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JOURNAL ENTRY
June 21st, 7:45am - Cape Graham Moore - Students on Ice Ice Base Camp
(Posted 12:00 pm EST)
- Geoff
Good Morning!
It's summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and up here at 73 degrees north the days are really long! In fact, they are endless. Yesterday we had a jam-packed day! After a great breakfast of Blueberry pancakes, did some camp maintenance securing down the tents and cleaning up a bit. Our little tent city is quite impressive. In total we have about 18 tents including the cook tent, two mess tents (also our classrooms!), equipment tent, outhouse tents, and our two-person sleep tents. Here are some highlights of our day yesterday:
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1) David's talk about the Arctic food-web
2)  Hike to the lookout at Cape Graham Moore from where we had a spectacular view of the surrounding area! We could see the Floe Edge off in the distance, giant icebergs frozen in the sea-ice, thousands of birds (200 long-tail ducks, 300 common eiders, 100's of thick-billed Murres, two ivory gulls, 4 Canada Geese, six Snow Geese, 2 Gyrfalcons, 8 snow buntings, dozens of Northern Fulmars and Black Guillemots, and many more!!). We had several impromptu lectures on the Cape Graham Moore, including a rock lecture by Ingrid,  Bird identification by David, and in underground classroom (aka - a cave) Eric told us all about Hoar ice. In every direction there was something to see and learn. There was just too much to soak in…
3) First trip to the Floe Edge! Where we did some plankton tows and used the hydrophones to listen to the marine life.
4) Discovery of Polar Bear tracks. Lots of them!
5) Ice soccer.
6) Rachell's highlight - Sitting on the Cape, reflecting and absorbing this incredible environment.
7) Lunch! Grilled cheese and mushroom soup. Our chef Lee is awesome!!
8) Eric's evening talk on Snow and "what you should know".
9) Lots of after dinner story telling…
10) Snow storm!
It was a sleepy group that headed off to the tents last night and crawled into our toasty sleeping bags (thank you Trailhead!!). Everyone is talking about how great they sleep up here! This morning Kelsi did her wake-up call by driving a snowmobile between everyone's tents! It worked!! We're now all sitting around the tent having some porridge and getting ready for the day ahead of us. The group has really come together and what a great group! It's great to see all the personalities and senses of humour emerging, and friendships forming, no doubt many that will last for a lifetime. We are really starting to work together as a team, and it has happened so naturally. It is great to see the experiences of this expedition starting to take effect.
Today we're taking of to visit an ancient Thule site on the south coast of Bylot Island. The weather is a bit overcast and windy but we're confident our good kharma and the sun will clear things up!!! And if that doesn't work, then we'll just let the expedition spirit take it course…
Note:to read more about Birds etc. in the area - please visit:
- Bylot Island Migratory Bird Sanctuary
- Digital Collection Program of Industry Canada (Species)
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- Stephanie (Keene, Ontario)
Re. June 20th
Wow, today (yesterday) was the best day ever! We finally made it out to the Floe Edge. Our new starter Kelsi woke us at 7:30 this morning. We ate our superb blueberry pancakes, and packed up our gear. We walked to Bylot Island where we climbed up a huge hill and overlooked the wonderful view. The view was amazing; it was completely white with patches of open water where seals and birds were swimming in the cold blue water. We spent about an hour up on the hill where we got a lesson from Ingrid about rocks and their formation and characteristics. We then made our way down the mountain at around 11:30 for some lunch.
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After we ate our lunch and had a little bit of a rest, we climbed into the Komitics to travel to the Floe Edge. The ride was around a half hour, but it was well worth it. When we arrived to the Floe Edge, it was really cold, but we saw tons of open water with seals and birds diving in and out of the icy water. We were looking for polar bears and whales but unfortunately we did not spot any whales or polar bears. But we did see some HUGE polar bear tracks that were probably the size of my head, but they did look pretty fresh, maybe 1 or 2 days old. We then thought we might see some more wildlife at another Floe Edge about 5 minutes away from the Floe Edge that we were already at. So we decided to make our way over there.
At the other Floe Edge, it was much colder. We put down a device into the ocean to see if we could hear any whales or any other species in the ocean. But unfortunately we didn't. The only thing you could hear were the waves, the ice moving, and some seals! We put down a Plankton net into the water to see if we could find any species. That was a success! We caught some little red critters that we brought back with us to look at under the microscopes. We then decided that it would be a good time to have a hot drink and a light snack before we headed home. Hmm… that hot chocolate and cookie tasted so good. After we had a little break, it was almost dinnertime so we decided to head home.
