At Summit

Well I have been at summit now for about 36 hours. Everything with science has been so busy I have not been able to keep up with blogging, e-mailing or skyping. I am currently exhausted but am going to bust out a quick blog on what I have been up to. On June 2nd I woke up in Seattle at 4:00am to catch a plane to Albany, New York. I was traveling with Dan, a science technician from the Isolab at UW. We arrived New York, checked our science gear to make sure it was intact, and went to bed. Woke up at 3:30 am to catch a taxi to Scotia Airbase and then a C-130 to Kangerlussaq. When I arrived at Kanger I immediately started to see familiar faces. It was fun to talk to people and catch up on what they had been doing for the past year. I went for a hike up to the lake to look for Musk Ox. I was not disappointed; there were two lazily grazing by the lake. After my hike, I went to bed and appreciated my last night in a real bed.

One the 4th we took another C-130 to Summit. Mr. Mike, who I had just spent a few months with in Antarctica, greeted me getting off the plane. It was great to see him but he was leaving on the same flight I came in on which was really sad. There many more familiar faces at summit that made me feel right at home. I wanted to catch up but had too much work to do. The altitude adversely affected neither Dan nor me so we went straight to work hauling around our heavy boxes and getting them out to Sat Camp. Sat Camp is the satellite camp that is a quarter mile from the main summit camp in the clean air sector. We walk out to Sat Camp to keep the air clean for all the atmospheric sampling that occurs there. We will be using Sat Camp to sample Nitrate in the atmosphere for our friend Julia’s dissertation research. The first day we got our gear sorted and lab space set up. We had a great dinner and organized our tents for bed. We sleep in Arctic Oven tents at Summit.

I was all ready for a cold night. I got in my –20 degree bag with my snickers bars to eat for warmth in the middle of the night. I love sleeping in the cold because you can eat candy in bed all night and it is actually recommended. That in itself is a reason to go to an ice sheet. Anyways I got in my bed and did 100 sit ups to warm up my bag. I was so hot by the end that I had to get out of my bag. I put on my spa mask, thanks Wendy, to block out the light and fell asleep. Never waking up to eat my snickers. My alarm woke me in the morning for morning briefing. I got out of bed, put on my boots and walked all the way to the big house and up the stairs without falling. This is a big improvement over mornings in Antarctica, where I my morning clumsiness was often made fun of. I must admit though that my tent is the closest tent to the big house, the kitchen/dinning area at summit, a nice hook-up from Kathy. I didn’t get a heated sleeping unit this year because it is all boys this year in the Jamesway with no patrician. I am hating a bit on boys right now because the Jamesway is all boys and the C-130 Loadies didn’t put down the toilet on our flight to Summit because there were only 2 girls and lots of cargo in the way. So the boys could use the bathroom but the girls could not. This was particularly bad because I drank two liters of water at breakfast to stay hydrated for the altitude at summit. Yucky boys.
Today, after morning briefing, Dan and I went right to work. We got the nitrate sampling equipment set up with a few skype calls to Julia over a bad internet connection. We also started doing surface snow sampling a 0:00, 6:00, 12:00 and 18:00. This will also be our time schedule for checking the nitrate and doing the snow samples. Speaking of which, I need to get to bed. It is already 10:30 pm and I have the 6:00 am snow sample. I will ski out to take it. I am not looking forward to 6:00 am but I am looking forward to the ski. I hope it is another warm night. It has been windy and snowing all day but not too cold, -12 C about 10 F. Oh and sorry no photo's for this blog. Somehow I managed to put my camera in the bag that got palletized for the C-130. I will get some photo's posted in a few days when the science routine settles down.