APLIS POSTCARD #15
26 March 2007
Position: 73-13N/145-32W
Temperature: -20¼F
Greetings from APLIS, adrift in the Arctic Ocean.
Boy, I thought it was cold yesterday but today is even
worse. The difference - winds
gusting to 25 knots. ItÕs not only
made things colder but the blowing snow has kept us in camp. Visibility is so poor, we can sometimes
barely see from one side of the camp to another in the blowing snow.
So, as long as weÕre stuck in the camp, I may as well talk
about something IÕve wanted to for a while now - the camp itself. All of the buildings are constructed of
sections of plywood 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide. That means all of the buildingsÕ dimensions are in
increments of 4 feet. The largest
building - the Command Hut - is 20 ft by 20 ft. All of the living hootches are 8 ft by 20 ft.
All of the buildings have names. Before we arrived, the guys from APL/UW stenciled each with
the name of a Las Vegas hotel - ÒCircus CircusÓ (where I live), ÒThe SandsÓ, ÒLuxorÓ,
etc. The Command Hut is called
ÒMGM GrandÓ, possibly a nod to the studio that produces Stargate. And the Mess Hall - the centerpiece of
the camp - ÒBellagioÓ.
The ÒVenetianÓ with ÓNew York, New
YorkÓ in the Background
Each living hootch has up to six residents in three double
bunk beds and is warmed by an oil-fired heater. One trick of living up here is to keep a stock pot on top of
the heater. Filled periodically
from our mined ice supply, the water melted in these pots provides each hut
with water for bathing and drinking.
In addition, keeping the pot at a slight boil raises the humidity in the
huts from near-zero to about 20%. Avoiding
cracked skin is important for the comfort of the residents and to avoid the
potential for infection.
All of the residents have customized their hootces to their
own tastes. Most have shelves (to
keep supplies and toiletries off the ground where they would freeze) and coat
hooks (for parkas). ÒNew York, New
YorkÓ used to be our equipment shed but, with the recent population boom, has
been taken over by the ladies from Stargate. ItÕs rumored to have carpeting, curtains, and other
luxuries. I have no idea where
they would have gotten those things up here.
When we first got here, temperatures were warm enough that
many people were drilling holes in their walls to improve ventilation. All that ended today. People have been scurrying to keep the
biting wind out of their hootches.
Ventilation holes have disappeared. Minor gaps between the plywood sections, overlooked before
today, are being hunted down and taped over.
The wind has had other effects on camp life. Over the past two weeks, normal foot
traffic has worn familiar paths between the different hootches and some of our
outlying areas like the runway. The
blowing snow has erased these and replaced them with random snow drifts - some
almost knee deep.
Just to clarify.
We refer to the fluffy white stuff covering the ground as ÒsnowÓ only
because thatÕs a familiar term.
Real snow is frozen fresh water thatÕs fallen from the sky. Our ÒsnowÓ is actually tiny pieces of
sea ice that have been eroded by the wind. If you were to taste it, it would be salt. The Arctic is a desert, receiving very
little precipitation. To complete
the comparison between the Arctic and a more traditional desert, what we call
ÒsnowÓ is actually the arctic sand.
Arctic Dunes
The last of the Stargate team was due to arrive late in the
day. To us non-pilots, this was
not the kind of weather weÕd like to fly in. But to an experienced bush pilot like Shawn, today was just
another day in the Arctic. To help
him out, we had a caravan of snowmobiles go out to the north end of the runway
to mark its centerline with their headlights. Shawn eased his plane down gently for about the 50th
time. On board were John Smith
(Executive Producer for Stargate), his wife Lynn, and Actor Richard Dean
Anderson.
The Stargate crew is now complete. All we need is a clear day tomorrow for them to finish their
filming. Besides that, we need the
weather to clear before cabin fever sets in.
Jeff Gossett
Arctic Submarine Laboratory