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.

Here is our exact route from our satellite tracking device.  For anyone interested, here is the google earth .kmz file SPRING ROUTE

Two caribou along the way…

First repeater, R9 A OK!

Swapping cards and batteries on a river gaging station.

Great weather!

The weather crapped out when we reached Fish Creek Station and worked on completing a snow survey about midnight.

Home sweet tiny home… Arctic oven, two cots and a wood stove.  So nice to have a sanctuary from the cold and storm… 

"Sunset" at camp at Fish Creek

Eric wrapping up the last of the snow depth probing at 1:00 am

Fantastic day on the Arctic Coastal plain…