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cw-as-fieldresearch · 8 years ago

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The Weird Ways of Camp Life

One of the things that you learn doing fieldwork is that you pick up some weird habits. You know, things that we accept as normal that might seem outrageous to the rest of the world. For some insight into the oddities of living in a remote camp in the arctic, I have compiled a list of some of these things. Enjoy, and don’t judge too hard – I swear we can actually be “normal” people when immersed in the real world!

Tundra Time is its own time zone.

While in the real world people have commitments to jobs, responsibilities to others, social events, and in most places in the world have daylight to give cues to what you should be doing with your life, we lack most of these time triggers up here. Granted, we have jobs to do, but who really cares what time of day they happen as long as they get done? Cory and I have basically given up on watches out here. Firstly because they both were very sluggish when it was cold, so they weren’t doing much good anyway. But it also works out great whether you’ve got a tonne of work to do in a day, or just a few things; when we’re putting in long days, as long as the sun is out and there are lots of snacks in your bag, it’s really easy to put in a 10 hour workday without realizing it (knowing the time just makes it worse). When there isn’t much to do, it’s pretty obvious – there’s no need to rush. And we basically only had a few days where there was actual darkness since we’ve been here, so the sun certainly isn’t helping keep any sort of normal circadian rhythm. In a typical day, we wake up around a very bright 10 am (maybe later lately since we’re just working from camp), have some breakfast, work until mid to late afternoon, have lunch around 5 pm, work more, have dinner around 10 pm (though often later depending on how frozen dinner ingredients still are), and go bed by around 1:30 am (still very much light out).

Bathing is optional, and rare. Especially in the winter.

While in the summer it’s possible to grab a bucket of water and give yourself a sponge bath, or brave the icy cold waters for a dunk in the creek to freshen up, things get a bit tougher during the winter. It’s cold. Being wet is cold. Clean is just not worth it. In the month that we’ve been here, there was a day not too long ago that I decided that I could survive having wet hair and not freeze too much, so I washed my hair in a bucket. The biodegradable body soaps that we have don’t really cut the grease anyway, so I basically still looked like a dirtbag (but smelled faintly of peppermint). Did some laundry too though, so at least if I didn’t look clean, I had clean underwear. Despite the fact that I am one of the most-bathed people in camp at a rate of one hair wash per month, things are surprisingly not smelly. Either we haven’t been working hard enough, or we’ve all just slowly acclimatized to the smell, it isn’t too bad. We do occasionally take advantage of baby wipes and powder to “freshen up”, so that probably helps too.

In the summer, camp food is limited to non-perishables. In the winter, we eat like kings!

Who would have thought that the dinner menu would involve steak, chicken parmesan, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, and frequent burrito nights? Not me, given that in the summer most dinner is based around various types of canned things (some less appetizing than others) and whatever onions/carrots/garlic that haven’t gone too moldy. Or pasta. Between the cold temperatures allowing us to bring in meat and keep it from spoiling, and the epic stove/oven that we now have (goodbye days of Coleman stoves!), we’re cooking up a storm here! I’m exploring my inner chef and making some pretty darn tasty meals with all that we’ve got here, and some decent baked goodies too (my peach crumble was amazing, if I do say so myself). We’ve had some weird things … like pork neck bone. Didn’t know that was a thing that people ate, but it came in our bulk bundle of meats so I made something of it. Pretty darn tasty in the end – just a bit of WTF?! upon finding it. Now that things are warming up quite rapidly, we’re on a high protein diet trying to get through all of the meat before things spoil. It’s a pretty tough life having to go through two packs of bacon a day between five people … :P

Your bowel movements become scheduled to the times when the generator is running

We got new incinerating toilets this year, which is awesome because the former “Ecojohn” was crap (pun intended), but they’re pretty big power hogs and our solar array can’t handle the load (pun intended again). Running a generator all day just to power a toilet isn’t the most efficient, and you’d be surprised how quickly one’s bowels become triggered by the sound of a generator starting. Okay, that might’ve been TMI, but you don’t get how exciting it is to have a working incinerating toilet! Thank you Incinolet, for your fool-proof, auger-less “inshitterator” design!

The internet quality changes with the weather

Do you know what happens when you have satellite internet for which the satellite sits upon a platform that seasonally sinks into the thawing ground? Crappy internet when things warm up! Today we had to readjust the satellite for the first time this season due to its platform dropping and losing signal entirely for most of the day. But, we’re back online! This is going to be a common occurrence as the summer progresses – there are good days, and bad days, and sometimes you just have to re-angle the dish. Still worth it to be able to have internet in the middle of the tundra!

