Peggy's Weather Report from Trail Ridge Air, Anchorage:
*Time: 12:00 noon Temperature: 19.6 C 66.9 F
Humidity: 62.0%
Wind: 7 km/hr from South
Clouds: Cirrus Cirrostratus
Cloud Cover: 80% broken
Light level: 1485 X 10 Lux *
GPS: Trail Ridge Air, Anchorage
Latitude: 61.18413 N
Longitude: 149.96829 W
Elevation: 18 m
Both teams brought their gear down to the truck at 7 am so we could have Kaladi Brothers coffee and said goodbye.
We took a few group photos, one with Dr. Kaufman, Caleb, me, the official PolarTREC team, and
one with the team I had just been working with: Chris, Dr. Kaufman, Caleb, Heidi, and me. This morning the new teams head different directions; new scientific information will be gathered from different lakes!
We went our separate ways. I was introduced to Eric that morning. He is another new graduate student who will be working with Dr. Kaufman. Caleb, Eric, and I went to Trail Ridge Air to catch our float plane going down the Turnagain Arm inlet across to Whittier and across the Prince William Sound to Culross Island where Mica Lake is located. It was foggy and no one was flying when we arrived for our flight, so we weighed and stacked our equipment and waited until the weather cleared for the flight. At noon they were ready to transport us, then discovered that our boat was too big to fit in the plane with three passengers. I volunteered to come on a second flight later.
Eric and Caleb took off at noon.
I waited and when the plane got back they put me on the plane along with a family headed out to a remote cabin for a week of salmon fishing.
The weather was perfect. There were an amazing number of glaciers along the route. My husband and I had driven most of this route a few weeks before and it was gorgeous but the aerial view of the area was simply breathtaking.
We flew down in the Prince William Sound to let the family off. The plane got tangled in grasses and the pilot spent time untangling it and guiding the plane towards shore so the family could get to shore. There were thousands of salmon migrating up the streams around us! The boys in the family were very, very excited.
The pilot, Dean, and I took off again and continued on. I spotted a cruise ship and many more glaciers. The sun and clouds highlighted the magnificence of the glaciers and islands. We took a sharp right and then a sharp left up over a hill and Mica Lake was in front of us. This lake was not impacted by glaciers and looked like a lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains. It was dark and very, very clear.
We landed and made our way to where Caleb and Eric set up camp. Trail Ridge loaned me some hip boots and as I walked toward shore, I stepped in a hole and overflowed the boots. It did not feel bad as the day was quite warm and the water was not too cold, but I would have wet boots until we left. The pilot took off and we were alone for 3 days.
Caleb and Eric were having trouble getting the boat together. The ground was rocky making it difficult to keep the floorboards in flat. We spent about a half an hour pushing and pulling until we go the boat together. Once together we celebrated for a moment and then went out for a test drive. We took the bathymetry apparatus and circled the lake and criss-crossed it to get a lot of depth readings.
Then it was dinnertime. We made a tasty falafel meal with veggies, and got to know Eric.
We went to the sleeping tents for the night. The plan was to meet at the kitchen tent at 7:30 am.