Alert-120

From my perch on the old lab tower, I could see the winds stampede over the mountain ridges, billowing snow carving its way over the tundra.

The wind was screaming in my ears. I watched it kick up whorls of snow that flew up the walls and through the slats of the wooden stairs. The horizon was outlined in yellow that lit up the ridges in a hazy blue. I was gripping the railing tight to keep my balance as a brain freeze developed underneath my forehead despite being layered completely.

***

With the relatively tame weather of January, I had almost forgotten how unforgiving the conditions can be here. February will be the coldest month of the year, and the windstorms will become more frequent as we approach March.

It was no surprise then that after weeks of almost no wind, the wind began to pick up until it was racing at 75km/hr on Monday (Feb 5). On station, it was windy but as we made our way south towards the lab, the road became a cloudscape of snow undulating like waves. The closer we got to the lab, the more visibility dropped and in the brief stretch of off roading where we did not have the reflective directional signs to guide us, it was a gamble if we’d find the road again with nothing to place our bearings on.

The plywood door of the lab needed to be shovelled out, and our milkcrate of food almost blew away when I set it down. We were worried the wind might disconnect the block heater extension cord that keeps our engine from freezing over when the truck is off, but in hindsight, that would be the least of our worries.

Hannah couldn’t perform any of her outdoor tasks due to the weather and sensitivity of the equipment she works with, but that didn’t stop her from teasing me as I strapped on my ski goggles and headlamp. Not a single strip of skin was exposed once I was fully geared up. I joked that I looked like a serial killer, but in all seriousness, if I saw myself dressed the way I was down a dark hallway, or maybe standing ominously on the cusp of the shadows of the tundra, I’d book it.

Alert is classified as a desert due to how little precipitation we receive annually (about 160mm), which begs the question. How is there so much snow? Answer: The Wind.

Days exactly like this where the wind pushes the snow from the south northward in powerful, unending gusts, sending it up and down over mountains and valleys. The unique landscape of the high arctic with odd snow divets, drifts many feet high next to barren ground, and waves over the ground that look like the glacier-marked rock outcrops of Killarney is all due to the wind.

^There’s a variety of cool patterns the wind will make on the snow, but I was pretty cold and didn’t feel like spamming a bunch of photos of snow on the blog. This snow is actually quite compact and hard (and the squelching of your footstep echoes down below), as you can see in the bottom left, my boot barely breaches the surface. This makes walking actually easier than you’d expect, until you accidentally hit a soft spot and fall in.

This is all great information, but you can’t actually visualize it until you are standing on a drift that is now 2 feet higher than it was the day before yesterday and knowing that it hadn’t snowed for over a week.

***

I forwent lunch, opting to try to finish all my tasks ASAP so we could get out of the lab faster.

The bright side to having 60+ km/hr winds is that for the most part, the lab itself was relatively clear of snow. Not that I really felt like sweeping the tower or platform, but it was nice to know that I wasn’t skimping on my duties. On Wednesday I would have to sweep out the small mud rooms in-between every lab entrance as the snow had somehow found a way inside but that was a task for future-Val. Current-Val had to deal with the frankly terrifying task of braving the tundra in the sea of wind and snow.

Looking out towards the BSRN Platform (the platform a good few paces away from the lab where our moon/sun tracking equipment is), I had a thought, “Do I really have to do this?” The correct answer is: No, not if I really didn’t want to. But some part of me knew I didn’t want to give up the chance to say I had been swept away by an arctic windstorm (I’m kidding).

I was hunched over, the wind whistling past me as I made my way to the platform, and I thanked my past self for throwing my goggles in my bag ‘just in case there’s hardcore wind’ because yeah this was hardcore wind. I could feel the brain freeze setting in just beneath my forehead, and it caused my eyes to water. Every breath I took, the more my goggles fogged, and I knew I was on a time limit out here.

The wind from the platform had come straight from the mountains, uninterrupted and fierce. I tried leaning back a few times only for the wind to push me back up straight. Facing it head on felt like travelling in warp speed in some sci-fi world through space, the grains of snow glinting in the light from my headlamp sort of looked like stars. I was pretty happy in that video but honestly the rest of the day sucked.

The wind became so relentless I had to rely on what was left of the guide-lines not beset by snow to guide me to where I needed to go. The snow was still soft in some spots, not having the hours being carved and flattened by the winds just yet to be fully solid, and every breath I took fogged my goggles more and more. I cursed every false step that had me break through the snow barrier beneath my boots. What a workout.

***

Part of the tasks take place in a small wooden shed outside of the main lab called the Clean Room where I wear a special parka to change and clean the filter packs that monitor atmospheric microplastics. Modern Canada Goose parkas have flame retardant in the fibres that will transfer to these filters and skew the data, so we wear older parkas that were not made with these fibres. The Clean Room is not heated save for a small space heater lamp combo, so it can get pretty cold in there working with metal and holding metal tongs to touch the filters.

