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Letter from Alaska II
Jul. 18th, 1999 12:00 amSunday, July 18, 1999
Toolik Field Station, Alaska
68°37'40"N x 149°35'47" W
Dear Janet,
Thank you very much for the package. I went to Residential Life around Monday to complain again about our Broken (er, missing) doorknob in #603. "Are you Tobin Fricke?" They asked, and handed me the package.
Good books are like tastey food in large quantity: I exercise no moderation. After two late nights and part of the journey up here to the Brooks Range, I'd devoured Blind Descent. I liked it, thank you. Steph (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
krazyaces) will probably read it next should she finish the 18 books she's started.
On Thursday we left Fairbanks for the third annual intern trip to the Brooks Range. We drove up the Dalton, camped at the arctic circle, in a light but persistant rain. Cooked salmon caught by Doug a few days before, over open coals.
The Dalton was far more mundane than its notorious reputation would have you believe: Tales of flats and breakdowns, broken windshields and other perils of the treacherous conduit to Prudhoe are common. The actual road itself is fine, an average, if not above-average, compacted gravel highway, lifeline to the Alyeska trans-Alaska pipeline and the umbilican cord to the Prudhoe Bay oilfields.
After camping at the BLM campground at the arctic circle, we continued north on the Haul Road in our caravan of three suburbans, crossed the Bearing Sea / Arctic Ocean continental divide, and set up camp at Lake Galbraith.
The rain let up enough to allow for some tromping about, a campfire and s'mores. Overcast skies hid the novelty that the sun would set for the first time in nearly two months in a few days.
Morning came just as wet as the night. A few of the interns had insufficient rain gear or had leaky tents. After a late start, we broke camp and decided to head South in search of better weather. (We had insufficient fuel to travel very much further north.)
After a few miles a passing truck brought interesting news: ahead, first the road was being washed out; and beeyond that, it was blocked by a mudslide. The water on the road was still passable; we plowed right through it.
About a mile later, however, we encountered the rock/mud slide, actively being cleared by DOT. Here we were instructed to go back, lest the road wash out entirely, trapping us on a mile of highway, blocked on either side.
The Suburban I was in was left uninformed as to our new destination. We passed Galbraith and continued north, passing Alyeska pump station number three. Shortly thereafter we turned off, onto a raod leading to a small clump of structures adjacent to a lake: Toolik Field Station, UAF.
Toolik Field Station could have been on Venus. Surrounded by white vapor, masked by rain, a small collection of trailers, olive, evergreen, and tan, huddled on the tundra, elevated from the permafrost. Bunnysuited hominoids trekked from building to building, like astronauts on the moon.
Doug and Paul, the two professors leading the trip, talked to some people, and they allowed us refuge in a trailer, 15'x60'. We huddled inside and tried to get warm. "We might get out of here by Tuesday," Doug joked. "That's not funny, Doug." Replied one of the 20 interns. "But he's right," Added the guy from Toolik. Apparently a bridge to the South had washed out, they had learned via a call to the Chandalar DOT camp via radiotelephone. A bridge on the Dalton last washed out in 1994.
So now we're passing the time in the trailer, reading, playing cards. Many of us would like to drive to Deadhorse, 130 miles north of here. Deadhorse is the next (and only) municipality north of here, a work camp for Alyeska Pipeline employees. There we could purchase gasoline and continue north to Prudhoe Bay, touch the Arctic Ocean, tour the facilities at Prudhoe. But Doug and Paul don't want to do that.
Twenty miles north of here, there's allegedly a heard of 300 Caribou and some number of Musk Ox, in a place called Happy Valley. Unfortuantely we don't have enough gasoline to do that.
11pm -- The white blanket smothering the sky has coagulated into magestic cumulous clouds, which are taking flight on the stratospheric winds, allowing the sunbeams to radiate down to us dwellers of the tundra. The midnight sun is coasting along the horizon, nearing the end of its two month sojourn of continuous visibility.
I finished reading Neuromancer. Great book, Bruce Sterling-era Sci-Fi from the early 80's. I think I'm going to read it again sometime, try to capture more of the details. And I totally did not understand the ending.
Monday, 11am -- Doug and Paul have decided to purchase some extra gasoline from Toolik Field Station -- gasoline hand-pumped from individual 55 gallon drums for the extremely reasonable price of $2.00/gallon [at the time gasoline prices were at a low of $0.99/gallon in Berkeley - ed], insignificant compared to the $1.35 paid per mile, per vehicle to UAF for the privledge of driving their vehicles up the Haul Road. This extra fuel will allow us to take our gasoline-hungry suburbans 50 miles north to Happy Valley, an escape from the confines of Toolik.
