July 5 – Bad Karma

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

Today I learned some more about the unpredictability of science in the Arctic – tough conditions and quickly changing conditions.

It was a slow-start day. Most everyone slept in and met up at lunch. Kim had set out with Mat Seidensticker to help him pull in his traps at about 10:30, and Kirstin and Jenny were in Atqasuk, so I had the afternoon to kill until Kim got back and we could go out to the tower at BEO. Dora Nelson has three of her students here for two weeks to experience the Arctic and learn more about the science here. Torsten was taking them to see the ice cave and asked if anyone else wanted to go, so at lunch the Aerosonde group and I decided to tag along. We drove out to the edge of town toward the BEO tower site to ice cave. Torsten had the key to unlock the padlock and they removed the large pieces of plywood and insulated covers from the cave entrance.

Removing the ice cave covers

There is a 25-30 foot ladder that leads down to the cave and we could go down one at a time to look around.

Ladder down to the ice cave

The ice cave is an old ice wedge beneath the tundra that has been excavated. To learn more about what an ice wedge is and how they form check out this Arctic Wildlife Refuge site:
http://www.mapcruzin.com/arctic_refuge/permcycl.html

When we got to the bottom of the ladder there were two chambers, one to either side, which extended for about 10 feet or so. One of the chambers had been re-excavated in the past year or so because it had become nearly full with ice crystals. It was an open tunnel, about 4 feet wide by 4 feet tall and completely cut out of solid ice. It had some very small crystals beginning to form on the ceiling.

Small ice crystals

The other side passage had larger more developed crystals in it covering the ceiling and some of the walls. They were huge, hexagonally-shaped, hollow complex ice crystals. The crystals grow as water from the air freezes onto the walls and other crystals. It was absolutely beautiful! The pictures hardly do it justice. We had to be careful not to bump them with our head or shoulders because they are very fragile and require quite a while to grow so large.

Large ice crystals

After visiting the ice cave, I waited for Kim to get back and when she had returned it was getting late into the afternoon. Since we would not be able to get to BEO and still get back in time for dinner, the Aerosonde group, who leave on Wednesday, said that they would wait for us and we would all go into town to have pizza. Kim and I figured that we could run quick out to BEO, gas up the generator, download the data and get back in about 1 ½ hours. However, we overestimated the amount of good Karma that we had for the day.

When we got to BEO, we put gas in the generator, pulled the start cord a couple of times, turned up the choke, pulled a couple more times and it started beautifully. It ran for about 10 seconds and died. We tried restarting it to no avail. After a bit of pulling, we thought we might have flooded it and decided to give it a break while we downloaded the data. Kim downloaded the data and then we gave the generator another go. No luck. We opened up all of the panels to check the oil, the spark plug and air filters, found a bunch of dead mosquitoes, but still it did not start.

Finally, in desperation, we called Jake Andrew, the mechanic from the Aerosonde group, to see if he had any words of wisdom for us. We tried everything he suggested, still to no avail. We tried to give it another break in case it was still flooded and went to lock up the data box and discovered that the data had all flat lined and the receiver light wasn’t blinking anymore. Now we were really beginning to panic! What was happening?! It took us a minute to decide that maybe the batteries that run the tower had run down since yesterday morning and until we got the generator going, we really wouldn’t be able to tell. Unfortunately, we had no tools with us, because we hadn’t been able to find the toolkit when we left and now the fog was beginning to roll in. Things were getting worse by the moment!

Jake called back to see if we had gotten the generator going. Oh, we were feeling very sad at this point, because we knew that we needed to bring in the dead generator and fix or replace it. Jake said that he would save us some time by rounding up another generator and driving it out. We could haul the defunct one in and meet him at the road to replace it with a good one. That at least would save the time of us driving all the way back in and out. So we unhooked the generator and started hauling it back through a mile of sloppy tundra to the road. About 20-25 minutes later, we got near the road and Jake met us with the new generator. So we turned around and hauled the new generator out to the tower site. Two miles of carrying generators, even trading off back and forth, is hard work.

We got to the tower, started up the generator easy as pie and plugged it in. Jake looked at the batteries and said that they were charging and I opened up the data box to check the data recorders – the lines were squiggly again! YEAH! So the data had stopped because the batteries had run down. We were so relieved, but so tired and we still had to hike the mile back to the road.

So a 1 ½ hour job took 3 hours. What bad Karma. This seems to be the nature of science in the Arctic, though. Prepare for the unexpected. Our kind dinner group had waited the extra time for us to go to dinner at Arctic Pizza, though. Boy, were we hungry by then!