July 18, 2006 - Bringing Gear out to the Lake, Heavy Packs for All! Options

[Maggie_Kane]

Today we took the morning to sort out all our scientific gear. We had to set up a wet lab for sieving sediment samples, instruments to calibrate and lots of electronics to charge up. Plugging things into the wall is not quite the same as at home, as most of our appliances run on 110 current, but a much higher amount (220) runs through European lines. It is more efficient this way, but the down side is that our electronics don’t like to be super charged, and blow out! In order to make this switch happen, we need to convert the current to our smaller 110 current first. This is done with a box that goes on the end of the cord, but you just have to remember to use it! Also, the holes in the wall are a different shape, not two squarish prongs, but two round pin prongs. All this means that we have to come prepared so we can run all this expensive equipment properly.

At lunch time, we headed out to the newly organized shed and started to get our gear loaded up into or onto our backpacks. There were many very heavy objects and we had to get creative as to how to do that! We needed to get a lot of the field gear up and over to Lake Linne so that we can get it out to the spot where we want to use it. The hike was relatively flat and about 6-7 km. Some students took the large batteries that will be used for a meteorological station up near the glacier and a time lapse camera that will be positioned high on the wall of the valley throughout the winter. These weigh over 70 pounds, which is about twice what we like to carry on our backs. Tough stuff!

Loading up Gear


Carrying Super Heavy Batteries


Stream Crossing


The lake is absolutely beautiful. There are no words to describe it, so I’ll just show you some shots from this day of us all enjoying the lake in different ways.

Sitting by lake


Al Werner Sitting by Lake Linne


Skipping Rocks