The animals that had been seen earlier at Happy Valley evidentally had moved on. Here, at the northernmost point of our trip, we were a mere one hundred miles from Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay. On an earlier trip we drove to Valdez; combining these two trips, we've coverd 690 miles of the pipeline's 789 mile ribbon across the state.
We returned to Toolik, packed, and departed, resolved to camp out at the road closure until the Bridge was fixed. I think I forgot to mention: the first bridge was fixed by this point; however, another had washed out. The bridge had become clogged with rocks and debris. The water then went around the bridge, eating away at the road on either side of the bridge.
Apparently nearly three inches of rain had fallen in a 24 hour period of time. The Toolik biologist who told us that added that his amount of rainfall accounts for a quarter of the region's annual total. The rainwater can't penetrate the frozen ground, a quality of the permafrost which creates vast amounts of surface run-off when it rains.
We arrived at the road closure, parked in the line of vehicles, and tromped around.
The road opened at 8 pm. We arrived in Fairbanks at 4:35am. It was very dark compared with what we were accustomed to, even in Fairbanks: you could see the effects of headlights on the pavement, and our apartment complex was illuminated by the glow of a forest of sodium vapor lamps.
July 20 -- Of course our adventure could not end there -- about half of us accompanied Doug to "the northernmost Denny's in the world." Finally we got home and to sleep at 7am.
....
July 21 -- Today we toured the Army Corps of Engineers' permafrost tunnel. Like many of the Geophysical Institute's endeavors (although I don't know if the tunnel is a GI project), the Permafrost Tunnel is paid for largely by the DOD. In fact, our original tour was scheduled for a few weeks ago, but had to be rescheduled because of some experiment underway at that time.
The permafrost tunnel is exactly what the name implies. Dug nearly 400 feet into a hillside, the tunnel is refrigerated to -5°C in summer, and naturally cooled in winter (winter temperatures in Fairbanks have been known to dip below -40°C/F).
Walking into the tunnel, one walks into time. Bones from ancient bison and saber tooth tiger protrude from the frozen walls. The dense odor of 10-40 thousand year-old organic matter is thick in the air. At one point there's even an ancient frozen pond, preserved for millenia.
On top of the floor (ice) lies a thick collection of loess, fine grained glacial till, "rock flower" from ages past. Deposited at a rate of 1 mm / year this material composes the substrate of the permafrost. Exposed to dry air, the permafrost on the sides of the tunnel slowly dessicates, releasing this fine powder from ages of frozen captivity. It adheres to your shoes and itself, the fine grain of its particles giving it a sort of viscosity or stickiness. Disturbed by twenty pairs of shoes, it billowed up into the dank atmosphere, clouding vision and making breathing difficult.
....
On our previous trip, we toured Ft. Knox gold mine, which holds some standing as the largest gold mine in the United States. Most of us were appauled by the overwhelming horror of it: A giant pit, nearly a mile square; a large plant pumping cyanide at 1 ppm into an oddly colored pond. This is the real price of gold, not the $___/ounce quoted daily in the Wall Street Journal. They extract 0.025 ounces of gold from every ton of ore processed.
....
7/27/99, 65°12'54.2"N x 149°59'39.8"W -- This last weekend, a group of seven of us got together to go for an excursion to a hot springs that Stephanie had found on a geothermal map of the area. The eight mile trail to the springs proved less-than-perfect; several crewmembers nearly mutinied after six miles of sloshing through sometimes-ankle-deep mud through the rain and mosquitoes. But in the end our efforts were rewarded, with an idyllic campsite next to the river, a huge beaver pond, and a hot spring beyond our expectations (which had been pretty low, so we were easily pleased). Carl and Ken built a great campfire and we had a grand time. This hotspring is virtually unknown compared to the other Fairbanks-area springs (Circle, Ghena, Manley, Toolavana) and we had the place to ourselves. Of course it's only the novelty aspect in this case that allows the ends to justify the means -- would anyone sane complete such a trek for the reward of a pool of lukewarm, opaque water? Interesting: The Roadside Geology book explains that the hotsprings here are not heated by volcanic effects, but rather are warmed by the heat from radioactive decay of isotopes deep within the earth. Sorry, no geiger counter.
Well, this is my last sheet of paper, so I better wrap this up. I'm going to try to stop by SJI when I Get home but I don't know if I'll be able to—I get home on the 19th and classes start on the 23rd.. cutting it a bit close, eh? Speaking of which, have you heard anything from Chris (t8982) since he left on his trip? He's probably having quite an adventure. Well, I'll talk to you later.
