Alert-120

I lied when I said that the weekends are quiet at Alert. It’s the weekend MORNINGS that are quiet, and sleepy as everyone gets well-deserved rest before the brunch rush. It’s the weekdays that are truly quiet in terms of non-work-related hustle and bustle.

I was originally planning on posting something on Friday to mark a full week of me being on the station and what my thoughts were, but the weekend was jam-packed. I found myself rushing to my room after dinner tonight because I had somehow managed to social myself out in the most isolated place on Earth and needed some alone time.

The Weekend

As one of the GDs put it the best, “I wanted to be by myself, but I needed to socialize”. Of course, attending TGIF is actually mandatory for military members so regardless of if he felt either which way, he needed to be there. But I agreed with the sentiment. After a week of learning the job, all I was really craving was a gin and tonic plus a game of pool if you can believe it. If I had said a beer and pool, that would make me an old man, but since it’s a classy gin and tonic it’s alright.

Sidenote for my friends and mom: They have Empress Gin here! I had the most beautiful blue-to-lavender magic tonic in my life. Alcohol wise, they have everything I’d ever need.

I had made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t watch The Thing (1982) during my stay in the arctic. It would only freak me out, especially since I’d be spending 3 days a week out in the frozen desert in the dark with only the radio and anything lurking in said dark to keep me company. If the wind kicked up, I’d have a hard time hearing anything sneak up behind me so, you’d be disappointed to know I only made it a week without watching or even thinking of it. You’d be even more disappointed to know I watched the sequel – The Thing (2011), which isn’t even a quarter as good as the original, the following night on Saturday.

There seems to be no good influences up here to sway me from making bad decisions as such, and I can’t help but imagine what kind of horrors I will freak myself out with on Monday at the lab.  

Also on Saturday were the Inuit Games, a special event put on by some of the Inuit staff here in Alert where we are pit against each other to play a few different Inuit games. The games were as followed:

1. Knuckle Jump: Imagine getting ready to do a push up on your knuckles…except instead of pushing up, you must jump forward while still in a knuckle plank as far as you can go and whoever gets the farthest wins. Women were not allowed to play this game, and while one of the military guys tried to explain that me and the other woman can do whatever we want (maybe to avoid any sexism complaints), we were both very willing to sit this one out and watch as the guys gave themselves bloody, floor burned knuckles.
2. Toe Jump: Can you touch your toes? I can. Can you jump forward while keeping hold of your toes? I…cannot. It looked easy when one of the event leaders did it, she gave us all a false sense of confidence until we all began to do it one by one and failed miserably.
3. Kneel Jump: While sitting with your ankles flat on the floor underneath you, you must jump as far forward as you can to your feet without using your hands. Yeah, I sucked at this one too.
4. Ayagaq: The Inuit version of Ball-In-Cup. Attached to a stick by thin leather is a hollowed-out bone that you must perfectly skewer with the stick. If you miss three times in one turn, you must pass it to the next person. Needless to say, the game went for a few rounds before any winners were declared.
5. Hand Pull: Honestly, I can’t really explain this one. It’s basically an arm wrestle but if you were also playing Twister. There were four rounds where you and your opponent took turns pulling or trying not to be pulled on each hand as you battled for the other person to release their end of the handle attached to your handle by rope. Thankfully, there was another woman or else I probably would have sat out for a few reasons.
6. Arm Pull: Similar premise as Hand Pull except there is no handle contraption and instead you lock elbows with your opponent and pull, trying to straighten their arm and get them to fall out of the lock. This one was even more intimate as the other one, and again, thank god for the other woman as I would have definitely sat out.

Anyway, I came dead last. If you were wondering.

The reality of me being the only civilian who hasn’t consistently worked out in over two years going against 10 military members didn’t dawn on me until the handle in Hand Pull was tugged out of my grip in a second flat. ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘Yeah, what did I expect?’

All in all, it was very fun. It was even more fun when the prize master messed up the prizes and gave everyone one of the amazon gift cards as apology, which I promptly traded for $10 real dollars to total $35 in winnings for honesty not doing much, if not losing, in the week I’ve been here.