The wind would catch the door and whip it open if I wasn’t careful, and somehow, snow had been blown in despite me not seeing any obvious breaches. I quickly cleaned the metal filter casings and prepared the main “Toxics” filter pack to be brought up. It’s heavy and I have to bring a bottom and top cover for the filter I remove so with my hands full of cold metal, I braved the wind and started up the stairs.

Not even halfway up the metal tower, I had to stop. My hands were ice cold, and I could feel my uncertainty in my legs, unsure if I could keep my balance up the rest of the steep metal stairs. If I was having this much trouble even walking up the stairs, I doubted my ability to even open the machine worrying the wind would rip it off its hinges. The wind had now pinned me in the corner of the stairway. My hands were full so I couldn’t hold the railing and I was terrified of turning around to go back down.

On a good day, I still have a moment of panic as I take a step wrong with no free hand to grip the railing. My boots are so big, and the steps so small and for a brief moment I feel as though I might fall, though I haven’t yet. With the wind, however, it could very easily become a reality.

Pressing my side into the metal railing and using my elbow as a linchpin, I climbed the rest of the stairs where you guessed it, the wind was even worse. I stood there for a moment weighing my options like I had before doing my outdoor checks before thinking better of it and turned back towards the stairs, keeping my back pressed firmly on the railings. As fast as I could safely descend, I retreated, running into the Clean Room to (gently) throw down the icy metal and beeline to the warmth of the lab. My hands were frozen, and I could feel the ice in my veins leading up towards my numb fingertips.

“Hey, Hannah, yeah uh I am NOT going to be able to do that by myself…”

***

Hannah had to help me with the rest of my outdoor tasks. I was glad I turned around when I did and asked for her help, because as we completed them, I realized in this weather, you needed four hands to get anything done or else the wind would pry whatever you were holding right from your fingers.

Every time we came back into the lab to warm up and get the next filter change ready, we’d watch as the wind m/s rating slowly increased. We needed to get finished and Get Out.

We had predicted correct; the block heater HAD disconnected. Though, a frozen engine didn’t mean anything if the truck was encased in a snowy prison, surrounded by snow drifts that when I stood on them, made me feel like I was next to a regular car. Track trucks are great when they are ON snow but trying to get on top of that snow with a 90-degree incline was asking a little bit much.

I sat quietly in the passenger seat, letting Hannah try to figure this dilemma out. The wind was getting worse and the drifts that had encased us was making it difficult to get out. She pulled forward, barely kissing the lab, and then reversed. We’ll forget the part where she backed up into the adjacent shed. Pulling forward, we could hear the tracks spinning but we didn’t move. She pressed the gas again. Only the sound of tracks slick on the snow. We were stuck. Stuck Stuck.

Hannah got out and walked around the truck. When she got back in, I didn’t even need to know what she was going to say. I knew. We were fucked. Thankfully, if we were to get stuck, at least we were at the lab with water and food (and a bucket for you know what).

Though, neither of us wanted that, and quite frankly, neither of us wanted to be the one to radio the station to let all the military guys know two EC girls got stuck outside the lab in a windstorm that we shouldn’t have even been out in. There would be no one to come tow us, the heavies wouldn’t make it up the mountain road in regular conditions, definitely not these ones. Hannah said fuck that and put the truck back in drive.

I wish I could describe how we got out, but I can at least say we got stuck two more times before we finally dredged ourselves out of the drift labyrinth that the front of the lab had become and onto the honestly not much better road. The visibility was almost zero and we could no longer see our tracks from when we went off-road.

We devised a plan. Hannah would watch the left side of the road, and I would keep my eye on the right.

“Let me know if I go off the road,” she said. And so, we sat in heightened anticipation for the next forty minutes as we crawled our way back to station, eyes glued to the passing green flag signs.

***

Spinning your tires on a regular vehicle is one thing. Spinning your tracks on a track truck is arguably much worse. Once we had finally found the road again, Hannah let me know something was wrong with our front track. And we could feel it as we drove. Something was wrong and if something went even worse, we would be stuck halfway between the lab and the station. But, hey, how bad could it be if we were still moving?

As we neared the lights of the Station, we beelined it for the Maintenance Bay. One look by the mechanic and he told us we had snapped our tension bolt on the front right track. Tension bolts are long, solid steel bolts that keep the tension of the track taught and proper. When you SNAP a bolt in half, it can fuck up a lot of things. On-route to maintenance, we were joking about arriving to maintenance and finding out we had been without a track and just driving on the bogey wheels but that genuinely could have happened.

So off Big Red went to the doctors, and we finally made it back to the office. I asked Hannah if there was anything else today, and she replied with the most relieving words I’ve ever heard, “God no, I am having a nap. We’re done for the day.”

All in all, it was a fulfilling day. Yeah, Hannah fell down the stairs, and then I fell UP the stairs – jamming my fingers into the metal railing in the process. Yeah, the wind threw us around like rag dolls and it was almost lights out for Big Red but hey! That’s life in the Tundra.