Heidi's dry bags (it had NO food in it), and Heidi did a siksik dance to ward it off.

After swearing at the nefarious nature of siksiks and their seal-bag eating ways for a good 5 minutes, we discovered that we were freezing and went on a constitutional to check out an abandoned silver mine (which has happily been nicely reclaimed since the last time I saw it).

Toes warmed, we went to check the nets. And, as usual, crap weather means good fishing. Nancy saw her first red charr, and we caught a HUGE lake trout.

H: "HOLY CRAP!! It's a shark! Look at the head on that thing!!"

N: "It's a TUNA! Look, you can see a fish down its throat."

H: "Well, now our boat will REALLY be a bear attractant. Good thing it's aluminum. As far as I know, they can't eat aluminum. But I have been proven wrong by bears in the past. And siksiks. DAMN that siksik!"

2011-09-05T07:59:00.001-07:00

The Lake of Futile Death and the Leaky Red Boat Reunite

After our return from Nauyuk, where we caught our limit of fish but hardly any spawning females (DOH!), we headed to Hovaktok (Louie Lake). Experience had taught us that this lake can be very, very tricksy. In fact, it has been named the Lake of Futile Death in previous years. Previous experience has also taught us that there can be a LOT of bears at Hovaktok.

Nancy: “Heidi, I feel that your luck and my luck together are…….catastrophic.”

Heidi: “This indeed appears to be the case. Let’s take stock. We have one barely floating boat (LRB), a few less floats, a plug in cooler that is now a box, and some damaged camping equipment. Our radio doesn’t work from Hovaktok. I feel that we need to plan for ALL contingencies.”

Nancy: “I used to think you were cynical and a bit pessimistic. Now I realize you are just realistic. Let’s take both bear kits and extra noodles.”

This being decided, we slung out camping equipment, food, and fuel in the likely eventuality that the ceiling would come down while we were working one day and we would be unable to get home. We also signed our gun in and out every day, AND we brought all of our nets home every day. This was extremely time consuming, as it involved taking all floats and weights off and bagging the nets BEFORE trying to wrassle them into the helichopper. The strategy apparently worked, as we did not see a single bear during our entire time there!!! The fishing was weird – as opposed to previous years we did not catch big spawning charr, and once again the spawning female lake trout were very elusive – BUT we did not have our equipment ransacked by bears. We also did catch our limit of lake trout, which was great, and we saw a wolf!

The other great thing is that Nancy is turning into a nerd. Quite often, Nancy speaks of ski patrol and rafting. The other day on the bus up from the barge, Nancy hadn’t said anything for about 5 minutes. This was unusual. Then she said, “I can’t believe that female last night was resting!! She even had her red fins on.” Later that day Nancy said, “Phew. This periphyton is slippery.”

Other quotes:

Nancy: “Oh, hello pretty lake trout. Welcome to the LRB. Population: you. Oh look, you are a ripe male.”

Heidi chuckles evilly. Another convert. ☺

The only problem these days is that we are a little short on sleep and have slept in the last two mornings. When this happens, Heidi bolts awake and shouts, “NANCY, IT’S GO TIME!”

Nancy: “WHERE ARE MY PANTS? WHY ARE THEY BACKWARDS?”
Heidi: “GO GO GO GO GO GO – we’re going to miss the shuttle!”
Nancy: “Heidi (upward inflection) – why are we always running when we’re awake?”
Heidi: “We can’t run while sleeping.”
Nancy: “I never drank coffee before I started working for you. Now I rely on it.”
Heidi: “And this is unfortunate, because we are running low on high-test. Too bad we can’t inject this into our veins.”
[Nancy bites into first cinnamon bun of the day]

Today we start our first real day on Roberts Lake. The Lake of Futile Death (now the lake of grudging life once again) is complete for this year. Good news: we can switch to an aluminum boat (maybe). Bad news: there are three bears in the area. Ha!

2011-08-30T22:51:00.001-07:00

The Pump

As some of you may remember, when we arrived here there was ONE pump for the leaky red boat, and it had to stay with the rescue boat [read: safety pancake]. Mike Braeuer shipped us a pump overnight, and the above photo shows what we did to ensure that it was not purloined. Nancy spent the better part of a weather morning on this.

On the day it arrived, we carried Super Pump everywhere around camp.

Heidi: “ I don’t want to put this pump down. Where will we store it?”
Nancy: “When one tires, the other one will carry.”

Super Pump, we thought, was not going to be useful once we got our new boat. Sadly, the new boat had no need of a pump because it held air about as well as a colander. So, Super Pump’s value sky-rocketed.

Yesterday, we arrived at LRB at Roberts Lake to find that a bear had ransacked the place. One dead float, many scratched floats, bear hair in boat, gill nets upended, etc etc. We walked over to LRB in trepidation…..had the bear ate Super Pump? Pumps have been eaten before…..

Nancy: “PHEW! Luckily, the bear read the death note! Okay, I’m going to turn the escape pancake back into an escape pod.”

Heidi: “Good idea. As we know, the key to a good bear strategy is an escape pod. [Counts floats]. Sigh. Good thing Mike gave us extras!! We should tell those bear DNA folks to fly over here. Actually, maybe they should just follow us around.”

2011-08-28T00:09:00.000-07:00

Before the hurricane

Days 2 and 3 at Nauyuk

Day 2 at Nauyuk Lake dawned clear-ish and calm-ish, and the extremely leaky red boat arrived at approximately 1 pm. By 5, we were setting nets. True, we could see air bubbles coming out of the pontoons, but this was not a problem as long as we kept on top of the pump situation. Which, thanks to Mike Braeuer, we could. The pump deserves its own post, but that will come later. ☺

So, after catching some fish, we put them on strings on processing island (along with the nets – to avoid attracting bears), and headed back to camp. The next morning dawned hurricaney. Winds were gusting to 50 knots, and Doris Camp reported that they were getting blown off of the mountain. After hemming and hawing, we decided that we could get the nets and fish from the island (it’s quite close to the cabin), but we could not set any nets. So, processing began! First challenge: how to weigh fish parts on a sensitive digital scale in a hurricane.

Hank: “Well, Jim, I think the only way around this is to set up the tent. I’d rather not do this because it’s my own personal tent and is likely to become completely covered in fish guts, but I think it’s our only option.”

Jim: “Hmmmm. I think you might be right. Is that the lake blowing off the lake?”

Hank: “Yes.”

So, we took Mark down to American beach where there are drums and a giant piece of wood (rare commodities) to cut fish on, and asked him to scope out a slightly more sheltered spot to set up the tent. We saw him shake the tent out of the bag, and we were a tad concerned. But hey, Mark camps all the time. What could possibly go wrong?

Approximately halfway to the island to get the nets and fish, Nancy’s eyes got REALLY wide.

“HOLY SHIT!!”

Expecting to see a bear and preparing herself for it, Heidi turned toward shore. Whereupon she witnessed her $400 Nunatuk 4-season MEC tent cartwheeling across the tundra and cliffs and headed for the drink. Revving the ELRB as high as possible, she beat it toward shore at an angle of interception. Nancy, oblivious to her personal safety, launched herself out of the boat in an attempt to tackle the tent. Unfortunately, the water was over her waders. However, she avoided the abyss by somehow grabbing onto a boat handle and literally catapulting herself toward shore.

Heidi: “NANCY!!! Look BEFORE you leap!!!”

Nancy: “It’s the raft guide in me!!!!”

After successfully tacking the tent and surveying the damage (one large rip in the nylon, one medium rip in the nylon, and one damaged pole), we looked up to see Mark beating it over the cliffs.

“Windy.”

Good grief.

Let’s take stock. One ELRB, one plug in cooler that is a box, one bag of cookies and danishes from the kind people at camp, one bag of emergency jelly beans from Jill, 10 L of kerosene, two sooty stoves, a hurricane, and one damaged tent.

But no bears!! And no bugs, either.

2011-08-27T07:54:00.001-07:00

Arrival at Nauyuk

Arrivals at Nauyuk tend not to be dull (please see previous entries from 2007 and 2008). This year proved to be no exception. After waiting for good enough weather for 1.5 PAINFUL days, we circled above Nauyuk and I noticed the cabin looked….different. That’s because a bear had ripped the front door out by the frame. There was insulation everywhere, siksik poo everywhere, it smelled like bear pee, the stove was on its side on the floor, 1/3 of the ceiling was down, a bunch of vapour barrier was down, etc etc. Basically, there was a giant mess.

Heidi to Mark: “Well, Mark, looks like we have some fixing to do.”

Mark: “Heh…. yep!”

Pilot to Nancy: “Are you sure you girls are going to be okay here?”

Nancy: “Oh, COME ON! Just because we’re out here in the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean we have lost our domestic skills. We’ll have this place fixed up in no time.”

Heidi: “Let’s take stock. Our stash of nails has been stolen. We have no broom. In other news, the windows have fallen out of the door, and the door is a pancake on the tundra. On the bright side, the frame is still in one piece.”

Mark to Nancy: “Nancy, let’s go to Walmart.”

So, Nancy and Mark take off down to the other camps in search of goods. Heidi, in the meantime, takes apart what is left of the freezer outside (see previous entry where she stripped the wiring) and the fridge inside in order to scavenge screws. Mark and Nancy come back grinning. They have found a box of nails, and have taken the middle screw out of every hinge in every door at the other camps. They have also scared up the brooms that Heidi and Marilynn used in previous years.

Two hours later, we had a frame, a door, and the windows were being held by Tuck Tape. The inside still smelled slightly of bear pee, but otherwise we were in good shape. It was time to haul stuff up to the cabin. It turned out, upon inspection, that our plug-in cooler (shipped in its original packaging) had arrived without its cord. This effectively rendered it a box. No matter, we had brought a GIANT stash of icepacks and an Xtreme Cooler for just such an eventuality.