The local helicopter pilot is the camp hero

When you’re in a camp like ours, when once things melt the only option to get anything in or out is helicopter, everyone worships the bringer of the goods! We’re especially lucky that our local pilot, Chuck, is a superstar – we couldn’t ask for someone better to be the one in charge of getting us and all of our stuff in and out safely! So Chuck has gained some pretty high status among camp residents – he brings us food, power, shelter, and sometimes he brings us the only new face that we’ve seen for weeks on end! We might come across as a *little* obsessed, but rightfully so – Chuck and co. treat us pretty darn well up here at Trail Valley, and we’re super grateful for it (and really deprived of human contact). Also, the sound of a helicopter is super exciting, even if it isn’t coming for us. There is usually an exclamation of “CHUCK!!!!” (even though it could be any of the pilots) and a feeling like we aren’t all alone in the world out here.

Anyway, I’m sure that there are more things that I’ve forgotten, but that’s all I can come up with for now. If I think of more camp-isms, I will be sure to share!

Until next time, from the half-thawed tundra,

Ana and Cory

#fieldwork arctic camping tundra science

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tvc-hydro-research · 8 years ago

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April 18 Update

Camp update- following Evans previous post

Chuck and the great pilots at Gwich’n Helicopters slung out all of our equipment on Monday the 10th. It took 6 sling loads over 2 days to get all of our camp supplies, research equipment, food, and fuel into camp. Since receiving the camp supplies and equipment Evan and I have been very busy working on setting up the camp the way we would like it for the rest of the season. There are so many improvements the camp is almost unrecognizable compared to this time last year. Here are some things we have done over the past week:

- Dug out and set up 1 of 2 Ft. McPherson tents. This is used as dry storage for non-electronic science things, tools, extra heaters, misc. items that can be out in the elements. There was 6 ft of wind packed snow at this spot. We didn’t set up the second tent because we figured we don’t need it now with the food storage and extra weatherhaven…. And there is about 6-8 ft of hard windpacked snow in that spot. We will wait until the end of snowmelt for this.

- Set up and installed prospector diesel stove in small weatherhaven. We have been running this 24-7 and it keeps the other weatherhaven toasty for storage of electronic stuff (our science gear ie ebees, rtk) are in here along with Aarons scatterometer overnight. My only concern is the heater will use a lot more diesel than we had hoped for. But we should be fine for the next 4+ weeks where we need it. We have also been using it to melt snow for water. This puppy puts out so much heat, and with the addition of some wooden shelves for storage make the small weatherhaven feel like a sauna! Could this be our next camp project?

- Build shelves in Seacan and organized all cans/ dry goods on shelves. I am not sure if you have seen the pictures (see twitter) but Vicky stocked the shelves and did an amazing job! Plenty of food and we were able to get rid of almost all of the cardboard filling the majority of a helicopter sling with crushed empty boxes. This will help food orders in the future a lot! We still have 2 silver crates full of dried goods that are being stored in the small weatherhaven for now. The problem is that the seacan is cold at this time of year and so things are freezing/ some exploding (RIP pickles) and in the summer I can imagine it will get very HOT.

- Installed new batteries for solar and reinstalled- The solar is now working great with the new batteries. I also had to rewire and mount a few solar panels that were sheered from their brackets during the harsh winter season. Once reconnected our solar input tripled (we were running 2 series in parallel going into the solar charge). We may end up building our own custom solar array rack out of spare lumber to allow us to capture the full solar potential during the 24-7 daily light.

- Installed the new stove, sink, and kitchen. Evan and I build some cupboards for the kitchen with shelves that frees up a lot of space! The new stove is working great and hooked up to our 100lb tank, but I have adapters for the 20lb tanks as well. I am not sure how long this will last but we will find out.

- Renovated outhouse to fit 2 incinolet toilets. We had planned on building an addition to the outhouse, but once we removed the ecojohn we found there was ample room for both of the incinolet toilets. We “adapted” the existing building to house both toilets separated by a wall in the middle. Both doors are facing east and the exhaust vents go out a small hole to the west. I had to hardwire the 30A plugs on the toilets to a wall receptacle where I sacrificed 2 extension cords that run to the new generator. They seem to be working great… minus the HUGE power draw. Even now, working much better than the shitty (pun intended) Ecojohn toilets. Anyone know what to do with a 150 pound toilet that doesn’t work? Would make a great yacht anchor I imagine….

