Permafrost outreach 2009

Another full day of action for all of us.
The trail from Brevig Mission to Wales was less traveled and obviously less marked.

The morning started out with packing and getting gas.
While we were getting gas, we were lucky to get information about the trail condition, especially with the white-out conditions we had in the morning.
It wasn't as windy but felt cold probably down in the single digits.



















Kenji safely navigated through the blurry white trail.






Even after a wrong turn, he was quick to correct the course, and we were back on the trail.


The trail it's self wasn't difficult, but the bumps form the wind packed snow made the 80 mile trip much longer than we hoped.

Coming down on the north side of the hill suddenly the clouds opened up.
Even more surprising was the lack of the wind.
Looking back, we saw the low hanging greyish clouds over where we came from.
Along the trail we saw a moose, muskox, fox, and a lot of animal tracks, including a woverine and wolf.
















By the time we were about 10 miles out of Wales, Kenji had to hurry to get to the school before the school was out.
Luckily he made it there before the teachers all left.

We are all a little wore out form the continuous travel, but work comes first.
Kenij went right to drilling.
The frost tube went well, but the monitoring station bore hole kept colapsing as we drilled and backfilled the hole because the ground material was sand.
Although the depth was not the best result, Wales station is probably one of the most scenic Permafrost Monitoring Station.

















After a successful installation it was almost time for sunset.

There were many signs of people living here from a long time ago.
It's hard to say how old they are, but reminants of whale bone houses, stone trail markers, and look out places made out of piled rocks (probaably for marine mamals) all indicated the history of this place.









As the sun goes down past over Little Diomede Island another day comes to an end.
Tomorrow we will head to Shishimaref.
Drilling in these cold places is taking a toll on the equipment.



posted by Tohru