Matt Druckenmiller, Jeremy Harbeck and myself spent four days on the ice to scout out the landfast ice off the coast of Barrow and to install the Mass Balance Site. Field work was short every day since the sun won’t even rise for another week. I’d say workable conditions were from about 11:30 to 4 pm or so. Snowman Jeremy did a 1.3 km MagnaProbe snow transect under conditions (cold, wind, darkness) that would have qualified him for a trip with Edmund Hillary. For the record, we saw a polar bear in the distance, and polar bear footprints and several Arctic Foxes not far from where we placed the probe. Keep your fingers crossed we get through this season without interference with the local fauna.
