Brooks Range

I'm probably going to end up just posting random pretty pictures of the world I'm living in right now. So here you go. Since I took this, it's snowed again and all that bare tundra is once again blanketed...for now....

A Tower

Water being precious here at Toolik, we are encouraged to use one of the many "towers" situated around camp. Calling them that makes using a long-drop, outhouse toilet sound way more interesting and appealing than it otherwise would. I'm a fan.

Boardwalk

Tonight I finally wandered out into Toolik's backyard, which has this really charming boardwalk system that provides tundra-protecting access to a whole bunch of science projects that are set up in the hills. The boardwalks were almost completely covered when I first got here, and now (2.5 weeks later), they are kind of, mostly, revealed...but the funniest part of the walk is not pictured here, because whenever I hit a patch of snow where the boardwalk is still obscured, I would end up post-holing like CRAZY, a couple of times to the top of my thigh. There was one time I was not sure I would be able to get my boot out. It will definitely be more relaxing to walk on the boardwalks once the snow is entirely gone, or almost so.

Two  different boardwalk views:

That's if for now! I have a bunch of one- or two-picture posts on deck that I'm going to run with for a while. Short but sweet?

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!

Local walk

Though I've been busy enough with (and tired enough from) work that I haven't been going out on daily walks, I did get a bit of a leg stretch on my first Sunday afternoon in camp, following the road that goes north along the east side of Toolik Lake.

I was technically leaving the station boundaries so finally got a picture of the entrance sign:

Camp looks so small from a distance!

Small-scale was beautiful as well, the snow having melted off in some patches.

The lake is still very decidedly frozen. Hard to believe that it will mostly likely melt enough for the bold and brave to jump into it later this summer. For now it just looks like part of the frozen tundra.

And the snow accumulation is still impressive! But I'm super grateful for a ploughed road to walk on.