So, the time came to inflate the boat. We had been gloating for the previous 2 days about how we had a boat shipped overnight from Edmonton to camp, to replace the leaky red boat (which had become the extremely leaky red boat). We had tested to make sure that the floor boards fit, and had inflated it half way. Assured that the boat was pressure-tested, we packed it up in the pouring rain and shipped it to Nauyuk.

Ah, fools we be.

After each of us pumping for what seemed like an eternity, Mark started circling the boat. Nancy and Heidi stopped pumping. And listened. It was not so much a hiss they they heard, but a gush. Nancy knelt down near the bow of the boat and pressed on a pontoon. Her face got closer. And closer.

Nancy: “Well!! There’s your problem, Hank!”

There was a 2-inch gash in the seam of our recently-shipped boat. The leak was so bad that the boat wouldn’t even inflate. While Nancy attempted to patch it (we knew this would be unsuccessful, but hey, might as well give it a whirl), Heidi phoned camp.

“Hi Jill, this is Heidi. Ummmm. If you could somehow get us the extremely leaky red boat, that would be great. The thing is, that one at least deflates after inflating, instead of just refusing to inflate in the first place.”

Jill, bless her for all eternity, assured us in extremely comforting tones that the boat would be flown out that night or the next morning. Somewhat deflated (literally) at this point, we decided that the best course of action would be to call it a long day and have some supper.

This, also, turned out to be slightly more difficult than originally anticipated. Surprisingly.

A few weeks earlier, Heidi had asked for some white gas to be shipped to camp. This is a dangerous good and takes some special handling, so folks in Yellowknife had kindly agreed to take care of this. The fuel arrived in its dangerous goods packaging, and thinking that we should leave it in that packaging for the sling to Nauyuk (to prevent leaks), that is exactly what we did.

Ah, fools we be.

It was kerosene, NOT white gas.

Now, kerosene will burn in Heidi’s MSR stoves, but not well, and not unless you change the fuel jets. Being too tired to read the label properly, Heidi did notice that the fuel did not light well and was sootier than all heck. When the stove erupted into a giant fireball and she just about lit the cabin on fire, she deduced that this was NOT white gas. A phone call to Erik later and the digging out of her instruction manuals and stove maintenance kits (which she did have) resulted in a sooty Heidster, changed fuel jets, and stoves that would work…….with a lot of patience.

“Let’s take stock. We have a bear-ravaged cabin, a plug-in cooler that is effectively a box, stoves that smoke like a hot damn, and absolutely no way to float. It is day 9 in the field. RATS AND SQUIRRELS! But the door is back on. And mom’s zucchini casserole is amazing. Even if I may or may not have added some carbon.”

Nauyuk is as beautiful and peaceful as ever. No bears yet! (Only the evidence thereof).

2011-08-19T02:22:00.000-07:00

Hmmmmm. It has turned to 'Fogust'

This term was coined by Maury, one of our pilots, and relayed to me by Angela. The weather, unlike that shown in the photo above (our first night - we're staying on the barge to the right), has turned, well, craptacular! We are scheduled to leave for Nauyuk tomorrow, but we will see if the ceiling is high enough. Once again, we will be employing the dual helicopter strategy, where an A-star slings our gear and we follow in the long ranger. We have Mark on board again (hopefully - he should turn up tomorrow), a whole bunch of Heidi-friendly food, a boat that FLOATS AND an accompanying pump, and enough gill nets to hopefully catch some fish!!

I anticipate, however, that the tough will have to get going. Not going to lie - the weather is NOT pleasant. In previous years, Kathryn and I adopted song-writing as a coping skill. Marilynn and I had alter egos - Beatrice and Rosie, of course. Nancy and I have also adopted alter egos - Hank and Jim. It all started with us figuring something out and me saying to Nancy, "Well, there's your problem, Hank!" After looking at me strangely, shaking her head, and taking a bite of the stale marshmallow square in her pocket, she said, "That's right, Jim! The problem here is that your patches have been ripped off and replaced with duct tape (true story!)."

So, if you don't hear from us until August 25th, this is a good thing. If you do, at least we can take our boat that floats and go fishing somewhere near by!!!

- Hank and Jim

Heidi taking one in the chin and dissecting a disgusting carcass with tools from the first aid kit - excellent potential for large otoliths

2011-08-16T19:57:00.000-07:00

Return of the Leaky Red Boat (or is it final death for the leaky red boat?)

So loyal blog readers, you’ve waited a long time for this post. Three years in fact. This year, it’s Nancy and I, and we’re back at Hope Bay. Things are looking a little different around here. There is an airstrip, roads, a giant camp (or is it a rat maze?), and even MORE safety rules. A girl can’t go anywhere without PPE on around here.

Anyway, Nancy and I arrived on Friday, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Even 1.5 days of safety orientations did not dampen our spirits. At one point, Nancy even said, “Wow, this place seems really organized.”

Ah, fools we be.

If you cannot remember the story of the leaky red boat (LRB), please refer to previous blog entries. Suffice to say that LRB has seen its share of service. It may or may not have encountered the following things in its long, long life: a) attack by grizzly; b) slung into broken piece of drill stem; c) picked up with a fork lift and dragged across beach.

Anyhoo, LRB was supposed to be less leaky (we were dubious, but chose to believe). In fact, rumour had it that LRB had been replaced. On Saturday afternoon, after safety orientation 375647c, Pants (i.e., Nance) and I headed down to the location of the boat. Our guide proudly announced in a Newfie accent, “I’s soaped her all down good, and look at this – she’s rock hard!” At this point, Pants and I looked at each other dubiously. Why? Our eyes said to each other, “I hear hissing, do you hear hissing?” Foolishly choosing to ignore this ominous sound, we prepared ourselves for a Sunday am departure.

Sunday am dawns. Pants and Heids head to the helipad and look at the boat. It’s flat as a pancake. No worries. We’ll pump it up.

Ah, fools we be.

The original armada of boats is unfortunately not accompanied by the original armada of pumps. There is ONE pump with ONE correct attachment. Unfortunately, new safety regulations require that said pump stay with the ‘rescue’ boat that lives in a sling ready to rescue people at a moment’s notice. [Sidenote: rescue boat is also currently flat as a pancake].

Pants and I are undeterred, know we will figure something out, and head to the 730 safety meeting.

Direct quote from Nancy after the meeting, “Heidi, I’ve never really understood why people think The Office is funny. I understand now.”

Chair of meeting: “Heidi, do you have any safety concerns for today?”

I really did ponder my next words carefully. I knew what I should say, and then there was what I did say.

“Well. My boat’s flat as a pancake, and it’s going to sink like a rock to the bottom of the lake.”

[Nancy bursts out laughing, only to realize that nobody else is laughing.]

“So. I guess I’ll deal with that.”

Seeing that half of western civilization is up on this patch of tundra this year, we were informed that ‘The Fountain Tire Guy’ would patch our boat. We waited for a day. We visited Roberts Outflow, caught some char, did the same thing again, had a somewhat humorous electrofishing experience. No patched boat. These two prairie girls decided to take matters into their own hands.

“Nance. I’m going to try to get a pump flown in from Golder. Yes, I know I have no way to pay for said pump and we are not working for Golder this year. However, I think this is our best shot.”

Nancy: “Agreed.”

At which point, Nancy, with her considerable experience patching rubber boats, patched the rubber boat. This was not easy. All of the repair kits on site were well past their glue-by date. We used bike tire patches that we brought from Edmonton. After 5 hours of patching, Nancy declared the job a success. With baited breath, we left the boat to cure, and decided to check this morning if it was holding air. In the meantime, and as if by a miracle of god, Mike from the warehouse at Golder got us a pump. We don’t know how. Also, he sent us a candy necklace. We owe Mike many, many cheeseburgers.

Fast forward to this morning.

“Hey Nance, why don’t you go check the boat, and I’ll do up the journey plan and track our still-missing generator, white gas, and blue Rubbermaid.”

Nance: “Cool.”

Heidi was halfway through figuring out where the erstwhile generator may or may NOT be, when Nancy returned.

“Heidi, the boat’s gone.”

“What do you mean, the boat is GONE?”

“The boat’s gone.”

After staring at each other and laughing hysterically (it is Tuesday, and we arrived on Friday and have still not seen the water), we go down to find the dude who might know what’s gone on.

“Oh, sorry there girls….I forgot to tell the tire guy not to pick up the boat.”

The boat had been picked up by the tire guy. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that he removed every last patch from that boat, and that it was unlikely to be in service any time soon. This discovery may or may not have involved us hitchhiking a ride in a cube van and wandering around asking where the tire shop was. A particularly memorable response was,

“What’s a tire?”

So, you may ask, what are we going to do? Well, of course any rescue mission must involve Mike at Golder. Angela (formerly Golder, now our Newmont contact!) moved heaven and earth and other planetary units and arranged for this to be a legal and paid operation, via Claire (who I would imagine is laughing as I type this).

So. We have a pump. Mike, bless him forever, was going to drive our boat to the Edmonton airport tonight or have it picked up at the crack of stupid tomorrow morning. It will arrive by Buffalo on Thursday. We are scheduled to leave with Mark for Nauyuk on FRIDAY.

Quotes from Mike, “Boat…boat….Heidi, not sure if we have one. How soon do you need it? Stupid question. Yesterday, right? Boat….boat…..here’s one! And I just got an email that said I’m authorized to send this. Don’t worry, Heidi, we’ll get there. Sometimes we get to the finish line upside down and on fire, but we’ll get there.”

Know what’s great? We haven’t been able to test the motor.

What could be possibly go wrong?

Nothing, because quite obviously, this is the easiest thing we’ll ever do.

Pants and Heids

PS. Don’t worry, mom – we’ve bribed the cook and I am eating actual food.

2011-01-31T12:44:00.000-08:00

Hi ho, hi ho, back to the north I go......

And I need someone to come with me!!