After the Inuit Games, I got my hands on one of the PCs in the Gaming Room as a few of us started a new 7 Days to Die (a zombie survival game) server and I was finally able to show them I didn’t suck at something. It was a very zombie themed weekend as after playing for a few hours, the weekly movie in the theatre as Shaun of the Dead which I highly recommend as a comedic break from the horrors of a life imitating alien from The Thing.

Sunday was nothing remarkable. Movies, volleyball, more movies, bingo. If you’re not playing a sport, or a game, you’re probably watching a movie. There’s lots of time to kill and honestly, I am kind of living for it. University and multiple jobs have burnt me out pretty bad and I can finally watch some of the shows I’ve had on the To-Watch List, play the sports I didn’t have time to play or the team to play on, and play new games I would have never touched before coming here.

But let’s backtrack a little bit. You’re probably wondering, “Val, what do you actually do up there? And where are the pictures?”. Fine, I guess you deserve to know about the work that may or may not give me a heart attack now that The Thing is now fresh in my mind.

The Lab

To get to the lab in the winter, we drive trucks specked out with tracks making it much, much taller than me. Apparently, Hannah could only see the top of my hat over the hood of the truck. And vehicle checks on those things? I have to climb it like a monkey.

This is Brown Betty. She has been in the shop since November. Behind her was the guy we have been driving this week and I got to operate on Friday – named Big Red. Driving a track truck requires patience. Since it is a diesel truck, you can’t ignite the engine right away and you can’t turn the tracks when you are not in motion, or you’ll completely break the mechanism. You can imagine what kind of ‘patience’ I needed to have when trying to reverse park Big Red in between those two yellow crane trucks which were so nicely parked angled inwards.

When you’re out driving in the tundra, turning, or going over a hill, the light from the high beams will expose the vast world in front of you for a brief second only for the dark to blind you once again. It’s off-putting to know just how expansive it is. The snow mounds like to play tricks on you too. Is that a hare? A fox? A wolf? Sometimes you’ll spot lonely tracks taking off into the darkness and wish that they do not lead towards the lab, even if it is something small because what is small can bring what is large.

The snow has completely covered the road, hiding the fact that it is built up from the main ground. Even one track off the main road could mean dipping into the hidden ditch and requiring rescue if you fell the wrong way. Thankfully, you are not completely stranded if you forget which way is which. Every 10m or so is a green or orange flag depending on the way you’re facing. If you are seeing orange, you are heading away from the base. If it is green, you are heading towards the base. If it’s white, it means its snowing.

***

In terms of office work, I haven’t done too much besides cleaning the fish tank and learning the shipping and receiving tasks so I can’t speak too much on that, but I can talk about all the cool science stuff I get to work with 6km south of the station.

This is the Dr. Neil Trivett Global Atmosphere Watch Observatory. The observatory predates Dr. Neil Trivett’s name being added, however, his dedication was added in 2006 to commemorate major role in establishing the lab and his scientific additions to the GAW program. He passed in 2002, but there are plaques littered about and of course, as long as the lab stands, he will never be forgotten.

You can find some better photos of the building online like the one above, but they’re usually during the day so I wanted to show how truly dark it is out here. After my orientation, I started to thank the snow for at least allowing me to see if there were any animal tracks about, and what animal it might belong to, because a chunk of my responsibilities are located *outside* of the lab. Such as, on amazing little platforms such as this:

You see those lifelines? You can imagine what those are for. Currently my biggest fears, besides The Thing which comes and goes, are:

1. Polar Bears – which are thankfully out on the sea ice (probably) and have no reason to come inland (hopefully).
2. Wolves – apparently, they will steal stuff and my given weapon to protect myself? A car brush.
3. Low Visibility – even further beyond that platform with the yellow and white lights is a tower that I must also walk out to. There are no lights near that tower. Because of important science. I am afraid of getting disoriented mainly.