Tobin
Fairbanks, AK
Toolik Field Station, Alaska
68°37'40"N x 149°35'47" W
Dear Janet,
Thank you very much for the package. I went to Residential Life around Monday to complain again about our Broken (er, missing) doorknob in #603. "Are you Tobin Fricke?" They asked, and handed me the package.
Good books are like tastey food in large quantity: I exercise no moderation. After two late nights and part of the journey up here to the Brooks Range, I'd devoured Blind Descent. I liked it, thank you. Steph (
krazyaces) will probably read it next should she finish the 18 books she's started.On Thursday we left Fairbanks for the third annual intern trip to the Brooks Range. We drove up the Dalton, camped at the arctic circle, in a light but persistant rain. Cooked salmon caught by Doug a few days before, over open coals.
The Dalton was far more mundane than its notorious reputation would have you believe: Tales of flats and breakdowns, broken windshields and other perils of the treacherous conduit to Prudhoe are common. The actual road itself is fine, an average, if not above-average, compacted gravel highway, lifeline to the Alyeska trans-Alaska pipeline and the umbilican cord to the Prudhoe Bay oilfields.
After camping at the BLM campground at the arctic circle, we continued north on the Haul Road in our caravan of three suburbans, crossed the Bearing Sea / Arctic Ocean continental divide, and set up camp at Lake Galbraith.
The rain let up enough to allow for some tromping about, a campfire and s'mores. Overcast skies hid the novelty that the sun would set for the first time in nearly two months in a few days.
Morning came just as wet as the night. A few of the interns had insufficient rain gear or had leaky tents. After a late start, we broke camp and decided to head South in search of better weather. (We had insufficient fuel to travel very much further north.)
After a few miles a passing truck brought interesting news: ahead, first the road was being washed out; and beeyond that, it was blocked by a mudslide. The water on the road was still passable; we plowed right through it.
About a mile later, however, we encountered the rock/mud slide, actively being cleared by DOT. Here we were instructed to go back, lest the road wash out entirely, trapping us on a mile of highway, blocked on either side.
The Suburban I was in was left uninformed as to our new destination. We passed Galbraith and continued north, passing Alyeska pump station number three. Shortly thereafter we turned off, onto a raod leading to a small clump of structures adjacent to a lake: Toolik Field Station, UAF.
Toolik Field Station could have been on Venus. Surrounded by white vapor, masked by rain, a small collection of trailers, olive, evergreen, and tan, huddled on the tundra, elevated from the permafrost. Bunnysuited hominoids trekked from building to building, like astronauts on the moon.
Doug and Paul, the two professors leading the trip, talked to some people, and they allowed us refuge in a trailer, 15'x60'. We huddled inside and tried to get warm. "We might get out of here by Tuesday," Doug joked. "That's not funny, Doug." Replied one of the 20 interns. "But he's right," Added the guy from Toolik. Apparently a bridge to the South had washed out, they had learned via a call to the Chandalar DOT camp via radiotelephone. A bridge on the Dalton last washed out in 1994.
So now we're passing the time in the trailer, reading, playing cards. Many of us would like to drive to Deadhorse, 130 miles north of here. Deadhorse is the next (and only) municipality north of here, a work camp for Alyeska Pipeline employees. There we could purchase gasoline and continue north to Prudhoe Bay, touch the Arctic Ocean, tour the facilities at Prudhoe. But Doug and Paul don't want to do that.
Twenty miles north of here, there's allegedly a heard of 300 Caribou and some number of Musk Ox, in a place called Happy Valley. Unfortuantely we don't have enough gasoline to do that.
11pm -- The white blanket smothering the sky has coagulated into magestic cumulous clouds, which are taking flight on the stratospheric winds, allowing the sunbeams to radiate down to us dwellers of the tundra. The midnight sun is coasting along the horizon, nearing the end of its two month sojourn of continuous visibility.
I finished reading Neuromancer. Great book, Bruce Sterling-era Sci-Fi from the early 80's. I think I'm going to read it again sometime, try to capture more of the details. And I totally did not understand the ending.
Monday, 11am -- Doug and Paul have decided to purchase some extra gasoline from Toolik Field Station -- gasoline hand-pumped from individual 55 gallon drums for the extremely reasonable price of $2.00/gallon [at the time gasoline prices were at a low of $0.99/gallon in Berkeley - ed], insignificant compared to the $1.35 paid per mile, per vehicle to UAF for the privledge of driving their vehicles up the Haul Road. This extra fuel will allow us to take our gasoline-hungry suburbans 50 miles north to Happy Valley, an escape from the confines of Toolik.