LAB/FIELD TECHNICIAN JOB POSTING FOR ARCTIC FISHERIES PROJECT

I am looking for a hard-working, enthusiastic lab and field assistant to assist with a collaborative fisheries research project in the Arctic

Responsibilities will include:
• Preparation of laboratory samples
• Assistance with fisheries permit applications and returns
• Up to 2 months of remote Arctic field work (expect extensive travel)
• Preparation of educational materials for NWT and Nunavut communities
• Partial supervision of second assistant

Eligibility
• Undergraduate (completed or currently enrolled) education (subject area flexible)
• Interest in freshwater Arctic ecology
• Interst in engaging communities
• Sense of humour
• Experience in remote environments
• Certification (or willingness to be trained) in wilderness first aid
• Possesion and acquisition license (or willingness to obtain license) for restricted and unrestricted firearms

Pay is $2,500 per month for up to 10 months. Start date negotiable but as soon as possible. Current students may apply for the field season (beginning of May to end of August) only. Send resume, cover letter, and dates available to: arcticfieldjobATgmail(.com)

2008-09-03T21:41:00.001-07:00

Random conversations on the tundra

Below is a collection of snippets that left us, at various times, rolling on the hummocks with hysteria/giddy giggles.

************************************************************************************
Marilynn (while peeing): “Crap. Helicopter. Go pee, go."[Jumping into waders] “Uh-oh…. wetness. Sweat or pee? Sweat or pee? It would be warm if it was pee, right?”

5 minutes later.

Marilynn: “Gross. I just stepped on a dead bird.”

Heidi: “WHOA. Look at the size of the maggots on that thing! Those are the biggest maggots I’ve ever seen. Do you have any campinos?”

**********************************************************************************

One day, we found ourselves half-trotting over hummocks from Stickleback outflow to our launch site on the lake. Helichopper ETA was 2 minutes.

Marilynn: “!*@&#, are you serious? Bloody substandard.......”

The bag of water bottles had broken and there were bottles scattered everywhere in willows, hummocks, and scrub birch. An hour later, we were similarly trotting between Fickle Duck outflow and Fickle Duck lake. Heidi looked down at the bag and panted, “Oh boy. Structural integrity compromised.”

Marilynn: “Make sure you’re running on hummocks and not on rocks. That way the bottles won’t break when your bag breaks. You know what’s really easy? Running through a swamp in waders with a 100 lb pelican case.”

*********************************************************************************

Angela and I stumbled out of our dark cabin at 6:15 am one day with one eye open against the light and thoughts of nothing but the disgusting coffee we were about to wolf down.
Angela: “Heidi, you know what? I’m not getting any LESS tired.”

*******************************************************************************

Angela, Paul, Claire, and I were all on Patch Lake one day in rather horrific weather. Paul had branched out from cookies to tarts on this particular day and somehow, our lunchtime discussion turned to soda crackers. This was perhaps because I was wolfing down about 5 packages of crackers in an extremely ill-fated attempt to kick the cookie habit. (For the record, it didn’t work and at one point during the day I resorted to a 2-year old granola bar in the bottom of my pack that tasted like rancid peanuts).

Paul: “Have you ever tried putting 4 crackers in your mouth at once and eating them in a single minute without drinking any water? It’s impossible. You THINK it’s going to be easy, just like eating a tart (opens mouth impossibly wide and inserts an ENTIRE butter tart while Angela, Claire, and I look on incredulously), but it’s actually impossible.”

****************************************************************************
Marilynn and I arrive at Boston Lake, where Claire and Dan have left a boat for us to use for water sampling.

Heidi: “Hmmm. That’s interesting. I thought they would have left the pump with the boat (kicks half-deflated pontoon). I wonder why they would take the pump back to camp?”

Marilynn: “In other news, it’s hurricaining again. No bugs, though.”

Heidi (zig zagging half an hour later through the chop): “It’s like driving a shovel with a sewing machine. Man, this is easy.”
********************************************************************************

Marilynn and Heidi are sampling the ocean at the base of Louie Lake outflow, where the bear they chased earlier is back fishing in the rapids and there are seals congregating around the boat. Also, we may or may not have forgotten the paddles on this fine day, so the boat was a bit crowded with pieces of 1 x 4 (we tested, and we could actually paddle) and a LARGE rock to be used as an emergency anchor, if necessary. Marilynn was passed out on a pontoon.

Heidi: “Mem. how many Benadryl did you have today? Only, you’re missing bear TV and seal TV. It’s pretty cool.”

Marilynn (drowsily groaning): “Three Benadryl.”

Heidi: “Don’t they have non-drowsy stuff?”

Mem: “Yes, but you know I’m a cheap-ass and it was a few dollars more.” [Pondering for a few seconds] “Perhaps if there was a Shoppers Drug Mart on shore I would spend the extra money.”

Heidi: “You are ridiculous, you know. Is that a bear-shaped rock up there or a rock-shaped bear? I’m not wearing my contacts or glasses. Haven’t all summer, in fact.”

Mem: “I’m ridiculous? Rock-shaped bear. How fast do you think bears can swim?”

Heidi: “Don’t know, but if he heads this way, you paddle with the 1 x 4 and I’ll throw the anchor rock at its head.”

2008-09-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

Hurricanes and safety dudes

I have previously mentioned the abundance of safety dudes on site this year. One day, after a safety dude saw us in a boat and had a conniption, Marilynn was approached by one of the staff in camp.

Direct quote: “Does it ever get rough when you’re in the boat?”

Marilynn looked at this person in stark amazement. “Does it ever get rough?” she thought to herself. At which point, a raft of answers flooded into her mind.

Marilynn (in her head): “Well, we are at WINDY Lake.”

Marilynn (in her head): “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in the ARCTIC. The BARREN lands.”

Marilynn (in her head): “You know when it’s too windy for the planes to land? And we’re in the boat?”

Marilynn (in her head): If by, “Is it ever rough,” you mean, “Is it ever so horrendously windy that you zip up two rain jackets to your eyes, bail while driving, drive with only one eye open, and zig zag for two miles across a lake wreaked by 18 inch waves while a bear eats your gear on shore,” then “Yes, sometimes it’s rough.”

In any case, Claire and I were one day off of finishing the August water sampling. We could smell the finish line. We could taste it. Anticipating the sweetness, Claire processed an entire day’s samples on her own one evening while Heidi went out and sampled 7 more streams just to bring the finish line that much closer. So, it was the last day and we were on Hope Bay. It was a TITCH windy. As in, it was Hurricaine Hope. Perhaps we should have waited until it was less hurricainey, but we didn’t.

Beatrice (gazing out into the swells): “Claire, I believe this is going to be the EASIEST thing we have EVER done.”

Fast-forward approximately one-half hour.

Heidi: “Windy logistics, do you copy Heidi on channel one? Yes, we’re going to need an extra hour at this site.”

Beatrice: “Claire, according to the GPS we have dragged the anchor 300 metres since arriving. I think we’re going to have to lift the anchor and move it back to where we’re supposed to be. And then we’ll have to re-sample. RATS.”

Claire: “Right. But, ummm, Heidi, the anchor is about a million pounds at this site.”

Heidi (pondering): “Okay, let’s just get it off the bottom. Then we’ll tie it off on the handle of the boat and long-line it back to the site.”

Claire: “Is this: a) a good idea; or, b) a bad idea?”

Heidi: “B. Bad idea. But it is significantly less painful than: a) lift anchor 25 m into boat.”

So, off we went. Do you know how easy it is to drive a boat in 1- 1.5 m swells while you are pulling an 80 lb anchor approximately 15 m below you? I should mention that the wind was a headwind at this point. Not easy, let me tell you. But we made it and re-established our position. We also let out more slack, in an attempt to reduce our drift.

Heidi (glancing at GPS, then yelling): “RATS. Claire, our strategy has proven ineffective. We are still drifting like an SOB. [Thinking]. Okay, this is what we’re going to do. I’m going to attempt to drive the boat in reverse into the waves while you deploy the Kemmerer. That way, we MIGHT have a chance of getting a vertical sample!”

Claire (looking dubious and recounting the loss of the DFO zooplankton net and the Aqua-Vu camera): “Isn’t it sort of likely that you’ll cut the rope while driving?”

Heidi: “Ha. Yup. That would really suck, especially because this is a brand new Kemmerer. Okay, let’s go. Hey Claire, is it ever rough when we’re sampling?”

Claire: “Do you have any cookies?”

I had 2, and an hour later we were shivering triumphantly on shore, with Claire remarking that her hands had never been so cold in her life. Luckily, dexterity is not required for eating cookies.

2008-09-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

The Lake of Futile Death throws us a (small) bone

So, until the last week of August, Louie Lake was the lake of futile death. As mentioned in a previous entry, Maril and I fished like we had never fished before and bug hunted like the world depended on it……all for naught. NADA. ZIP. Not a single anadromous fish and narry a mysid nor gammarus to be found. As a last ditch attempt, Maril and I hatched a plan. Hatching plans is one of our strong points. Bug hunting in the Arctic, evidently, is not.

Maril: “Okay, here’s the problem. You have to start water sampling and I have to go home. And the lake of futile death has not yielded. How about I work for two days on water sampling and then Claire can help you on Louie for two days when the water sampling’s done? Maybe the fish will be moving by then.”

Heidi (while bringing up yet another empty kick net): “Yes, I think this is an excellent idea. Largely because THIS is not working (gestures toward net). For whatever reason, the fish just aren’t moving yet and the bugs are exceedingly elusive. Maybe the water’s too high? [Heavy sigh]. Mem, do you have any patience cookies left?”

This brings me to an important point. When things are really going terribly, the only thing that keeps two fish girls sane is cookies. LOTS of cookies. The best ones are oatmeal with chocolate chips.

Maril: “No, but I do have some campinos. I’ve re-named them, actually. They’re called Heidi’s anti-grouchy medication.”