- Set up new Honda generator. Evan and I build a wooden box to host the new generator. This muffles the loud thumping of the larger generator. We had to put it as close as possible to the outhouse to reach the cords for the toilets. Each toilet needs its own 120V 20A outlet or it will keep blowing the fuse on the generator. This uses up both outlets on the generator, meaning you can only have either 2 toilets running, or 1 toilet and the weatherhaven. After 2 full days of testing we have found that the new generator is a fuel hog, going through a full 20L jerry can a day (roughly 8 hrs run time at half load) minimum. Therefore we are trying to limit its use to running the toilets, and if we do not need the toilets but need AC power for the weatherhaven we are still using the Honda 3000W as it is much more efficient. Still working out the kinks, but at least we have working toilets and power!

- Since we did not use the new lumber for the outhouse we are going to build 1-2 more tent platforms, bringing us up to 9. For times when we have more than that (rarely) we should have spare plywood people can put under their tents- or they can set up on the snow.

- The internet appears to be working well, however it goes through regular short losses of signal. We’re talking 5 min max drop times before it reconnects. We have been playing around with it a bit and there seems to me no rhyme or reason as to the issues. During the day it works great- I was even able to skype the other day, but once you have 4+ users it can be pretty useless at times. We are researching ways to increase our signal strength before we would have to resort to a professional realignment.

- All in all the weather has been amazing out here! Sunny most days with highs in the low teens. Once you get out and moving you barely need a jacket. No signs of snowmelt either which is awesome news for us.

Science things

We have not had much time for anything other than camp stuff. However as we near the end of my big to-do list we are thinking about starting up some science things to prepare for the end of winter surveys.

Yesterday Evan and I went searching for the rebar benchmark to set up and test our new RTK system. Unfortunately the location is not “well” known….. as in I have the coordinated down to the cm but handheld GPS units are +/- 5m accuracy… That’s a big search radius for a small piece of rebar. The area is also covered by a 1m well packed snow drift. After hours of digging in the snow we ended up with a ~20m x ~7m pit in the area we thought it should be... key word here is Thought… no matter how certain we were we could not find our little rebar friend. We even went back and looked at old photos for reference but each photo told a different story of where the point should be. We felt like treasure hunters searching for a mysterious mythical treasure, and just like most treasure hunters we came up empty handed. So we eventually gave up and set up a new temporary reference point for our base station and logged a few hours of GNSS points to send away for a PPP assessment. This service improves the accuracy of an unknown point down to within a few centimeters.

Once we set up the base and test the new RTK unit further we will disperse wooden cross-shaped markers across Evans lakes basins that serve as georefference ground control points with cm accuracy. We use Orange survey stakes in an X shape staked to the ground with rebar posts (if we can drive them into the ground). We are thinking of doing half on bare ground and half on the snow surface with the latter needing re-surveyed as the melt progresses. We will resurvey the GCPs is Siksik as well. These are necessary for flying the UAS and creating highly accurate digital surface models.

Evan has noticed that his weirs in the channel outlets of BBL and LBL are completely covered in ice! By covered I mean they are buried under the channel ice and cannot be found! These are weirs where the side walls were 3-4ft high! This is going to complicate our snowmelt runoff surveys as the weirs will likely be useless. We will have to resort to using the channel ice for our channel dimensions and record how it changes across the melt. The siksik weir has a similar affect, but the channel ice is only covering the bottom V portion, so the water level recorders in the stilling well may still function properly.

Before the arrival of the rest of our crew this weekend we plan on testing the following equipment to ensure it works for the end of winter snow surveys:

o Leica GNSS RTK unit

o EBEE

o EBEE RTK and RTK base station

o Magnaprobe

We are visiting the Inuvik Jr High School on Wednesday afternoon to give a talk about some of the research projects we are working on in Trail Valley Creek. Evan and I are skidooing back to meet the rest of our crew. I have put together a presentation with a brief overview of our research and why we are out here studying the snow. We are very excited to be invited into the schools to share some of our research findings and hope to educate the students on the importance of understanding how a changing climate is affecting the hydrological systems in their own back yards. Keep posted for some pictures from this visit. I will post a copy of some of the slides too so everyone can share in our work. Unfortunately I won’t be able to include some pretty sweet UAS drone videos.. .and my wonderful clipart animations. If you want the real deal just contact me and I am happy to share.

The winds are beginning to pick up. That means there is snow blowing all across the barren tundra, creating these nice fresh drifts around any obstacle. Very neat to watch these small snowdrifts form, however when all of that snow is being blown into your tent it’s not so fun.

Pictures to follow shortly! the internet is not being very cooperative.

Till next time.

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