June 28 – Lots of Miscellaneous

Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 74 Location: Barrow, AK

Another busy day today, but not as busy as the WILL be!

We got up the morning and found out that the truck was stolen! Around the NARL everyone just leaves their keys in their BASC trucks. BASC stands for Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, the group that supplies many of the materials like trucks, snow machines, four-wheelers, boots, parkas, etc. for scientists working here. And it was right out in front of Kim, Kirstin and Jenny’s Quonset hut when it was stolen. So to take Jenny and Kirstin to the airport so that they could go to Atqasuk and for us to go to BEO this morning, we had to borrow a truck. Finally, Kim, Dora (a former TEA teacher who is now working here for fun!), Torsten, who was our bear watch, Hideki and Dr. Kim and I all loaded up into the truck and drove to BEO.
When we got there we met the nicest British birders – two men studying snowy owls. We talked to them for about 10 minutes or so about birds, owls and foxes and then got ready for our hike. At that point, Hideki, who does not speak English well, apologized and said that there had been a mistake – he and Dr. Kim wanted a ride to their tower site at CMDL, not BEO. They needed a ride because their truck had a flat tire that hadn’t been changed, yet. So we hopped back into the truck and drove back past NARL to CMDL, which is out further toward the Point. We dropped off Hideki and Kim and called for someone from BASC to pick them up in about an hour or so, downloaded our own data from our tower at CMDL and headed back to BEO.

Map of Barrow area showing NARL. BEO is along the long road heading out of town on the bottom.

Finally, we got back to BEO and started hiking in to the tower. The day was overcast with a small bit of wind at the time, so there were still a lot of mosquitoes. On the way out, I almost stepped on a bird – a Long-billed Dowitcher – that was sitting on her nest! As I stepped, she flew up from a spot about 4 inches from my foot. I hadn’t even seen her and it still took a moment to see the eggs. There were four of them, brown speckled in a camouflaged scrape nest. I was glad that I hadn’t stepped on them.

Dowitcher nest with eggs

When we got to the tower, we downloaded data and gassed up the generator again. As we were finishing up, Torsten pointed out that weather was coming in and we were probably going to get wet. So we started back in quickly. The fog was coming in like a wall and the wind picked up. The mosquitoes were gone, but the wind was blowing mist into our faces. By the time we got back to the truck our fronts were very wet.
After we got back to NARL, it was time for lunch and GOOD NEWS! Our truck had been found! Someone had borrowed it for a joyride (you can’t drive away from Barrow; there are no roads out of town). They had scraped the BASC stickers from the sides and gotten in stuck in the mud – but our tools were still in it at least.
After lunch, we took the truck and went exploring a bit. We got gas, went to the end of the road south of town, then to the freshwater lake, then to Paglagivsi, a local archeology site, then to the end of the road north of town and then back to NARL.

Freshwater lake south of Barrow

Sign at Paglagivsi an archeology site on the south of town

Back at NARL, we caught up with Matt, who studies snowy owls and had offered to take us birding before he leaves next week. All of us went back to Kim’s Hut and made a plan to condense 3 days of work into 2 days so that we can have Thursday and Friday free for birding with Matt. Our plans for tomorrow include field measurements at CMDL (soil moisture, thaw depth/active layer, soil temperature) along several transects which take about 4 hours and instrument calibrations which take about 1 hour.