Shageluk and environs as the sun sets on 16 December 2003.

Monday, 15 December. This is my second visit to Shageluk in 2003. I was here in January for the same reason that I am here now: to set up the ALISON observatory that will be run by Joy Hamilton and her high school students at Innoko River School.

I visited in January because autumn 2002 was unusually warm and Shageluk Lake froze over late and the ice did not reach a sufficient thickness for me to visit before the end of the year. Autumn 2003 has been different and here I am, just a few days before Christmas 2003, anticipating a successful day on the ice tomorrow with Joy and the students.

I thought that getting here would be a little simpler than it was in January, since I would be travelling on only one air carrier (Frontier Flying Service) between Fairbanks and Shageluk via Anchorage and Aniak. However, the flight out of Anchorage was delayed 90 minutes and I arrived at Shageluk, via Holy Cross, at about 5:15 pm, just as twilight was fading. Such is the nature of bush flying.

Richard Franco, the principal of Innoko River School, met me at the Shageluk airstrip and drove me the 3 miles to the village and the school, my lodging for the next two nights. A few minutes later I bumped into Joy at the village store when I was buying dinner. I think she was doing the same. We met later in the evening at the school and planned our activities for the next 36 hours, talked about polar science and environmental change, and discussed my brush with fame in September.

Tuesday 16 December. At 11am, just as the sun was rising above the village, we were on the ice at Shageluk Lake. It promised to be a lovely day: sunshine, no wind, air temperature hovering around ­22°C. Perfect weather for setting up an ALISON observatory. I am disappointed that I broke one of the ice thickness gauges in my increasingly futile effort to get the weight and wires through the ice hole and slot into the water below. On the other hand, the other gauge went in without any difficulty (to my great relief) and the wooden stakes were put in after the snow depth and temperatures had been measured, and snow samples obtained.

  

Tracy and Victoria measure snow depth and the temperature at the bottom
of the snow on the ice (left); Bubba and Jorian drill a hole in the ice (right).

By 2:30 pm we had completed the work and were on our way back to school. The students did very well. Three students had made measurements earlier this year, including Tracy, Bubba and Jorian, shown in the above photographs. Four students were new to the study. Everyone paid attention, made careful measurements and worked well together as a team.

I want to thank Eluska John, Jr. the school maintenance man, for lending his chainsaw so that I could put in the ice thickness gauges. The chainsaw has a 18" (45.7 cm) bar, which turned out to be just long enough to allow me to cut through the 43 cm thick ice. I hope Eluska wasn’t too horrified by the sight of his chainsaw being soaked by copious amounts of water, which eventually froze up the machine.

My day ended with an enjoyable conversation with Rudi Hamilton, Joy’s husband and a village elder. I sat listening with fascination as he described his language and culture, and changes in the local environment and wildlife. My contribution to the conversation seemed trivial by comparison.

Wednesday 17 December. I spent the morning with Joy and the students. We talked about snow, ice and polar environmental change, and about the ALISON project, including the data collected at Shageluk last winter and how they compare with the other ALISON sites. Once I had demonstrated measuring the mass of the snow samples that were obtained yesterday, it was light enough for us to return to Shageluk Lake.

The purpose of the visit to the lake was to demonstrate how the ice thickness gauge works. I was a little anxious as I connected the cables from the battery to the gauge. With fingers crossed we waited for the resistance wire to heat, melt the ice around it and allow me to raise the wooden handle. It worked! So Shageluk has a functioning ice thickness gauge and I am looking forward to seeing those and the snow data as the winter progresses.

So, another successful ALISON site visit ends and return journey to Fairbanks begins. I am writing these final three paragraphs in the Frontier Flying Service Terminal at Aniak. The plane is an hour late. Such is the nature of bush flying.