First day of field work...

may 31, 07


Today was the first day of field work. Most exciting! My hope was to not only have a great day helping with research but also... get to drive a snow mobile (or snow machine as the locals call it). And would you know it, I get the chance right of the bat. The snow machines are very powerful and shockingly they can go up to 200 mph. Ok, I didn't get it up to anywhere near 200 mph (more like 30 mph) but let me tell you it felt very fast. The ride is very rough, and because the snow doesn't make bumps very obvious you must be ready to get some air at any moment. Thus, any thing not tied down will come flying off, this can include people too, as my research mate, Santonu, found out. Poor guy was on the back of one of two sleds that were being pulled and hit a bump that shot him right off and it was not for a good kilometer that we noticed! He was most lucky not hurt and had a good laugh and memory of this rough ride. All together we had 5 snow machines and the drive from the research faculty took about 15 minutes and left us in a nearly completely white environment much like the loading console straight from the Matrix. A strange, unsetting yet exciting feeling of both danger and safety as you can see for miles, however still hyper-aware that you are indeed in the natural food chain. Once we to our site, we unpacked our equipment and we split into 3 groups, santonu and I, Dave and Amorita, and Craig with Alex and Sandra.

Santonu and I watching the Tramline Progress. 300 meters of tramline and 3 tramlines.

The area that Santonu and I were focused on was a dried lake bed as is covered in over 4 feet of snow. On the lake bed lies 3 train-like tracks that support our mini train that carries sensors to measure various things a regular intervals for a total of 300 meters. Because of the heavy snow, the track had been bent and snaked left and right instead of being perfectly leveled and straight, and so we had to walk the track straightening and leveling each section for each track and log any pieces that needed to be replaced.

One of two snow sleds that we pulled with the snow machines.

This took the whole day and was very exhausting, but worth it as we were able to run our train on each track and test the sensors.Long day. After this was a bit more fun driving around the snow machines! After this we went and ate! Good day!