Bad weather on Sunday 14 November in south-central Alaska forced many aircraft to divert to Fairbanks. Consequently, Fairbanks International Airport was crowded with large aircraft, mostly Boeing 747s, on Monday morning when I left for Huslia aboard a very much smaller Piper Navajo. This was my first trip to Huslia and first time flying with Warbelow's Air Ventures.

The plane was supposed to depart at 8:30 am, but since this is bush flying it didn't depart until soon after 9 am. The view of Mount McKinley as the sun rose was spectacular, but much of the flight was spent looking at the tops of low clouds or the insides of clouds. We arrived at Huslia as the snow started to fall after a windy night. It has snowed pretty much all day.

After assembling the ice thickness gauge and preparing other equipment and supplies, and having lunch with Sharon Strick and her partner, Ed Vent, we left soon after 1 pm to set up the study site. We were five adults and three students travelling on four snowmachines with sleds. I got to drive a snowmachine, something I haven’t done for years. It was only 3-4 miles to the lake and the trail was easy and fast, but I was reminded of my general aversion to snowmachines. I can’t understand how anyone finds any recreational value in snowmachining, but I do fully appreciate their importance in rural communities where there are few if any roads.

Our brisk drive in light snow and an air temperature around 5°C took us to Richard’s Spring Camp on the edge of a lake that was once a channel of the Koyukuk River. Setting up the site was primarily about showing Sharon and her students (Lois & Alex Vent and Danielle Ballard Huffman) how to make ALISON measurements. But it was also an opportunity to involve the students’ parents, Floyd Vent and Shawn Huffman, who, together with Ed Vent, drilled all twenty-one holes through the ice before we put in the wooden stakes that mark the measurement transect.

Huslia group after installing the ALISON site.

The parents were very interested in the ice tools that I had brought with me, particularly the Minnesota ice saw. It soon cut a 50 cm long slot through 25 cm thick ice so that the ice gauge could be installed. I, too, continue to be impressed with the ice saw, which has made redundant two chain saws that we have used in previous years.
I think we were back at school – officially Jimmy Huntington School – at 3:30 pm with time to show Danielle, Lois and Alex how to measure the snow mass before their school day ended at 4 pm. Then by 4:30 pm Sharon had entered the data into the computer and thereby learned how to used the ALISON spreadsheets. I spent the rest of the evening writing reports and ALISON Web site material, interrupted by a less than successful Indian dinner (one of my Huslia memories will be of curried beans exploding in the microwave!).