21 July 2004

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 23

Today was a fun day. We awoke to the return of the musk oxen so I spent quite awhile watching them work their way down the hillside. It amazes me that such large animals can survive on such small plants. They really seem to move at a good pace in order to continue feeding.

The cook, Rae, had the day off because two Canadian researchers joined our camp and they cooked dinner. Rae and I went fossil hunting and really enjoyed ourselves. The morning was quite nice but the clouds rolled in...as did the wind. We returned to camp around 4 and the rain started soon after.

The evening was quite busy because the class joined us for a presentation by Chien-Lu on samples from the teams research at Mould Bay last year. So, we all piled into the yert tent for a powerpoint presentation in the pouring down rain...

On a side note, it has just dawned on me that in all my journals I have yet to send you a photo of a frost boil! How awful is that! So, today I have included one so that you can see what these formations look like. The dry areas are the interboil and the vegetation ring around them is called the interboil. The dry area in the center heaves (rises) in the winter as the ice freezes and creates cracks in the interboil as the freezing causes the soil to shrink up.

A group of frost boils extending across the tundra

These are called heaveometers and as the ground rises as does the little metal plate. At the top of the plate there is a little pin which will scratch the white paint. Next year they will be able to see how far up the ground heaved by the scratched area of paint.