The picture of that platform, called the BSRN platform, is from the back of the lab. To my right in that photo is a wooden staircase leading to a platform on-top of the lab to where we complete our flask samples which I will explain later. The metal tower is roughly 10m and is apart of the ‘new’ lab and has many microplastic filtering machines. I am not sure where the ‘new’ lab and the ‘old’ lab begin and end to be fair. The lab itself was established in 1986, and the new lab was an addition that expanded the lab in 1992.

Behind the ply-wood front door is a metal ramp leading to a freezer door that will allow you to enter to the lab proper. There is a well-equipped kitchen, office with a bunk bed in case of prolonged stay due to storm conditions (or bears), an adjacent equipment room to the entrance chocked full of different machines, and a back room (where there is another door leading to the back entrance where I took that platform photo) that has more equipment. A lot of the equipment is beyond my paygrade, and I mostly make sure they are running and free of dust rather than any direct work with them.

***

Mondays at the lab are the task heavy days. The days where I have the most things to complete on my checklist, and we stayed at the lab from 8am to 5pm trying to cram as much training in as possible. Some things I must do every time we go to the lab which is on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (which is usually only a half day, so we get back in time for Friday poutine lunch and sports), while some things are weekly, biweekly, and monthly.

My outdoor checks are every lab day and take the bulk of the time. I have to head out to the BSRN platform, make sure all the machines are working and free of snow as well as the platform itself. The platform is home to a lot of sun and moon tracking equipment that I guess is somewhat useless in the dark period, but nonetheless, we must push a little button to tell the machines we are doing maintenance on the platform and write down our exact time in and out as to create a detailed record so if data is wonky, it is probably just because we cleaned it. Speaking of which, because we have so much very sensitive air filtering equipment, we must record the minute we arrive/depart and turn the truck on/off due to the exhaust fumes. Remember this detail for Wednesdays.

I also go around both the tower and wooden platform clearing off snow from the building and equipment, making sure everything is in working order, etc. There are a few more things I must check on the ground such as that tower beyond the BSRN platform, and a few more small equipment stands such as a nipher gauge which we collect on Mondays, let all the snow melt, and then pour into jars for scientists to examine how much microplastics are in the precipitate. Since our Canada Goose parkas have flame retardant in the fabric, we must wear old parkas that will not falsely contaminate these samples as well as wear gloves and write down what fabrics we are wearing on our data sheets.

There are a few other machines on the metal tower we have to wear these parkas for such as the bane of my existence the PUF filters which also filter for microplastics. I won’t get into it but imagine trying to shove a sleeping bag that is one size too big into a stuff sack. That is basically what I do for these PUF filters when I shove them into a glass jar to be sent off to who knows where (I do know where because I fill out the shipping form). Cleaning the filter canisters as well as putting them back together is tedious and must be performed in the ‘Clean Shed’ aka a wooden room that is the same temperature as the outside and you must wear frozen medical gloves over your glove liners to be able to perform the filter changes. But…it’s also minus 30 and my hands freeze almost instantly. Not sure what hurts more, your fingers freezing or unthawing the near frostbite.

Inside the lab, I mostly check numbers and if said numbers are too close to another number, it’s time for a filter which. I also have to add a lot of meteorological data to various data sheets such as ambient temperature, wind speed and direction, atmospheric pressure, etc which is all available in the office computers. I don’t really calculate anything besides the ‘weather conditions’ like ‘cloud cover’. So, I look outside, see the void staring back, and say ‘yeah looks like cumulus’.

Wednesdays are really exciting because I get to take flask samples from the air outside. Due to the sensitive nature of this work, and depending on how stagnant the cold air is, I postpone my outdoor checks for later in the day, so I do not contaminate the air with my breath.

Flasking in a nutshell is taking a glass jar that has no air particles inside (a vacuum), opening it and allowing the outside air to rush in, and closing it to be sent off to be examined for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This is the main purpose of the GAW lab as an atmospheric baseline station. Many weather stations will take samples from the upper atmosphere however, the lab in Alert is unique as only 3 labs apart of the GAW program take air samples from the same atmosphere that we would breathe aka from the ground, as well as our geographic location far away from industrial super sites. With the data collected, the scientific community is able to create a ‘baseline’ for what our atmosphere is experiencing with minimal contamination.