Heidi: “Hmmm. Yes, sorry. Fruitless bug hunting makes me grouchy. “
So, after a whirlwind of water sampling that shattered all previous time records, Claire and I headed to Louie Lake with our three bears. On day two I was lifting a net when….

Heidi (barely above a whisper): “Claire, I need you to find the dip net. Quickly. There is a CHARR. A BIG CHARR! And he’s only barely caught by his teeth.”

Claire dug frantically around the boat only to discover that the dip net was hopelessly trapped between 2 fish tubs, a cooler, and various other detritus.

Claire: “Ack.”

At this point, I reached into the water and grabbed the poorly-caught charr by the tail. While lifting the awkward load into the boat, I may or may not have fallen backwards into the fish tub. Everything’s a bit of a blur.

Heidi (grinning ear to ear): “YESSSSSSS!!! Look, look, look!! Claire, a CHARR! Ouch. I think I pulled both hamstrings doing that. But who needs to walk? All I have to do now is find otoliths.”

And so, the lake of futile death became the lake of mediocre, grudging, life. It didn’t give us much, but in three days we got half a dozen charr and a couple of sea-run trout as well as some amazing shots of our bears.
Pathologically stubborn? Perhaps.

2008-08-24T22:24:00.000-07:00

Definition of "the abyss"

The abyss is any depth of water greater than one's waders. It could be one stride long, but it's STILL the abyss. The other day, I was wading out into Louie Lake with the boat while Marilynn was frantically attempting to drive in the shallows with an onshore wind (and many boulders) and retrieve a snag (that I had caused) at the same time. I hoisted myself up to get into the boat but was completely foiled by an ill-placed dip net. (NOTE: Everything in the boat is ill-placed - it's 10 ft long). In any case, I felt myself slide back down and not touch bottom. Hence, I was about one muscle strand away from the abyss. I seem to have lost the ability to speak lately (I think it's cookie-induced), so instead of yelling, "Maril - HELP," I managed a "meh meh meh" grunt. Marilynn correctly interpreted this noise and with her THIRD hand plucked me out of the abyss while simultaneously driving the boat and holding a fishing rod. It was incredible. And she later caught a trout.

Heidi: "Whoa, that was close. Thanks for saving me from the abyss."
Maril: "You don't ask for help often, so when you do, I know it's serious. Do you think it is: a) a good idea; or, b) a bad idea, to give up fishing for 15 minutes and go look at piles of rocks while carrying the gun? It might me more exciting than fishing for fish that don't exist."
Heidi: "A, good idea. I just don't understand those buggers. Hey, is that a bear-shaped rock or a rock-shaped bear?"
Maril: "Rock-shaped muskox, I reckon."
Heidi: "Excellent. How do you feel about a nap after looking at rocks?"

2008-08-22T22:56:00.001-07:00

Ursula, Sam, and Archie

Archie goes fishing

Well, in the words of my mother, life is never dull. Through sheer endurance, Claire and I finished the August golder water sampling yesterday so that I have time for one last kick at the can at Louie Lake.

Louie Lake is my nemesis. I need charr from this lake. I set nets in exactly the same place as last year, on exactly the same date. Nothing. Maril and I angled. Nothing. Electrofished. Nothing. We kick netted for FOUR HOURS and did not catch a SINGLE mysid. NOT ONE.

So, I have renamed Louie Lake. It is now the futile lake of death. And I am giving it one last effort.

Today we flew out there and I asked the pilot to fly around and look for thel bear that is usually fishing in the rapids. We had even brought out a 2000 dollar SLR digital camera from one of the site supers in camp in case we could get good shots. We located the bear and started chasing him a few miles north. He always comes back, but it buys us time to get the boat out of the cargo net and in the water. Speaking of which, LRB (leaky red boat) becomes the *escape pod* when bears are around. Escape pods are important.

In any case, the bear was relocated slightly north of Louie Lake and our pilot (Wayniac on this day) went to land us.

Wayniac: “Is that another bear? That’s two more bears!!”

Claire: “Do you think we could get a little closer for a picture?”

Wayniac: “First I want to herd them all up and move them together.”

[Yes, that’s right. There are now so many bears that we are talking about herding them. HERDING BEARS? Give me a break. Are you serious?]

Heidi: “Perhaps we should let camp know that you’re going to be late getting back?”

So, we radio camp and tell them that the heli is going to be late returning.

Response: “Oh, that actually works out really well for us. We need the helipad for another machine.”

Claire: “SAY WHAT?” (off the radio). “Who says that?”

Heidi: “Yup, that’s right. Let’s take stock. There are 3 bears, 2 girls, 1 shotgun, and 1 happy logistics person. Perfect. And probably no charr. RATS. Where’s the third bear?”

So with two of the bears north of our site and the third unaccounted for, Wayne wisely decided to leave us on an island while he slung the boat over. Excellent strategy. As I alluded to above, the key to a good bear strategy is an escape pod. LRB arrived and we moved to the lake. We named the bears Ursula (mom), Archie (cub 1), and Sam (cub 2) while we were waiting for the boat and munching on our lunch. The boat arrived and our pilot checked one last time for bears.

Wayne: “Heidi, you can check Ursula approximately 3 miles north and closing.”

Heidi: “F-WIS, you can check leaky red boat out of the cargo net and onto the lake of futile death.”

Tundra math: 3 bears + 2 girls + 1 shotgun = 0 tundra naps. Well, at least no tundra naps on LAND.

2008-08-16T20:53:00.001-07:00

The return of Beatrice, Rosie, and Spinny

As experienced blog readers are aware, when the going gets tough, Beatrice and Rosie get going. Up to August 10th, the weather was not so terrible as to warrant the return of Beatrice and Rosie but on August 11th, that changed.

Heidi (on the evening of the 10th): "Mem, what do you think if we pack up most of this camp tonight and then have a bit of a sampling adventure tomorrow before we leave?" (Unrolls topo map).
Maril (looking at Heidi distrustfully and remembering previous "adventures" that involved dragging zodiacs through rapids and going on 20 mile boat rides through the Arctic ocean with an incomplete map): "What are you thinking?"
Heidi: "Well, DFO wanted me to sample a lake that's about a kilometre up the hill from here for landlocked charr. We'll need nets, a cooler, spinny, and floats."
Maril: "Spinny, eh? Did you patch the Chewy-induced holes from last year?"
Heidi: "Yup, Erik got me onto using bike tire patches. They work really well."
Maril: (Still looking skeptical) "Mmmmhmmmm. And how exactly are we going to get the gear up the lake?" (no wagons this year)
Heidi: "Well, you know my RIDICULOUS seal bag of death? It's 115 L. I should be able to put the cooler AND Spinny in there."
Maril: "Heidi, that's retarded. I'll drag the cooler with a harness made from webbing."
Heidi: "Great!"

And so, the next day dawned. We outfitted Mark with some waders from DFO so that he could cross the stream and join us. Unfortunately, they were a TITCH large. He stood in the back of the cabin holding them up to his neck, waiting for us to notice his goofy grin. We hoped he wouldn't have to use them much. We shouldered our packs and harnesses of death and proceeded up the hill in good spritis.

About halfway, Maril said, "I'm wet from the inside out."

Heidi: "I HATE being damp at 9 am. And I STINK."

Maril: "Rosie, I believe this is the EASIEST thing we have EVER done."
Beatrice: "Indeed."

After reaching the lake (longest kilometer EVER), we inflated spinny and set out. Turns out, the paddles we had weren't EXACTLY designed for paddling spinny and setting gill nets. The wind picked up, and it started to pour rain. As in monsoon. With thunder.

Heidi (yelling over the wind and rain after setting the second net): "Mem, do you think it would be: a) faster; or, b) slower to to get to shore and walk Spinny around the lake?"
Mem: "I'm not sure, but it would be: c) far less painful."

150 m of paddling has never been so painful in the history of the world. As we struggled out in another hour after eating soggy trail mix and soggy hummus that was over re-hydrated and then monsooned upon, our triceps burned and Spinny was spinning fiercely.

Beatrice: "Rosie, I believe this "boat" was intended for recreational use only. And we are NOT recreating."
Rosie: "I know, darling, I agree. But don't you think this is REALLY the easiest thing we've ever done ? Do you want another crumpet?"

We caught 4 charr. DFO wanted 50. Such is life.

2008-08-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

Pooping on the Tundra

Okay, we've already had a blog entry about pooping on the tundra. But this year's pooping trials were at an entirely new level. Not only were we contending with bugs, rocky permafrost (difficult to dig holes in), and the cold north wind on one's butt, but there were also bears and 12 american fishermen. What on earth is a girl to do? After holding it ceased to be an option, Marilynn and I looked at each other.

Marilynn: "Do you know where the poop bags are?"
Heidi: [Sigh] "Yes. Funnily enough, the paper bags are branded "Goodtimes.""
Marilynn: "How appropriate."

At which point, we made an inventory of pooping equipment. This year, the list included:
- 1 ziploc bag
- 1 paper bag
- toilet paper
- folding hand trowel
- hand sanitizer
- shotgun
- shells
- bear kit

After gathering the appropriate gear, you had to find a rock that was large enough for a bit of cover and a location where it would be unlikely to be approached by grizzlies from behind.

On day 4, the following conversation ensued.

Maril: "Hmmm. Have you seen the poop shovel? As in, the *only* poop shovel?"
Heidi: "You pooped last."
Maril: "Oh God. OH boy." [Maril starts dancing around the cabin]. "Mari-lynn, this is SERIOUS business."
Heidi (giggling, and knowing that karma will catch up with her in a few hours): "Well, you could try using a rock. Or a piece of wood. I'm not going to lie, though, it's going to be tricksy."
Marilynn: "This is a very serious predicament. Maybe I left it out there? Luckily, I remember exactly where I was last. Oh oh. What if I left it by the river when I was washing my hands and the tide came up?"
Heidi: "In that case, we have a pretty serious problem."

