Martin at the greenboard explaining some of the ALISON measurements and concepts.

I am writing this report in the kitchen of the newest building in Shageluk. Since my last visit in December 2003 the Iditarod Area School District has had a guest house built next door to the school. A duplex, it houses the school principal on one side and visitors on the other. So, instead of sleeping on the floor of the school library last night, I slept on a bed in my own room. Such unexpected luxury.

I was originally scheduled to travel to Shageluk on Tuesday 30 November. That morning I went into the office to check my e-mail before going to the airport to check in at Frontier Flying Services. It was as well that I did go to the office because a telephone message and an e-mail message from Joy Hamilton told me that I should reconsider my visit. Rain on Monday had turned the snow to knee-deep slush on the Shageluk Lake ice. We agreed that these were less than ideal conditions to set up the study site and show the students how to make measurements. And so, I postponed the Shageluk visit to 9-11 December, the end of a week that began with a successful 2-day visit to Mentasta. (link to Mentasta trip report)

I arrived thirty minutes ahead of schedule at Shageluk after leaving Anchorage thirty minutes behind schedule. I won’t attempt to explain – it’s something about bush flying that I am still adjusting to. Tim Stathis, principal of Innoko River School, met me at the airstrip and as we drove past Shageluk Lake I could see the consequences of the rain ten days ago – the snow on the ice was very patchy with many grey areas of almost bare ice with, I learned later, just a light dusting of fluffy snow.

Most of the students who will be making measurements at Shageluk Lake this winter also made measurements last winter. So, before going out to the lake to set up the study site by old Shageluk Village (it was abandoned after flooding in 1967), we had a refresher course for about an hour, methodically explaining how to make careful and accurate snow depth and temperature, and ice thickness measurements, as well as taking snow samples.

We were on the ice at about 10:30 am and installed the ice thickness gauge without any difficulty. The Minnesota super saw (link to ??????) made short work of cutting a slot in the ice, which was 43 cm thick with a considerable upper layer of snow ice. That patchy snow cover mentioned above varied in depth from 0.5 cm to 10 cm.

After measuring snow depth and temperature, and taking snow samples, I remained on the ice while Joy and the students (Denise and Marissa) returned to school for lunch. Other students left to fly to Anvik for a Wellness conference. As the wind speed increased, I occupied myself with hole-drilling and putting in wooden stakes to mark the sampling transect. By 1:30 pm I, too, was back at school discussing weight and mass with the students as we used the electronic balance to weigh the snow samples and record their mass.

Assisted by Denise, Martin explains how to use a TWIT(the ice thickness gauge).

The language of science can be confusing, e.g., the correct use of the terms mass and weight. I explain it the same way that it was explained to me over thirty years ago when men were landing on Earth’s low gravity moon – mass is invariant but weight varies as gravity varies. So we weigh less but our mass remains the same on the moon.

To avoid the verb ‘to weigh’ and thus any possible link to weight, I have heard people go so far as to refer to “massing” in the context of determining the mass of an object. This is too much scientific political correctness for my taste. I’d rather avoid the poor English represented by the verb “to mass”. I must check the dictionary, though, to see if “to mass” is indeed a verb in the context of weighing an object to determine its mass.