Close encounters of the iceberg kind.

 

 

 

 

Saturday morning looking outside my bedroom window the temperature had dropped, this was the reason why.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a few tense moments at the site this week as we had a visit from an iceberg that has been lurking in the waters of Strathcona Sound for about a month now. I was so far away when I arrived that it looked only like a speck on the distant shore. It started to move about 3 days before it arrived on our shores.  Because there is little in terms of objects that give some perspective to distances it was upon us with frightening speed.

 

This is a section of the wharf under repair and the most vulnerable which received the most damage.

 

 

This is the section which received the brunt of the force and it is the section that is mostly complete and therefore did not sustain any damage. The piece of ice you see was the iceberg giving up part of it's size to the collision. As the iceberg moved on it's way it started to lose some other pieces presumably as a result of the collision with the wharf.

This what the iceberg looked like from a distance with some objects around to give a better idea of the size.  This iceberg is not large by any stretch and is actually on the smaller size of what is possible to encounter.  A few years ago a couple of my coworkers were up here doing a Geotechnical investigation in support of designing this project.  It involved drilling a borehole from a barge some 75 feet offshore of the wharf. Because it can get very cold when it is windy they had built a temporary wall to shield them from the wind which also blocked their view of a seemingly stationary iceberg. Once these icebergs break loose of being grounded they can gain speed very quickly if conditions are right.  Long story short they had to jump into the small boat they were using to get on and off the barge abandoning the drill rig and barge.  The iceberg did miss the barge but grabbed one of the four anchors holding it in place and dragged it almost a kilometer before breaking the line.

 

 

Here is the iceberg dying a safe distance away grounded. The ship in the distance is sending in barges full of supplies this is called a sealift. 

Back in North Baffin Island and it is getting colder.

This part of Canada is labeled  "a Polar Desert" and it really is a desert.  There is little vegetation and almost no rain.  The sun shines all the time and even though it is cooling off,  the constant sun really does pick up your spirits. The days are getting shorter fast.  Instead of the 24 hours of sunshine a day we were getting a month ago the sun disappears at 11 pm now until 530 am.  Although it does not truly get dark it is close enough to being dark that sleep comes easier.

We had 4 Narwhal pass within 20 feet of the divers working on the wharf yesterday. By the time I ran for my movie camera and got back they were gone. Two adults and 2 babies visited the site . I saw them coming from some distance and I ran for my movie camera, in case I needed to get a shot from a distance.  While I was gone they came right up beside the site and left. They also left me without any pictures.

While we are on the subject of narwhals, when we went to the meal hall the other night for supper there was a plate of Narwhal Muktuk on every table for our dining pleasure.  At the galley there was raw narwhal on ice, sushi-like Narwhal it looks the same as cooked except the yellowish layer is pink. The cooked is more tender or less tough I guess.  I did not partake myself but it was comical to watch the face of participants and the ejecting of narwhal pieces into the refuse containers.  A few people liked it or said they did anyway.

 

 

My wife liked the anniversary present Narwhal earrings I bought the last time I was here, a lot,  and I won an other pair in a raffle for medical expenses for the artist. So, Narwhal is a huge part of the culture here as was exhibited by the reaction to the Narwhal visit by the local people working on site.

 

 

A little more from North of the 75th.

The views here are breathtaking.  If you look closely at this picture you can see some amazing cliffs when I first saw this I thought for sure that this was a quarry or something man made. These cliffs are enormous and out in the middle of nowhere.

This is what perma-frost looks like when you dig it up and let it thaw.  This is the first time this bit of ground has thawed in several thousand years and probably hundreds of thousands of years. 

This is what a man made feature looks like. Not quite as attractive as the natural features.  This is where we are blasting and crushing rock for our project.  We use the gravel to build roads, make concrete, make stable pads to build buildings, tanks, culverts, wharfs and pipelines on.

This my office which now has a real blind over the window not a towel as you see here.  The sun believe it or not, is very hot through glass even in the north. I had to make do with what I had.  That is one key to getting things done here in the North. Never discard anything because with limited resources everything can be used. 

This is the jetty behind the camp and that is the wildlife lookout and yes he is armed.  When the ice leaves the bears come ashore because they can no longer hunt from the ice.

Where there is water and a wharf you will find a man fishing. The object of this expedition was Arctic Char but all my fishing buddy here caught was a two horn sculpin known here as the ugly fish.

