July 9 - To Atqasuk we go!/Opening the Portal

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

Well this morning, I got up early to get ready to go to Atqasuk where the SDSU group has another eddy covariance tower that Kirstin has been monitoring since Monday. The group takes turns going down to Atqasuk each week, so that two people are in Barrow while one is in Atqasuk. I woke up to light SNOW outside! It had turned rather cold outside and the sea ice floes had come in close to shore.

Barrow from the air - notice how close the ice floes are now!

After I got up and ate breakfast, Kim and Jenny drove me to the airport where I flew on a small six-seater, single-prop airplane operated by Hageland Airlines.

Hageland Aviations Services - offers three daily flights to/from Atqasuk

There, I met Eric and Ivan the pilot and co-pilot. I was the only passenger on this flight and we flew straight to Atqasuk. As the 30 minute flight went by I got to see Barrow from the air and the ice floes everywhere and some terrific views of the tundra. There were many different areas, some mostly water and bogs, some drier and grassier.

Drier, polygon tundra

Wetter tundra

In a short time, we landed in Atqasuk, where Kirstin met me at the airfield. She gave me the nickel tour of the town, which is VERY SMALL. There are about 250 people here and I would guess about 25-30 houses.

Atqasuk - that is really ALL of it!

Other than the lack of ocean and being much smaller, Atqasuk is very much like Barrow. There are more dogs, but most of them are chained in front of the houses on 10 foot leads. There are still broken down four-wheelers and snow machines, but less garbage. Three minute later, after we drove around the town, we got to the BASC house. This is a work camp house with four bedrooms, a full kitchen, a bathroom and a living room. It is maintained by the people who live and work here for short time periods while doing their field work.

The BASC House in Atqasuk

The main reason that one of the SDSU group stays here in Atqasuk is to enable the tower instruments to take soil moisture measurements once per day. The instrument that does this at the tower, called a TDR, currently has a bug that when it takes the measurement at 1 pm, it pauses to have the MENU button pushed. If no one is there to push the button within a minute or so, it doesn’t take the measurements and they are lost for the day. This mysterious appearing and disappearing has been coined “The Portal”. So at 1 pm everyday, we must “Open the Portal”. Smile

Opening the Portal

The tower at Atqasuk is not very far from the road, so the walk is not very bad. The tundra plants are different here. Some are larger and others that have only just begun to bloom in Barrow are in full bloom here. Kirstin and I walked down to the creek nearby, which runs into the Mead River. Then we came back to the house and after we crunched the data from yesterday (which involves copying, pasting, running a macro and deleting any suspect points and took all of about 15 minutes), Kirstin did her Kung Fu routine while I did Yoga (seriously, there is not much to do here in Atqasuk). Our plan for this evening is to see if the cribbage board box actually has a cribbage board, play solitaire on our computers and maybe watch Harry Potter or Princess Bride. Then tomorrow, we will push the button to open the portal again. Stay tuned!