Happily, the poop shovel was located. Note: All poop shovels should be labelled with flagging tape. Along with all radios, GPS units, sunglasses, and knives.

2008-08-12T22:06:00.000-07:00

Peek-a-boo

Well, after Mark checked for bears and Maril and I set up the cabin, we all turned in for a well-deserved sleep. Heidi, predictably, was freezing and was totally caterpillared in her sleeping bag. At approximately 2:47 am, she heard some strange noises outside the cabin. Maril, in the meantime, had woken up and looked toward the door (sans glasses). She saw something brown and moving. In retrospect, she really wishes she had done something heroic....something dramatic. What she did do was assess the situation in approximately two nanoseconds. It went something like this.

Maril to Maril: "Brown thing at door. Bear. My gun at door. 1/2 foot from bear."

Maril to rest of cabin: "HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT!"

Heidi at this point realizes that those worrisome noises were from a worrisome source. Unfortunately, pupating from her mummy bag was proving difficult and she was stuck.

Marilynn: "GUYS, WAKE UP!!"

Heidi emerges to see Peek-a-boo with two paws on the glass part of the front door. She dives for her gun (at the back door) and both Maril and Heidi yell, "Mark, BEAR, MARK, BEAR, MARK!!!!"

Mark snores.

"MARK!"

Mark wakes up. The movement of Heidi and Mark has caused Peek-a-boo to sidle off with barely a backwards glance. Mark saunters calmly outside and fires some shots and bear bangers. Mark comes back in.

Mark: "Chill out."

Marilynn: "Well, it should be REALLY easy to fall asleep now!"

Maril and I stared at the door for approximately 15 minutes.

Mark: "Small bear."

2008-08-12T21:44:00.000-07:00

Arrival at Nauyuk

So.....the arrival at Nauyuk was slightly more exciting than we anticipated. Our helicopter with the sling load was approximately 5 minutes ahead of us and arriving at the site when we heard:

"Fox Kilo Kilo this is Whiskey Igloo Sierra. Can you let Heidi know that she's got some visitors.....there's a float plane here and some peope....and a grizzly.....wow what a great spot.....oh SHIT I'm chasing the bear toward the people."

So, a grizzly scare-off ensued. The bear ended up an uncomfortably short mile from our camp. We landed and took stock.

Heidi: "Well, my grandmother said you're never safe from suprises until you're dead. She was right."

Twelve American fishermen and an ALBATROSS float plane were anchored at the far end of Nauyuk inlet. Maril and I looked at each other.

Maril: "Hmmm. Heidi, what do you suppose the bozo rating of these fishermen is? And how the heck did they find this place?"

Heidi: "Tough to say on both counts. Let's assess how much camouflage they are wearing."

Turns out, some of the 12 had quite a low bozo rating while others...well, we're sure you can imagine. In any case, it meant we didn't have to fish for charr. We subsampled 30 of their fish and fish sampling was over in a snap.

In the meantime, we were setting up camp in our comfy little cabin and Mark was assessing the bear situation. Maril and I assessed other situations.

Heidi: "Let's take stock. There are 12 American fishermen and at least one bear. I'm not going to lie. It's going to be tough for a girl to pee around here."

Maril: "Indeed. What do you think we should be more worried about? The guys with a lot of firepower and a plane or the bear (s)?"

Heidi: "Do you think they have beer?"

2008-08-06T16:01:00.000-07:00

Well, Heidi, I think we are ready to take over the world.

Afficionados of "Pinky and the Brain" will know that the mission of Brain and Pinky is to take over the world. With the amount of gear we have, I think we are ready, too.

Maril and I are headed to our beautiful Nauyuk camp tonight. Hopefully we have less encounters with Chewy this year, but we are well prepared either way.

Maril: "Let's take stock. I think we are almost ready. We have two boats, two helicopters, and two shotguns. We pretty much have the army, navy, and air force."

Heidi: "Indeed. We also have a generator, solar panel, a week worth of food, and 3 coffee crisps. I think we're good to go. Not to mention 130 L of fuel. Holy crap. How are we going to transport 130 L of fuel?"

The answer lies in the dual helicopter strategy. We are using two helicopters - one will sling most of our equipment and the second will take Maril and I and Mark. That way there is also two helicopters for when we are flying over water. The weather is not exactly prime......we have also packed all of our puffy clothing, but with any luck we'll get a couple of nice days.

Maril: "It's fine, I'm sure it's fine. I packed extra cookies."

See you on the flip side, everyone....we should be back online in a little under a week. Take care,

Dr. Evil and Pinky

2008-08-04T22:28:00.000-07:00

Apres Swim
Holy Sculpin, Batman!
Swimming in the Arctic Ocean

Well, August rolled in a few days ago with a bright, sunny, windy day. This, unbelievably, resulted in us downgrading to silk long underwear and taking OFF our bug jackets (GASP!). On August 1st, we had an incredible day on the Arctic Ocean, sampling, looking at the amazing views, and catching all sorts of crazy critters in our gill nets. We caught sea stars, urchins, crabs, the biggest and most beautiful sculpin in the history of the world, and cod. Maril and I were like two kids pulling in the nets and dredges.

Heidi: "What the HECK is that??"
Maril: "That's a baby sea cucumber. I think. At least, it looks sort of cucumber-ish, don't you think? Do we need cucumbers?"
Heidi: "No, but let's try to catch more."

Well, after netting in a hurricaine for the better part of the afternoon and catching NO charr but having lots of fun, we decided that the adventure rating for such a beautiful day was not quite high enough. Which brings me to a side note. Because the operation up here is about to become a mine, there are a LOT of safety guys around. Safety guys seem to take a bit of an exception to us, and really do not like the fact that we are in boats, that we use gill nets, that we take guns into the field...etc etc etc. So, the rule is that if you hear an unknown helichopper, sit down in the boat until the pilots give you some sort of code over the radio. This could consist of, "F-ZAR off of Windy bound Roberts Bay with 5 safety guys." That means, "Yo, fish chicks, get out your invisibility cloaks." We also have code names....the air traffic guy here (affectionately known as Wolverine) refers to us as Dr. Evil and Pinky. In any case, we've been working quite far from camp lately and have not had any run-ins with the safety dudes. So, things can get quite boring, even when you are catching crazy critters.

Marilynn: "Heidi, do you think it would be: a) a good idea; or, b) a bad idea, to go skinny dipping in the ocean today? If we time it right, we'll only be cold for about 10 minutes before the helicopter comes."

Heidi: "A. Good idea. This is the most excellent plan I have heard all day. But the timing could be tricky. It's going to be tough to jump into our super suits at high speed when we're wet. Let's DO it."

And so, we had our 30 second dip. Followed by a mad rush back into the super suits and some missing articles of clothing......socks didn't quite make it on and I'm pretty sure I had most of the beach in my head. Uncontrollable giggles ensued the whole ride back to camp.

And today the ceiling was to the ground and we waited for 2 hours for a helicopter while mosquitos ate our eyeballs. Such is life.

2008-08-03T23:05:00.000-07:00

Holy cow! There's a strange bright disk in the sky today!

Tundra Grace

I was going to put this entry up at the end, but it seems like I should do it now. Have you ever heard the quote that it takes a village to raise a child? I also think that it takes a village to do a Ph.D. There are many many people out there who have helped this ridiculous adventure come to fruition and I am constantly humbled by your generosity. This year, I have had absolutely amazing in-kind support from Newmont, the company I am working with up here. Also, Marilynn is using ALL of her vacation time from her full-time job AND a leave without pay to come up and help me out for 3 weeks. Good grief!! Erik, my long-suffering partner, is enduring yet another summer of abandonment while Paul and Angela (Golder) and scores of friends in camp help pick bugs/entertain us every night. Tonight we even had live guitar music while bug-picking!! Karen, my supervisor, puts up with a lot of Heidi randomness and all of my friends and family seem to know when to help out and when to let me attempt something marginally insane. Thank you thank you to all of you....I truly hope that I have the opportunity to pass all of your kindness forward and I do not take any of it for granted.

Tonight I would especially like to thank Stephane, one of the helicopter owner/pilots up here (see previous entries). I found out today that Newmont will be supporting Maril's and my travel to Nauyuk this year with helicopters! Woo-hoo!! I didn't know until today, however, and we're supposed to leave on Thursday. I told Steph about this the other night and he had worked out a way to get us over there, with in-kind support from Heli Explore. Once again, Steph was going to save our butts. Thank you SOO much, Stephane. You're amazing!

I have so many entries to catch up on....we have had adventures on the sea (starfish! crabs! skinny dipping!), adventures on land (meeting an Inuit family and eating Klik), and more adventures in peeing (as always!). I'll try to get a few more entries up tomorrow and in the meantime I'll leave you with the most recent song.

If you don't hear from me after this, assume I have died of processed pork poisoning.

(To the tune of "You are My Sunshine")

You are my bug shirt
My only bug shirt
You keep me covered
And bug-bite free
I really love you
My stinky bug shirt
Even though when you're on
I cannot see

2008-08-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

Arctic cotton and the Doris mesa

New Zooplankton sampling method

Demise of the DFO Zooplankton Net

Hello again blog-readers. So, I haven't been updating as often as I should be.....sorry sorry sorry!

Guess what? Maril has arrived!! Yay! After Claire and I finished water sampling, I worked on my own for a few days catching bugs and dodging well-meaning safety dudes. Maril arrived at 830 am on Sunday. I threw her brand spanking new super-suit at her and we were in the helichopper by 9.

So, first things first. All of my zooplankton samples that were collected last year met their demise in the Golder warehouse. Tragic. This necessitated repeat sampling this year. Sooo..Mem and I head to Doris to sample zooplankton. We are talking one hundred miles a minute, catching up on each other's news while Maril pulls zooplankton hauls. The hauls aren't great, they are full of messy phytoplankton that somehow mysteriously vortexes itself once in the bottle and leaves you with zooplankton (see picture). And then, the tundra trolls strike.