Here again is our man made feature from a long distance away.  Because there is little or no vegetation it is easy to see the features. The feature behind the machinery is what is known as a Diabase Dyke that was formed when lava flowed between two existing hills and cooled.  This stuff makes great gravel.

A word about Polar Bears

I would like to tell you a little bit about Polar bears that I was unaware of never having seen one in real life.  Some of you may know this already but they are very big. Very big and very vicious.

We have a young man who works at the site here in Nanisivik who is from the community down the road called Arctic Bay.  He is Inuit and like the rest of the people who live there they all live the part of the life style that they have lived for a long time.  That is the hunting and fishing lifestyle that they love and allows them to exist in such a harsh environment.

As part of this aspect of their life they have to go out into a harsh environment to hunt and in this case be hunted. I am not sure of this gentleman's name but he works with one of the environmental engineers here who I have come to know quite well, Stuart.  We were talking the other day about Polar Bears and Stuart pipes up and says I've got something to show you related to Polar Bears.

He showed us a couple of pictures taken of his helper the Inuit gentleman. They were taken 3 months after he and his hunting partner had a night time encounter with a Polar Bear.  The story goes that they were travelling along when all of a sudden they were being chased by a Polar bear who caught up with them very quickly and took a couple of swipes at the helper and quickly started attacking his hunting buddy which allowed the first guy to gain control of his gun and was able to kill the Polar Bear before it killed them. Here is what the scars look like 3 months and 172 stitches (mostly sub dermal) later. Each one of those long scars were the result of the claws of the bear through some pretty heavy clothing. OUCH. Very big claws attached to a very big bear. That is why we have resident wildlife outlooks here around the clock.

The 15 mile trip back home must have a lot of fun too. Again enlarge the picture to get the full effect.

Road Trip to Arctic Bay

 

Explosives containers along the country side.

 

Mount Fuji in the distance.

 

Arctic Bay in the distance

 

Closer to Arctic Bay

 

 

Sled dogs are kept outside the community and feed three times a week. I felt bad when I saw them.

So I went up and talked to them and wished I could have fed them something.

In Arctic Bay looking out.

 

Another shot looking out of Arctic bay.

 

Headed back to camp.

 

You need to click on the pictures to enlarge to get the full effect.

 

Actually pictures don't do it justice you have to be there to get the full effect.

 

Some places actually leave you speechless.

 

The immenseness of it is really something.

 

Wikipedia calles it a Polar desert.

Nanisivik, Nunavut 2015

Well here we go again.  I am in Nanisivik, Nunavut.  700 km above the Artic Circle and a very interesting place.  We walk around with Bear spray and Bear Bangers with wildlife lookouts working around the clock which is easy because it never gets dark this time of the year.  I am here for a 3 week turn around and I am 60% through the first week.  This is what it looks like.



Click on the picture for a better look.

 

I am glad I brought these along.

 

 

 

 

 

The long corridor.  I don't think even Martha Stewart could do anything with this.

Outside the meal hall.

 

Shift Rotation and the trip home

Do you know what an ice road is? It is a road made of ice.  Now there are two kinds of ice road.  There is the kind that is actually a river that has had the snow plowed off of it and then a hole is augured through the ice and the path cut by the plows is flooded to give a somewhat smooth, road like surface and then scarified to give better traction.  A road of this type is the only road that currently exists between Inuvk NWT and Tuktoyaktuk NWT. In the summer there isn't a road and all travel must be done by air or boat.  It takes about two hours or more depending on the weather to get from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk on the ice road. That is 2 very grueling hours for a body. It is a constant pounding over cracks and bumps.  This is what it looks like.

That crack you see is actually a crack in the windshield not the ice road. The second type of ice road is over land and water is pumped into tanker trucks from lakes are sprayed over packed snow layer after layer until it is strong enough to carry the traffic.  Both these types of roads are very interesting and practical but very slippery.All driving is very calculated no sudden moves is the key.

 

It is a good feeling to have worked for three weeks 7 days a week 12 hours a day and to be headed home for a solid week off and a big pay check. But the 2 hour ice road ride and 2 days on an airplane take a little of the joy out of it. So when you get to Inuvik life looks a little like normal.  You have your neighborhood dogs roaming the streets.

Looking like wolves. But hey you have to remember where you are.  This is not exactly Chihuahua country.

 

So once you get to the airport in Inuvik you get your ticket you wait for the eternally late aircraft to arrive. My first trip up here so I have to get used to the systems here.  No high security here I noticed no strip search, no scanning of luggage.