You know how I mentioned that due to the sensitive nature of these samples, we have to be very detailed with arrival and departure times of the vehicles? Flasking is so sensitive, you cannot breathe while samples are being taken.

Some samples are harder than others depending on the type of flask but one of the flasks requires you to run up the stairs, close up the gauges, run back down the stairs and back inside all without breathing. I’ve started to practice by holding my breath while going up and down the stairs to my room, though the conditions are not the same.

I will also only briefly mention the circular flask you must hold on your head and walk ten steps forward while flushing the flask neck with a wooden stick also without breathing, take the sample by releasing the stopcock, fastening and then finally allowing yourself the luxury of breathe. Truly, I thought I was being hazed when Hannah told me that is how we take one of the samples. It feels as ridiculous as it looks.

Flasking is hugely weather dependent. If there is less than a specified amount of wind, we cannot flask. If the wind is pushing the fumes from the station south to us, we cannot flask. In fact, they completely stop the incinerator on Wednesdays for us.

Friday is all my lab day tasks such as outdoor checks, interior cleaning like sweeping and dusting, as well as setting up the filters to be changed on Mondays. We were able to be back by lunchtime on my first Friday so I will look forward to being back even earlier next week.

There will be some tasks that I still will not learn for weeks to come as they are monthly, every other month, sometimes every three months, but that is a summary of what I am expected to be doing in short. But with full lab days you might be wondering, ‘Well you have a fully equipped kitchen, what about the bathroom?’ and to that I say…we may be fully equipped but we do not have running water. And the ground is too frozen for an outhouse. You may want to skip to the end if you don’t want to hear bathroom talk.

***

When I worked at Grundy, my pride was stripped pretty quick. Falling in my first day, pretending to be a skunk – mom of 8 falsely accused of eating precious turtle eggs in front of hundreds of children and their families, or also pretending to be a muscle bro mosquito also for hundreds of children and their families. In fact, I consider myself to have a relatively healthy sized ego for what I have endured.

Though, nothing quite prepared me…for this…

Ego death. The complete loss of one’s sense of self and identity.

There is no running water in the lab despite the latrine located in the mid-entry way between the backdoor and the freezer door leading into the lab. “The Throne is Free” was scrawled in sharpy on a torn piece of cardboard, attached to the door with twine and a singular nail.

The interior was warm in colour and welcoming, despite the freezing temperatures. The seat even had a heater. I wasn’t really taking notice of that though; I was focusing on the black garbage bag already prepared with kitty litter at the bottom. Hannah had said she had never used the latrine in the 5 months she had been here, but I don’t know how that’s humanely possible if you are not severely dehydrated.

“I shouldn’t be embarrassed, everyone needs to go to the washroom,” I told myself and closed the door behind me.

It really changes your perspective holding your own pee ice cube in a bag marked ‘biohazard’. Despite the generous scoop of kitty litter, I stared unblinking at the black garbage bag that I had just tossed in the bed of the truck, after the thud the bag made on the way in.

Back at the station, I threw it on the pile of trash meant to be incinerated. The biohazard stickers had fallen off. Stickers don’t really work in minus 30 temperatures.

I watched the smoke from the incinerator rise in the polar sky, I thought about my cube. It really does come full circle.

***

Ha, okay, apologies for that. I wanted to be artistic and really outline how fucking weird it is to pee in a bag that freezes overnight which you then need to bring to the incinerator. Like, nothing prepares you for that and I had certainly never thought about it. I’m over it though, I’ll pee in a bag all I want because I’d rather be comfortable when I run up and down those stairs with my breath held than also need to go to the washroom. That’s just way too many things to focus on at once.

But hey! One week down! 15 more to go! So far, I am really really enjoying everything. Of course, it’s all still new so nothing has gotten old yet which I am sure it will but for now, I am thriving.

Ps. Hi Christian, hope you’re enjoying the blog.