The animals that had been seen earlier at Happy Valley evidentally had moved on. Here, at the northernmost point of our trip, we were a mere one hundred miles from Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay. On an earlier trip we drove to Valdez; combining these two trips, we've coverd 690 miles of the pipeline's 789 mile ribbon across the state.
We returned to Toolik, packed, and departed, resolved to camp out at the road closure until the Bridge was fixed. I think I forgot to mention: the first bridge was fixed by this point; however, another had washed out. The bridge had become clogged with rocks and debris. The water then went around the bridge, eating away at the road on either side of the bridge.
Apparently nearly three inches of rain had fallen in a 24 hour period of time. The Toolik biologist who told us that added that his amount of rainfall accounts for a quarter of the region's annual total. The rainwater can't penetrate the frozen ground, a quality of the permafrost which creates vast amounts of surface run-off when it rains.
We arrived at the road closure, parked in the line of vehicles, and tromped around.
The road opened at 8 pm. We arrived in Fairbanks at 4:35am. It was very dark compared with what we were accustomed to, even in Fairbanks: you could see the effects of headlights on the pavement, and our apartment complex was illuminated by the glow of a forest of sodium vapor lamps.
July 20 -- Of course our adventure could not end there -- about half of us accompanied Doug to "the northernmost Denny's in the world." Finally we got home and to sleep at 7am.
....
July 21 -- Today we toured the Army Corps of Engineers' permafrost tunnel. Like many of the Geophysical Institute's endeavors (although I don't know if the tunnel is a GI project), the Permafrost Tunnel is paid for largely by the DOD. In fact, our original tour was scheduled for a few weeks ago, but had to be rescheduled because of some experiment underway at that time.
The permafrost tunnel is exactly what the name implies. Dug nearly 400 feet into a hillside, the tunnel is refrigerated to -5°C in summer, and naturally cooled in winter (winter temperatures in Fairbanks have been known to dip below -40°C/F).
Walking into the tunnel, one walks into time. Bones from ancient bison and saber tooth tiger protrude from the frozen walls. The dense odor of 10-40 thousand year-old organic matter is thick in the air. At one point there's even an ancient frozen pond, preserved for millenia.
On top of the floor (ice) lies a thick collection of loess, fine grained glacial till, "rock flower" from ages past. Deposited at a rate of 1 mm / year this material composes the substrate of the permafrost. Exposed to dry air, the permafrost on the sides of the tunnel slowly dessicates, releasing this fine powder from ages of frozen captivity. It adheres to your shoes and itself, the fine grain of its particles giving it a sort of viscosity or stickiness. Disturbed by twenty pairs of shoes, it billowed up into the dank atmosphere, clouding vision and making breathing difficult.
....
On our previous trip, we toured Ft. Knox gold mine, which holds some standing as the largest gold mine in the United States. Most of us were appauled by the overwhelming horror of it: A giant pit, nearly a mile square; a large plant pumping cyanide at 1 ppm into an oddly colored pond. This is the real price of gold, not the $___/ounce quoted daily in the Wall Street Journal. They extract 0.025 ounces of gold from every ton of ore processed.
....
7/27/99, 65°12'54.2"N x 149°59'39.8"W -- This last weekend, a group of seven of us got together to go for an excursion to a hot springs that Stephanie had found on a geothermal map of the area. The eight mile trail to the springs proved less-than-perfect; several crewmembers nearly mutinied after six miles of sloshing through sometimes-ankle-deep mud through the rain and mosquitoes. But in the end our efforts were rewarded, with an idyllic campsite next to the river, a huge beaver pond, and a hot spring beyond our expectations (which had been pretty low, so we were easily pleased). Carl and Ken built a great campfire and we had a grand time. This hotspring is virtually unknown compared to the other Fairbanks-area springs (Circle, Ghena, Manley, Toolavana) and we had the place to ourselves. Of course it's only the novelty aspect in this case that allows the ends to justify the means -- would anyone sane complete such a trek for the reward of a pool of lukewarm, opaque water? Interesting: The Roadside Geology book explains that the hotsprings here are not heated by volcanic effects, but rather are warmed by the heat from radioactive decay of isotopes deep within the earth. Sorry, no geiger counter.
Well, this is my last sheet of paper, so I better wrap this up. I'm going to try to stop by SJI when I Get home but I don't know if I'll be able to—I get home on the 19th and classes start on the 23rd.. cutting it a bit close, eh? Speaking of which, have you heard anything from Chris (
t8982) since he left on his trip? He's probably having quite an adventure. Well, I'll talk to you later.Tobin
Fairbanks, AK
