TOOLIK FIELD STATION — After 800-plus miles by snowmachine and three weeks of working in the same clothes, it’s time to pack our duffel bags, stuff them into a barrel and set them on fire. Just kidding about the burn barrel, but three lake studiers and I returned last night to the slushy snow of […]
TESHEKPUK LAKE — Suspended in glass on the oil stove, the coffee leans south, as if the giant lake has a gravitational pull. Though Ben Jones has leveled this cabin before, he sees a useful function in the current slope, caused by thawed permafrost. Any snow blown in during the long winter will drain through […]
WEST OF NUIQSUT — A sick snowmachine awaits rescue here on the snow-covered ice of this boot-shaped lake. After an 85-mile journey from our last stop at Umiat, one of the Ski Doo Skandics sputtered to a crawl a few miles from our intended campsite here. The loss of one of their essential research tools […]
TOOLIK FIELD STATION — Despite a wind that makes today’s minus 14 degrees Fahrenheit feel like minus 39, a worker at this research camp in blue-white hills north of the Brooks Range has proclaimed this the first day of summer. Today, the population of Toolik Field Station increases from nine — five people running the […]