Piper Navajo aircraft at Huslia moments before leaving for Hughes, Tuesday 29 November 2005.

Aerial view of Hughes on the far bank of the Koyukuk River, Tuesday 29 November 2005. The long, narrow white strip adjacent and parallel to the river is the runway.

Johnny Oldman School (right) at Hughes lies next to the apron where the planes load and unload.

After a good night’s sleep on the library floor at Jimmy Huntington School, I was ready to head upriver to Hughes, about 30 minutes away by plane. Just as there was some doubt yesterday morning about being able to land in Huslia, so there was some doubt this morning about being able to land in Hughes.

Before leaving Huslia I saw some de-icing equipment that I had not seen before – a rubber mallet and a piece of wood that looked like a sawn-off broom handle. I leave to your imagination as to how this de-icing technique works.

As we flew from Huslia to Hughes the sky was overcast and in places the cloud base was at the land surface. Snow was in the air, too, but there was no problem landing, and I had a very good view of Hughes and the Koyukuk River as we circled to approach the airstrip.

The Johnny Oldman School in Hughes is a stone’s throw from the airstrip so it was neither difficult to find nor did it take long to walk over there. I think I walked into Joan Jones’ classroom at about 11:15 am. Two hours later I was out at the pond that is now the location of the ALISON study site. The air temperature was -17.45°C and there was a very light wind.

The pond is a long, skinny abandoned channel, probably once a slough where water must have flowed but has long since ceased to do so. The water is also shallow – roughly 0.7 m where we installed the ice thickness gauge. I suspect that the ice there, already 0.51 m thick today, will freeze completely to the bottom later this winter. Judging by some of the temperatures we measured at the bottom of the snow, some of the ice might be frozen to the slough bottom already.

Just two of us set up the study site – Dylan Ambrose, an 8th grader, and me. By 3 pm we were back at school, having set up the study site, made a full set of measurements and taken the snow samples. I could have set up the site on my own, but first I would have had to find it and probably become lost without Dylan as a guide, and then I would have had neither company nor assistance. Dylan did both and I’m glad he was there. He did a good job and together we set up the site in much less time than if I had been there alone.

So the site is all ready for eight of us (Joan, six students and me) to visit tomorrow to make another set of measurements, take more snow samples and thereby be trained in obtaining and recording good data. In the meantime, I am to be treated to a second Thanksgiving dinner this evening, courtesy of Joan.

Dinner was delicious and the couch in the gym made a comfortable bed for the night. I shall be sleeping in the gym again tonight. I hadn’t planned to stay a second night, but the weather prevented the Warbelow’s plane from landing and taking me back to Fairbanks. These things happen when the cloud ceiling is at ground level. Let’s hope the cloud lifts tomorrow.

The most important thing I did today was to return to the study site with Joan, Cynthia (she assists at the school) and four students – Kylee, Tamara, Mariah and Dylan – for a demonstration of the equipment and how to make measurements and take snow samples. It was a great relief when we connected the battery to the ice thickness gauge and the resistance wire heated up and we could move it up and down in the ice. The weather was slightly warmer than yesterday (-14.5°C) and the wind remained almost calm.

The Hughes school also has a wireless network; consequently, with my wireless-equipped laptop I am able to check my e-mail and reply to those messages that demand attention. It will be nice to return to the office, hopefully tomorrow afternoon, and not face a huge backlog of e-mail messages.

The plane did land at Hughes and I did return to my office on Thursday. We landed at Fairbanks International Airport at about 1 pm, my cold (-20°C), not-plugged-in car started first time, I picked up the mail, bought good coffee at the Alaska Coffee Roasting Company, and then went to the office.

Before I boarded the plane I visited the study site once more to take some photographs. It was overcast and the sun had risen only shortly before I went out, so the light was very flat and my photographs are not as good as I would like. Nevertheless, they give a reasonable sense of the nature of the study site. Unfortunately, someone had visited the site before me and driven a vehicle along the line of stakes. You can imagine my state of mind about that. Joan subsequently had a polite word with the culprit.

The Hughes study site runs from left to right across the middle of this photograph taken at about 10:55 am on Thursday 1 December 2005.