Imnavait Creek

At least for now, I have Thursday mornings off of work, so I let the science coordinator know I was interested in hitching a ride along on any outings that happen those mornings and available to help in any  way. There was an opportunity right away, on my first Thursday morning in camp. A couple of hydrologists here to get a long-running stream-melt project on track for the season needed help doing some digging at their site in Imnavait Creek Research Area, just 8 miles north on the Dalton from Toolik (though those 8 miles happen to go directly east instead of north). So with the two of them and the two science staff here, I packed a lunch and hopped in a truck for a field trip.

It was a chilly day (less than 20F) but brilliantly blue, the Brooks Range shining in the sun.

The hydrology equipment was about 100 yards away from the road, so we put on snowshoes/skis to make our way over to it.

And then we started digging! The project is collecting stream water as it flows down the valley during the spring melt, so in addition to digging out the equipment  installed there, we also needed to dig pathways in the snow to allow/encourage the water to continue flowing well past the collection site instead of collecting and stagnating right where the equipment is sitting, which would compromise the content of  the samples collected.

After a few hours of digging, we'd moved a pretty impressive amount of snow, and everyone was ready for a lunch break.

The rest of the group was going to stay to continue digging all afternoon, but I needed to return to Toolik to report to my actual job for the rest of the day, so I stole away for my last 45 minutes on a pair of borrowed cross-country skis (thank you, Hydrologist Sveta!) to go a bit further up the valley on a peaceful, lung-expanding mini-adventure. What a vista!

Then I got to take one of the trucks on my own back out of the research site...

...and onto the Dalton back to camp. It was my first time being a driver on the Dalton, and it was kind of a thrill.

And so I had my first little adventure away from camp. Hopefully the first of many!