Maril: "So, Heidi.....(pause, eyes grow larger and larger as she stares at the rope in her hand)......oh ****. Heidi, we have a problem." We both stare into the murky depths as the truth dawns on us. The zooplankton net has sunk.

Now, let's take stock. We are in the Arctic. Zooplankton nets do not exactly grow on willows, and we desperately need one. First things first. I call Mike (Golder).

Heidi: "Hi Mike.....this is Heidi....yeah, I may or may not have a small problem. ummmm....do we have any zooplankton nets kicking around the warehouse? If so, do you think you could send one up by, like, something really fast? Dragons. Can you send it up by dragons?"

Mike: "Zooplankton net. Shipped on something with wings and fire. Got it."

In the meantime, Maril and I explore our options. We don't have time to come back to this lake, even if the dragons somehow do miraculously get us the net. In the meantime, we mark the spot with a buoy so that we can drop the underwater camera down the next day, look for it, and hopefully dredge it up.

(I did consider caribou antlers (see previous entry), but zooplankton nets are hopelessly un-hooky).

Heidi: "We need something with fine mesh....fine mesh....what if we take a pair of silk long johns and cable tie two nalgenes to each leg? Hmm. The long johns will stretch. What if we drag the aquarium net through the water a couple of feet down? Horizontal tow-ish?

Maril looks at Heidi with that look that says, "I think you are on crack, but I can't really say that because this is your project." Then she says, "What if we brace the aquarium net with the kick net and THEN drag it through the water?"

Trolls defeated. Our ridiculous method catches SO many zooplankton, it's not even funny. And the sample is clean as a whistle.

PS. The dragons delivered yesterday. Our method still works better.
PPS. After we radioed to ask the other crew about the whereabouts of the underwater camera, they promptly sliced if off with the motor. Retrieval plan has been aborted.

2008-07-24T20:37:00.000-07:00

Sampling water in the Arctic in the middle of the night....what could POSSIBLY go wrong? (Check out the blooming Arctic cotton in the background - fields and stripes of white this year)
That is not dirt on the lens......
Claire, eating her peanut butter sandwich in the "security zone."

Holy bugs batman!

So, here we are and I have just finished the first round of Golder water sampling. Another rotation of workin' the night shift and filling bottles with water. You'd think this would be boring, but of course it's not. Claire, the girl from Golder that I was working with, is a kindred spirit indeed and we had a LOT of belly laughs.

The bugs are horrendous this year (on nights), ensuring that each of us check the other for "security breaches" as soon as the helicopter downwash has stopped. As we don nitrile gloves and pull drawstrings, we listen in angonized anticipation for the returning buzz that signals ONE BILLION voracious proboscii (sorry, pendants) waiting to annihilate us. The other night, on Spyder lake, it was so buggy that we couldn't fill the bottles without having to empy them to get rid of the bugs. I had to pee REALLY badly and was almost considering going in my waders, when Claire and I hatched a brilliant plan.

"Claire," I said, "I think what we should do is lock the tiller and throttle and pee when we are on plane." "The bugs fly too quickly otherwise and our butts will be hamburger."

Claire looked dubious. Claire hasn't done a lot of work on boats before. As I locked the boat into peeing position I stood up and said, "GO!" Claire looked...."How do I do this?" "Over the side, over side!" I replied frantically. I was madly attempting to get my pants back up while Claire was still leaning over, yelling, "I CAN'T GET IT OUT!"

"Are you talking to your pee or a bug?" I yelled.
"BOTH!" said Claire.

I laughed so hard that I had to blow my nose, which was a problem, because it was on the wrong side of my bug screen. Claire said, "oh, I wouldn't worry about that...I've been blowing through my bug screen all night."

Later that night, as we ate our lunch (inside our bug jackets), Claire remarked, "Heidi, there is a fair amount of peanut butter inside my bug jacket."

"I know," I said. "I can see the grease stain."

Yesterday the bugs left for about 12 hours. Because it was a hurricaine.

2008-07-10T19:01:00.000-07:00

Hello again loyal blog readers!

Well, here we are in 2008 (already!) and it's that time of year.....the time when ice is melting, bugs are hatching, and certain psychotic fish biologists are drawn to Arctic adventure! This year, as most of you know, was supposed to be scaled-down, shorter, and less adventurous. And perhaps it will be. Then again, perhaps not. I've learned not to take these things for granted anymore. New challenges have arisen as we are working with a lot of new people at the Miramar site (now taken over by a company named Newmont). The camp is so full that it looks as if we might have to commute every day from Cambridge Bay! Anyway, the usual problems have emerged....unable to find charter pilots, can't camp because of bears, etc etc etc. But there is lots of good news, too. We have been able to get a hold of Mark, our reliable bear monitor, and he will once again accompany us to our site at Nauyuk for a bit. AND, Marilynn will be rejoining me for the Ph.D. sampling. Once again this year, some of my time up north will be spent contracting for Golder (you have to buy the bagels somehow) and part of it will be spent FINISHING UP my Ph.D. sampling (I'm serious this time, Karen......and Erik......and mom......). So, for the first couple of weeks, I'll be working with a Golder crew and then Maril will be joining me at the end of July for three weeks. That crazy girl is using all of her vacation time to borrow her dad's gun and head to the Arctic. WOO-HOO! I'm going to miss her in early July and late August, but thank goodness she's coming!! Who else would I speak to in a British accent? She says that riding a desk chair is getting awfully dull.....and driving to field sites isn't nearly as exciting as walking/boating(swimming)/helicoptering.

So, we leave tomorrow (the Golder crew and I). I'm meeting Neal the scare plane pilot for a drink in Yellowknife (this alone should be worthy of a blog entry) and then heading to Cambridge on Saturday. Apparently, both of our boats, Zippy (extremely leaky) and Whizzy (even leakier) were recently frozen to the bottom of our large storage containers in camp so we'll see how this goes. I am anticipating sinking. And a lot of weather days. The weather has to be AWFULLY good to be able to fly round trip from Cambridge to Windy every day.......

Quote of the week (courtesy of Mike Braeuer) upon hearing my tales of recent shotgun training: "It's always the sweetest girls who are packing heat."

Ta ta for now,
H

2007-09-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

Creative thawing of the kemmerer nozzle

Unbelievably, started on the second pull. Way to go Whippy!

Things we Froze Today
4 hands
4 feet
2 survival suits
4 gloves
secchi rope
zooplankton net
zooplankton net rope
integrated water sampler (of death)
kemmerer (inside and out)
kemmerer rope
boat
cargo net (to the boat)
motor
motor tilt switch
buoy(s)
pH sensor
gas tank

Things that we Broke Today
kemmerer (several times)
Horiba water quality meter
Marilynn's knee
Heidi's back
Marilynn's sanity
Heidi's patience

2007-09-12T22:44:00.000-07:00

Bubba Big Munch

So, after leaving the Kent Peninsula, Marilynn and I moved to our next site at the Naujaat Hills. We decided to employ new anti-bear tactics, including anchoring the boat offshore (as previously mentioned) and taking a bear monitor along with us. The Naujaat Hills were beautiful, the charr fishing was fabulous, and we were in high spirits. On the last day we said to each other, "we probably don't need a bear monitor, we'll be on the water most of the day and we haven't seen any bears." We did take our shotgun as per usual, though.

Well, approximately 3 hours into the day, Marilynn and I were electrofishing in the rapids that cascade down from the lake.

Marilynn: "Heidi, what's that?"

Heidi: "THAT'S a bear, eating our gear. Again."

Marilynn: "What should we do?"

Heidi: "First, I think we should remove all things from our bodies that are trippy, such as electrofishers."

Marilynn: "Good plan."

So, the usual routine. Fired off bear bangers. No response from bear. Sounded air horn. No response from bear. Shot off 8 shotgun shells in direction of bear. No response from bear. Bear is between us and the boat, and is ripping apart my brand new $100 seal bag.

Heidi: "YOU BUGGER. UNHAND MY SEAL BAG."

Marilynn: "Heidi, perhaps we should be happy he is not eating the boat. "

Heidi: "Indeed. Perhaps we should also contact camp."

At this point, we decided to move to a point where we had a better view of the bear and, since he was not responding to bear deterrants, wait until he got bored. He eventually did, and we took the opportunity to move to the zodiac. Since the radio and satellite gods were not with us on this fine day, we then removed our gill nets and followed the bear up the shore with the boat to get some pictures while we waited for our helicopter pickup time.

Marilynn: "Heidi, that is a rather large bear. Do you think there is anything left of our seal bags?"

Heidi: "Very unlikely. He probably ate my cliff bar, too, dammit!"

Marilynn: "Heidi, I believe we have lost another cooler."

The bear was then named Bubba Big Munch, because it was big and munched everything. We lost our best field bags, a cooler, and my second bottle of sunscreen. Sigh.

We are now known as the "bear girls."

2007-09-03T21:13:00.001-07:00

The easiest thing we've ever done. Stupid Spinny. Stupid Chewy.

Spinny Escapes: Part Deux

After the arrival of Chewy, we decided that the safest course of action for boats was to anchor them offshore. Unfortunately, we may or may not have miscalculated the force of outgoing currents with the tide.

Emerging from the cabin after a satisfying lunch of soup and nut bread, Marilynn saw Heidi yell, “Shit! Where in the hell is Spinny?” and run down the hill as fast as one wearing waders and dodging hummocks can run. Mark the bear monitor spotted Spinny, approximately 300 metres offshore in the Arctic Ocean and well out of swimming range. Inside Spinny, there were floats, rope spools, and the depth sounder. Decision time.

Marilynn: Can we finish the work without that boat?

Heidi: Maybe, but we’d have to pull up a gill net without a boat, which may involve swimming down and cutting off the anchor and then dragging it from shore. Not fun. I think we should drag the zodiac down the rapids and retrieve Spinny.