Back at camp we had a lecture by Eric about Snow (while it started to snow) and another briefing by Geoff about what happened today, the plan for tomorrow, and then got ourselves ready for spaghetti dinner, which was delicious!!! When dinner was all done, we just took the time to relax and just share some funny stories about what happened to people and that we know. After we are all done our relaxing, it will be bedtime. And tonight, we must bundle up because it is very windy and cold out. Both of our toilet tents have blown over, and may I say that was not a good sight! But we got it all cleaned up.
Tonight was a very good day, and tomorrow will be filled with more great activities. This trip is amazing, and we are just getting started!
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- Belinda (Igloolik, Nunavut)
Re. June 20th
Hello,
It is a lot of fun in Pond Inlet and I've been there before. Now we were at the Flow Edge and I've been here for the first time so it was a lot of fun. I was bringing my hacky sack and played it a lot, and I'm getting good at it now. And my other friends played too.
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There are Lily, Jenny, Geoff, Barb, Zev, and other peoples too. So the English people ate caribou stew for the first time too. We found a lot of polar bear track and I seen it for the first time too. Today we had a lot of fun and we threw a snowball and I was the good aimer. So when I get back to Igloolik I can't wait to tell my friends and my family to talk about when I was in Flow Edge, So good night everyone!
BYE!!
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Teddy
(Re: June 21st)
Well I'm here in the great white north! I wrote a journal on Saturday but technical errors led to it's annihilation. Anywho, I'm having a great time here at the pole. We have now spent three nights at the floe edge camp, and one night at Salmon River. Last night was very rainy/snowy, snainy if you would, but my stuff stayed pretty much dry. So to start from the beginning, we got to Pond Inlet on Friday, had dinner and then headed to the camp site, wandering about the beach for about a mile. My uber-nerd biological collecting began at that point, and I have since collected two narwhal vertebrae and a rib, and one fragment of a seal jaw, with teeth in it, which are pretty cool. Pond was really neat, it's interesting to see how the Inuit live, the rhythm is so different here. Sleeping, sleeping is an interesting process. The initial falling is hard to do but once you are asleep, every time you wake up, it's like you have woken up in the morning, and you're like, sweet I've slept in, and then you realize that you have five hours left to sleep. In Pond we got briefed about the Sirmilik Park, it's history and general rules and guidelines. After that we went to the cultural center in Pond, which had old Inuit artifacts and a life sized narwhal model, which was pretty cool. Lily, who is one of the girls on the trip, is Inuk and taught us how to use traditional drums. We traveled to the base-camp afterwards, which took about four hours by snowmobile pulled Komatiks. Since then we have made two trips to the floe edge, and a trip to an ancient Thule site, both of which were very interesting. We're about to hear about traditional culture from Thomas who's one of our guides. Ttfn
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Photo of the Day ...
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Rachell Ellerbeck
(Re: June 21st)
Hello everyone
This morning was perhaps not my most memorable even though I am in the extraordinary arctic I have perhaps one of the most crappiest leadership jobs ever.( pardon the pun) Ok so my job is to clean the honey bucket which are the toilets we are using. You take the garbage bag which collects the excrement then you carry it to an ice crack and let it do its thing. So far it hasn't been too bad but today the bag was to full and it busted. So we cleaned it up and got the job done, washed my hands and headed into the mess tent. Suddenly all I can smell is poo! In fact the whole tent smelled like poo and I realized I was the cause of it. SO I had to scrub and scrub till I got it all off my hands. God I'm glad I'm not a plumber :-) .
After we loaded up in the sleds and went to the Thule site it was an amazing experience. It was almost chilling to see the old sod houses. It really gives you an idea of how people really lived back in the day. You can see the step on which the Thules slept. There were even graves sites and you can see the old human skulls. Well I must admit I couldn't take a picture even though the elders said it wouldn't be disrespectful but I just didn't feel right so I have no pictures to show everyone at home. Then we went to the floe edge. God it is beautiful there. By this time the sun had come out and it was reflecting off the snow it all looked like a post card of those winter wish you were here post cards. After which we listened to one of the guide elders to hear about some of the traditional knowledge about the land. It was fascinating. Well, must go, its way past my bedtime.
Keep on smiling
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Also, to read more about THULE Villages ... vist: www.cilvilization.ca and Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre |
