Frank's Blog

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Sunsets at Inigok

The sunset at Inigok always blows me away. Summer or spring, it is equally awesome and being so far north it lasts and lasts.. takes a few hours to go down, and this time of year does not happen until about midnight- here are a few shots from the last couple days.

Like a painting

Inigok Dome-

Arctic entry porthole reflection-

Eric taking pics-

April 19-25, 2015- A few days around Umiat and then north to Inigok

We had a great flight from Fairbanks to Umiat and then hopped right into prepping gear and doing some work at local stations and remote cameras. There were an abundance of ptarmigan in the area and we had some great weather to get the trip rolling. We are at our Inigok camp right now hoping to head out sometime today, April26, to sites further north. There are webcams we have deployed at Inigok available on the Umiat.com website- See below for some photos from the first few days of the trip.

Caravan charter from Fairbanks

Chatanika river just north of Fairbanks

Yukon river!

Eric prepping for a snow survey at the USGS Umiat climate station

Happy ptarmigan in the willows...

Built for the cold...

Working above the Colville river at the Umiat mountain cameras...

A radio repeater with bear fence

Gearing up the sleds

Ready to rock- enough science and survival gear for 5-600 miles and 2 weeks

Kunzville- near Inigok at sunset

Late night ride...

Saturday, April 25, 2015

2015 Arctic Alaska Snowmachine Traverse

Well we are back at it again! This will be the 9th consecutive year (minus 2013 due to funding issues) that Eric Yeager and I have embarked across the tundra to visit and service the USGS Climate and Permafrost Network Monitoring stations. Each year has been bigger and better, visiting more stations, adding equipment and capability, doing additional science, and specifically - in recent years, focusing on snow based science completing many snow surveys along the way. We started April 19th and plan to be out this year until May 5th, thus are part way into the adventure- we will post updates when we have time, and internet access. You can follow our progress by clicking the "Live Tracker" photo of the map in the top of the blog- We hope you enjoy seeing photos and hearing about our work along the traverse. As in previous years, we will cover a large portion of northeastern NPRA stopping at multiple stations along the way. We start the snowmachine trip in Umiat, travel north all the way to the Arctic ocean coast, around Teshekpuk lake and eventually back to Umiat. We camp and stay in a few established cabins/facilities along the way and the trip will end up being 4-600 miles depending on routes.

Snow cover and Logistics Camera Maintenance- Umiat Mountain

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

A few days at Inigok in a storm, back to Umiat and a great flight back to Fairbanks

We sat out a powerful wind storm at Inigok for a few days, made a day dash out to our site at Koluktak, 40 miles to the west. We then made our way back to Umiat, packed and inventoried and had a spectacular flight over the Brooks Range back to Fairbanks.

40mph winds create a ground blizzard.

Short movie of the windstorm.

Snow survey at Koluktak

Sunset snowmachine tracks at Inigok

Incredible vistas.

Sundogs at Inigok

Inigok Sunset

Wright Air Service Caravan, our chariot to Fairbanks.

Brooks Range

It never ceases to amaze me the beauty of this country...

No words can describe this...

Happy camper at the end of a great trip!

Fish Creek to Teshekpuk Lake Observatory and back to Inigok

Over the span of four days we travelled from Fish Creek to the fantastic Teshekpuk Lake Observatory maintained by Ben Jones (USGS) where we recharged our literal and figurative batteries for two nights. We went to service the stations on the Arctic Coast at Drew Point and then made our way back south to Inigok. The bears were waking up and we saw a bunch of tracks, and the snow buntings guided our way…

Working in the flat light cloud - no frame of reference…

Adjusting sensors at Lake 31, 10 miles south of the Arctic Ocean.

Teshekpuk Lake Observatory.

Always nice to see a snow bunting…

Neat, but sometimes disconcerting to see these tracks…

The grizzlies are awake.

Impossibly blue sky at a repeater south of Teshekpuk Lake.

Insane vistas, like a different planet.

Inigok to Fish Creek

Well, this is about a month late that I am now finally updating the blog. Limited internet access and Frank being pretty consumed busy with getting work done precluded updates… I will split the remainder of the last trip into several entries to make it a bit more accessible. Mainly, the photos will tell the story but we had a very successful trip, the weather mostly cooperated, the snow conditions were conducive to relatively comfortable travel and best of all, we found very little damage or faulty equipment at the stations visited on our loop. The damage we did find was repaired and we installed a few new sensors and a few new real time monitoring cameras along the way. The first segment was from Inigok to Fish Creek, about 40 miles Northeast. We stopped at several repeaters and monitoring stations along the way including USGS river gaging stations at Fish and Judy Creeks…

We flew into Umiat, traveled to Inigok, then made our way up to Fish Creek to the Northeast and eventually across the north side of Teshekpuk Lake, a visit to the Arctic Ocean coast at Drew Point and then back down the West side of Teshekpuk to Inigok. We then took a trip west to Koluktak (AK106), back to Inigok and eventually back to Umiat.