Marilynn: Heidi, we then have to get the boat back UP to the lake, and Chewy chewed the cart. I think we should let the dingy go.

Heidi (pathologically stubborn): I really think we should get Spinny.

Marilynn: I really disagree with this decision. Okay, let’s go.

We proceeded to drag the zodiac down the bouldery rapids until we became permanently stuck about 2/3 of the way down. We removed the 4-stroke motor (which we were now cursing because it is extremely heavy to haul through bouldery rapids), and finished hauling both to the foot of the rapids. At this point, Spinny was out of sight but Mark the bear monitor had kept an eye on its trajectory. We followed the waves out into Parry Sound and spotted Spinny with the binoculars about 3 miles offshore.

Heidi: Well, we said we wanted to see the view from the ocean.

Marilynn: This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever done. Rescuing a DINGHY in the Arctic Ocean.

Heidi: THERE SHE IS!!!! And we’re actually rescuing the rope. We are fresh out of sideline without those spools.

Marilynn: So, this entire calamity can pretty much be blamed on our chronic shortage of sideline?

Heidi: Yup.

Whereupon we pulled up, deflated Spinny, and placed her firmly in Zippy. Upon arriving back on shore, Heidi said,

“Let’s take stock. The boat, boards, and motor weight approximately 700 lbs (as estimated by the helicopter while slinging). We have no cart because Chewy chewed the wheels. In other news, we can’t deflate the zodiac and take it apart because Chewy chewed the air hose so we won’t be able to re-inflate it.”

Marilynn: This is going to be the EASIEST thing we’ve ever done (this is our canned line whenever something is going to be ridiculously difficult).

Marilynn cunningly fashioned handles out of some random tubing we found on the shoreline and we hauled the motor (as pictured) 500 m up and down a hill in the sled sans wheels. The boat, well, we don’t have a picture of that. Basically, we took ratchet straps, hooked them around our shoulders, and started pulling 300 lbs of boat. For 500 m. Up and down a hill. Over tundra.

Spinny may be burnt at the end of the season. Grrrrrrr.

2007-09-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

Heidi, looking a little swollen after swimming for Spinny

Spinny Escapes: Part 1

So, when we were out on the Kent Peninsula we had a zodiac on Nauyuk Lake. Zippy is a nice, sturdy zodiac with a peppy 4-stroke 15 hp motor. There is a set of rapids that joins Nauyuk Lake to the Arctic Ocean and this set of rapids is impassable to zodiacs. So, on the ocean side we had an inflatable dinghy (no motor, no keel). The dinghy’s name is Spinny, named for her incredible penchant for spinning.

Well, we may or may not have miscalculated the height of tide at this particular location. Emerging from the cabin after a satisfying lunch of nut bread and cashew butter, Marilynn watched Heidi yell, “SPINNY!!!!” and run down the hill as fast as one wearing waders and dodging hummocks can run. Heidi thought she could still grab Spinny with her waders on. Marilynn, meanwhile, grabbed Heidi a long iron pole that happened to be lying on shore. Heidi charged into the water, extended the extremely heavy pole, and felt herself slide down an extraordinarily slippy piece of algae-covered bedrock. Deciding that all was lost anyway, she dropped the pole and started swimming (in waders) after Spinny. Spinny was retrieved, and Marilynn laughed for at least 15 minutes at Heidi’s waders, so full of water that she looked like she was 300 lbs.
We have decided that Spinny is a recalcitrant teenager, bent on escape.

2007-08-26T21:50:00.000-07:00

Chewy the Bear (pictured investigating one of the Inuit camps)

We are desperately behind on blogging, sorry!

So, after being on the peninsula for 3 days, Chewy the Bear showed up. Chewy is a juvenile male grizzly and he showed great interest in everything that holds (or used to hold) water, air, or fish. Chewy scored 12 points against Heidi and Marilynn and managed to maim and/or destroy floats, 2 seal bags, 1 boat, sunscreen, a cooler, Heidi's cart (!!!!!!!), etc etc. He was completely unfazed by bear bangers, shotgun shells (as noisemakers), and airhorns. After Chewy's second visit, Heidi and Marilynn took stock.

Heidi: Let's take stock. We are currently in the middle of nowhere, floating in the Arctic ocean in an inflatable dinghy with no motor. In other news, a bear is ripping into our fish cooler and he now has his front paws on the zodiac. It's 10 p.m.

Marilynn (Looking through binoculars): Heidi, I'm not going to lie. Your cart is dead.

Heidi: Hmmm. I feel we should call camp and get some advice.

Whereupon Miramar kindly agreed to send out a bear monitor to help us keep an eye on Chewy. The bear monitor arrived at 7 am the next morning via the Scare Plane and found us where we had camped on an island so as not to be eaten by Chewy. Chewy showed up twice more. The last time, Mark the bear monitor reported that he ran down the shoreline, stopped briefly to bite our inflatable dinghy (a.k.a. Spinny - more stories to come), and kept running. Spite in bear format and definitely worth a laugh.

2007-08-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

The Most Beautiful Place in the World

After Neil left on his plane, we walked to the cabin to check it out. As we walked along the rapids from Nauyuk Lake to the Arctic Ocean we saw fish swimming everywhere. At any one time, we could count about 20 fish, mostly lake trout, but also some charr. The view from our front door was breathtaking, looking out at the bright blue ocean, between the mesas, with the river in the foreground. This place is truly special. On the top of both mesas, there are inukshuks, which Heidi and I came to regard as our guardians. The best word that we could find to describe this place is ‘sacred’.

2007-08-05T16:58:00.000-07:00

Takin’ the Scare Plane to the Kent

This year at Windy Camp there is a Beaver (single engine prop plane on floats) that is stationed at the camp, making it easier to get people around. The pilot of this plane is named Neil, or as we like to call him, Jack Black in disguise. Imagine Jack Black (as per School of Rock) in a bug shirt, black carrhart’s, and an inflatable fishermen’s vest (in case of a hard landing) peeing off of his floats in front of eight or so people. Imagine Jack Black stuck behind a deflated zodiac in his plane with his legs waving in the air yelling, “Son of a Gun, Son of a ****.”

This is Neil and the Scare Plane. Neil, somewhat like Dick the helicopter cowboy, likes to fly low and fast. Our trip to the Kent Peninsula was somewhat of an exception because he climbed high enough to hand over the controls to Heidi so he could enjoy an ice cold Coke while doing his paperwork. Heidi, white-knuckled at the controls, pondered this state of affairs and decided to get her pilot’s license. Marilynn, white-knuckled in the back seat was busy hoping that Neil would NOT let Heidi land the plane.

Neil spots the sampling site and we circle a few times looking for float-eating boulders. Neil lands safely (Marilynn thanks God) and we get stuck in the mud slightly offshore. Neil (ever the manly man) handily jumps off his floats in Carhart’s and work boots to anchor the plane. Marilynn and Heidi (more sensibly) don their waders and proceed to hump the gear out of the plane through the mud to shore. “The gear” includes: one 15 hp 4-stroke motor, 1 12 ft zodiac, 5 coolers, 2 tubs, 1 12-V battery, 1 generator, 1 freezer, 5 jerry cans, etc etc. Jack Black lifts everything down from the plane and hands it to us. Upon completion, Jack Black (looking back at us from the floats) says, “You girls just impressed the SHIT out of me. He then hops in his plane soaking wet, and yells out the window, “when do you wanna get picked up.”

2007-08-05T16:45:00.000-07:00

The Scene:

Heidi and Marilynn are sampling from Zippy on Hope Bay (Arctic Ocean) at 1 am on a very windy night. Large waves are rocking the boat and occasionally dragging the anchor. Marilynn forgot to pee before leaving shore. She discusses the situation with Heidi and decides the best course of action is to hang her ass off of the back of the boat and hang on.

The Script:

Marilynn: Heidi, does it make you uncomfortable that I am peeing less than a foot away from you?

Heidi: No. Could you please pass me the depth sounder?

2007-07-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

Marilynn in her super-suit. This is our finest hour. Water sampling at 2 am on the Arctic Ocean.

Ta-ta for now.

This afternoon Heidi and I will be heading out of Windy Camp for about two weeks, for a spa vacation on the Kent Peninsula. We are both really looking forward to our yummy dehydrated food and some tundra peace. On the other hand we have made friends with some people in camp that will be gone when we return, for example, Dick the Australian cowboy helicopter pilot. We'll miss his stories (eg. 'the time I punched a demon-possessed ptarmigan', 'the beer commercial', and others) and amusing flying style...'he flies like he stole it' -Pete, helicopter engineer. We have also had to say goodbye to our good friend Stephane the pilot, who has an unbelievable ability to place our boat on the shore PERFECTLY every time, therefore requiring much less muscle power on our part. We're looking forward to seeing him again in August but wish he was around to keep an eye on us during our tundra adventure like last year.

Take care, everyone, and we'll post when we get back.

2007-07-22T07:40:00.000-07:00

Scarves of Serenity

It is bloody windy. We were hoping that we wouldn’t have to use our new windproof neckwarmers until August, but alas, they made their debut last night. Following Kathryn’s suggestions, our stylish ‘Scarves of Serenity’ are made of two layers of windproof fleece, complete with a drawstring at the top, and a snazzy trim of polar bear/igloo flannel (good for boogers). Amidst the chaos, all we need to do is to pull the neckwarmer past our eyes so that it overlaps with our toques, and, presto, two shivery sticks on the tundra become two serene sticks on the tundra! Although it was a bit cold, it was the first day we didn’t have to be covered head to toe for the bugs…yahoo?

Difficulties at Night

Since we switched to working nights, Heidi and I have found some tasks more difficult than normal. For example, brushing our teeth in the morning (evening). It seems that it doesn’t matter how early we get up, the helicopter is always ready to take us a half hour ahead of when we expect to leave. We have also found it difficult to sleep, with beavers practically flying through our tent several times per day and helicopters slinging stuff all evening. We have commandeered a superior tent, so now we don’t have to deal with leaky screens, leaky roofs, and smoke detectors inspired by leaks. We have found it difficult to eat. We had to deal with bugs when we were working during the day, and we’ve developed methods to deal with that, but it seems that we don’t get hungry at night, possibly because we are too cold/buggy/rushed to be ready before helicopter comes, or maybe our bodies think that we should be sleeping, not eating. The lack of non meat items available at dinner (our breakfast) has made it difficult for Heidi to pack lunch, so when I panicked when I realized that I had forgotten my lunch, Heidi comforted me with ‘Oh, don’t worry, you can have half of my pickle and cheese sandwich’. well, at least she’s got three food groups covered. We are more or less surviving on a diet of cookies and cinnamon buns purloined from the ‘land of milk and honey’, Boston Camp. We find it difficult to remember to drink. We have no excuse for this, other than digging through bags to find our bottles. Heidi and I expect to have kidney stones and diabetes by next Thursday.

PS Moms: We are joking about the kidney stones. and diabetes.

2007-07-16T14:52:00.000-07:00

Let me start by explaining that Heidi and I, with the exception of a small nap, have been working for 24 hours. It is all part of Heidi’s master plan to switch to the night shift so that we can get helicopter time when we need it. Ask us in a few days how we enjoy eating breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. We really weren’t sure if we should have eaten a meal last night or not, and if we should, what time should we eat it at? Since I dropped some chemicals on Heidi’s snacks, we had to resort to emergency cookies. At our first lake I tested my skill as zooplankton collector and failed miserably. Never in my life would I ever imagined it possible to haul a zooplankton net and bring up ONE zooplankter. I thought my eyes were getting silly because it was ridunkulously late, and I should have been curled up in my sleeping bag (that I am slightly allergic to, damnit!), but, nope, that was by far, the most unsuccessful zooplankton haul ever.

Since we were working at lightning speed (go team!), we had a bit of time so we took our helicopter pilot friend Stephane to the fish fence so he could get his picture taken with one of the big fish. Heidi climbed up the fence and nabbed the biggest, meanest, wiliest arctic charr in the trap, and was skilfully passing it to me when it jumped out of the net into no-fish’s-land between the wings of the traps. Pretty much the worst place the fish could have jumped into. After they caught the fish, I shot a movie of Stephane with the fish…

Stephane (holding the fish): So, here we are, with the biggest fish here…(chokes on mosquito and sends a gob of spit flying…all caught on tape)…at which point Heidi and I hit the tundra laughing. We could roll around on the hummocks well because we were still wearing PFDs. In any case, we think Stephane enjoyed his initiation to charr wrasslin’.

Quote of the day/night: H: Who would have thought we’d be hauling boulders across the tundra (see earlier blog entry referring to anchors and their lack of hookiness)? M: at two o clock in the morning?!

2007-07-15T11:17:00.000-07:00

Paul's 20-minute fight with a lake trout ends in success

Let's take stock

Experienced blog readers will be familiar with this phrase. In the logistically demanding routine of Arctic field work, we say this at least twice a day. Well, we are about to start Golder's water sampling tomorrow. We will be working the night shift because the camp and helicopters are so busy. Good thing it's 24 hour daylight! In any case, we went to take stock of the water quality equipment today.

Item #1. Boat. Well. To avoid the problems of last year (see earlier blog entries) we had a boat from Golder checked and sent up especially for water sampling. Unforturnately, the boat was accidentally slung into a broken piece of drill casing the other day, taking the leaky red boat status (LRB) to an extremely leaky red boat (ELRB) status. We tried to patch it but to no avail. So, we have a boat that will likely sink. Although I am not the most cautious of people, I decided this boat was bad news. We are now sharing a boat with another crew that's doing the day shift.

Item #2. Water quality meter. Well. To avoid infinite problems with calibration that we had last year, we had a brand new meter bought and sent up. Unfortunately, it weighs 50 lbs. Now, why would someone design a field meter that weights 50 lbs? I have no idea. Also, the data logger won't connect to the probe unless it's fully charged. Because there are electrical sockets on every lake, of course.

Heidi: Let's take stock. We have no boat. Someone else has a fully functional boat that we can probably share but we will need to get mixed gas, because the boat we were expecting to use takes straight gas (see earlier entry regarding sheep and shepherds). The water quality meter does not work unless fully charged and unless we have a lot of siksiks trained to run on hamster wheels, the meter is useless. We can share a water quality meter with the day shift crew as well. Hopefully. Unfortunately, it's nickname is the horrible meter (Horiba meter). In other news, our radio doesn't work, making it difficult to communicate with the pilots.

Marilynn: It's fine, I'm sure it's fine.

Today, Marilynn and I walked about 6 km of tundra while sampling streams. Marilynn is learning about hummocks and their devlish ways. On these walks, we often use our wet wader boots with plastic bags over our socks so that we don't have to haul hiking boots along. At kilometer 5, we paused.

Heidi: We are about to enter the willow bloodbath. Remember, don't step on top of the hummocks, aim for the holes. Prepare for 10 minutes of horrible-ness.

Marilynn: Heidi, when we get to the end of the willow bloodbath, are you planning to climb that sheer, slippery bedrock cliff in felt-bottomed wader boots?

Heidi: M, it's really MUCH easier if you think of wader boots as your spidey boots. If you think you will stick, you will stick.

Marilynn: I am dubious.

Heidi: As well you should be. Aim for the lichen. It's stickier.

2007-07-11T21:49:00.000-07:00

These bugs are ridunculous.

So this is the latest quote from Marilynn, "Heidi, I don't know if I can take many more mosquitos" Paul, the Golder guy we're working with phrased it like this, "I am being totally annihilated." Yup, the weather is awesome. Hot, hot, hot. And, unfortunately, no wind. We gauge the progress of the day by what body parts are on fire. Today, after a 2 hour walk across the tundra in the buggiest bugs ever, we got back to the fish fence and decided our hands and face were never going to feel the same. Solution: we stood in the stream with our heads underwater and our hands on the bottom to numb the bug bite wounds. We call it the fish fence ostrich. The charr wrasslin' is more difficult with nitrile gloves on, but those little babies are surprisingly bug-proof. This morning, I decided to try citronella. I didn't think it was going to work, and neither did anybody else. Paul told me to let him know how it went. Thirty seconds later I was rolling around in the stream in agony washing it off. Turns out I have a skin sensitivity to citronella. Hmmmm. But, our gear FINALLY arrived with bug jackets! Yes! And a new dip net. Paul had taken to hunting down the charr in the stream with his bare hands. Which, astoundingly, actually worked once or twice.

Stephane our helicopter pilot friend is back! YAY!

Ahh, the age old question. When falling asleep, do you put your sleeping bag over your head and roast to death or listen to bugs buzzing in your ear? Speaking of which, this was another quote of Marilynn's today, "Heidi, just so you know, there is a dead and bloody mosquito in your ear. It's kind of gross. "

2007-07-09T20:41:00.001-07:00

Heidi in Paul's back-up waders (notice the good fit)

Charr Chaos 2-Double O-Seven is Here!

Hello everyone! We're back. The ice is melting, bugs are flying (correction, LOTS of bugs are flying), and we are fishing. This year got off to a more sane start, with our carts already built, less food to dehydrate, and more chopper support. YES!!!! For new readers, you should scroll back through the archives to get a feel for the project and our dubious talent for songwriting. For old readers, you may be somewhat relieved to hear that we have not been driven to song adaptation (yet).

So, this year Kathryn has a full-time job in BC. This unfortunate (for me) circumstance necessitated an alternate crazy girl #2. Marilynn, my office and lab-mate from New Brunswick, is up with me for 6 weeks and Roshini, my insane roomate from New Brunswick, is up with me for the last 4 weeks. Marilynn came out to Edmonton to start the marathon of cooking and dehydrating in early June. She also sewed us wind-proof neckwarmers (see earlier blog entry).

Our arrival in Windy Camp was somewhat less eventful than last year. We had flights in with Miramar so we didn't have to shout for Fred in the Cambridge Bay airport. However, we discovered upon arrival that the majority of our gear has not arrived and is archived in a warehouse in yellowknife. This is most unfortunate as we have: a) no waders; and, b) no bug jackets. Not to be deterred by minor setbacks, we purloined some excess waders and pulled out our new whizzy bug hats (best twenty-five dollars EVER spent). We don't really have most of our fishing gear yet, so we have been spending the last couple of days at the fish fence helping the golder crew out and opportunistically sampling charr and trout - YES. We'll be in Windy Camp until the 24th, mostly sampling water for Golder and then we head out for our Nauyuk Lake adventure on the Kent Peninsula. It will just be me, Marilynn, the bugs, and the charr for a couple of weeks and we're really looking forward to it.

We will leave you with a parting shot of our first charr of the year. This one mananged to flip so violently on the table that my camera and the pit tag needle flew away at high speed. Fortunately, the camera is shock proof.

We hope you are all enjoying summer as we watch the first spring flowers come out.

PS. Zippy (the only quasi air-tight boat) was slung full speed into a broken drill casing yesterday. Zippy is no longer air tight. Or water tight. Sigh.

2006-09-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

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)

2006-09-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-09-10T06:50:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-07T21:06:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-09-04T17:17:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-09-02T18:24:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-27T08:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-20T20:54:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-15T21:24:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-14T12:37:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-14T09:26:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-14T08:01:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-07-23T21:13:00.000-07:00

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

2006-07-22T20:13:00.000-07:00

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…

2006-07-21T21:42:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-07-13T22:25:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-07-11T15:14:00.001-07:00

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

2006-07-11T14:31:00.000-07:00

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)

2006-07-11T13:50:00.000-07:00

les fleurs du printemps...

mountain avens and other beauties

few-flowered lousewort

Arctic lousewort

2006-07-11T13:35:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-07-11T12:54:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-07-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-07-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-07-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

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...