I am back, indeed. It was an interesting experience, and I wouldn't mind returning, so long as it didn't cut into the major frisbee season too much (I did miss Fools and Turkey Swamp, though. On the plus side, I have about 2 extra weeks of comp time to use now. It's a perk for those of us who make less than $75K a year).

We were working all the time up there, to 10 or 11 most nights Fortunately it wasn't a hectic experience, just busy. Our experiments went well, and everybody at the camp seemed very interested. There were a lot of media present (more media than scientists in the ice camp), and some of them seemed to spend a lot of time around us. The National Geographic writer said, "This is the best show in town." However when I asked him that because of the show or town? he didn answer. November issue NG will have a story with pictures (actually does story) about expedition.>

Many bigwigs were present; US Sen Charles Robb of Va, head of NSF, Sec of Navy, a 4 star admiral (top officer in the navy), a 2 star admiral, and several high level assistants to Cabinet members. I gave a 30 second demonstration of one of our experiments to Robb and the head of NSF and some others.

No polar bears spotted, except once about 50 miles away from camp by the airplane that made daily trips. We still had to take a rifle with us whenever we ventured more than about 1/4 mile from camp. An Arctic fox wandered into camp and poked around a bit before leaving.

There were usually about 15 people in camp. They built some plywood huts with bunks and big-ass heaters. There was a huge temperature gradient. If you leave water on the floor, it would freeze, but often it was almost too hot to sleep in the top bunk.

Outside temps ranged from about 15 to -25 F. Lowest reported temp was -33 C. The company has arctic gear (parka, overalls, and boots called "mukluks"), but I still had to go on a shopping spree at Campmor, REI, and EMS beforehand, buying undergarments, glacier glasses, expensive socks, and liners. Only my toes and fingers ever got really cold, but if I underdressed in a particular area (maybe I just had that polypro top we won at Purchase on underneath the parka), I could feel the cold. There was occasional wind, too, which made it really biting. No real storms, though. Occasionally I'd have to take off my gloves to do something requiring dexterity, and my hands would get cold almost instantly. No snow at all.

The landscape was unique. I expected a big flat unbroken sheet, smooth like a remote area after a new snow, but it was actually really broken up. The only flat areas bigger than a few feet were refrozen leads. Leads are the open water that results when two ice floes pull apart, either from water currents or wind or thermal stresses, but they usually freeze pretty quickly, and freeze pretty thick. One lead next to camp was about 18 inches thick. Camp was on about 6 feet of ice. I saw open water only once the whole camp, and that one was very tiny (6 inches across by 30 feet long), except for the flight back, where a lot of water opened up because of the high winds. The other feature of the landscape was pressure ridges, formed when two floes collide. There were 6 foot thick blocks of use pushed up and sitting right there from the collisions.

The flight to the camp was also an experience. The Twin Otter seats up to about a dozen, has room for cargo, and has "extensive survival equipment" on board in the event of a crash. They flattened an area on the floe next to camp, and it functioned as the runway. The Twin Otter needs very little space to take off or land, though.

I am unsure how good my pictures will come out. My last roll or two of film (dating back over a year) have had some problems. I also bought a disposable camera for the trip. I need to take a few shots to finish the rolls so I can develop them all.

I got to drive a snowmobile and shoot a rifle, things I had never done before. The rifle shooting was on the next to last day, when there was a Camp Shooting Contest. It was a little disconcerting when about half of the rounds were misfires.

The other noteworthy task was when we strung together 14 spools of string (500' each) and lowered a chemical to about 7000 feet to make sure it wouldn't react, then pulled it up by hand. The terminal velocity ended up being only about a foot per second, so we had to spend two hours lowering this thing. We then had to pull it back up, during which time it seemed much heavier. If we pulled too hard, the tension in the string mounted and we were fearful it would break. We could have put more weight to make it sink faster, but then it would have that much harder to pull back up. Plus, I thought the terminal velocity was going to be about 1 m/s, which would have made the sinking take around a half hour. I think the error resulted from the weight not being as heavy as we thought and from the drag of the string.

Food was good, three full meals a day. I gained weight. There was a full-time cook, the secretary at the Arctic Submarine Lab in San Diego (where several of the other camp members worked).

I learned a bunch of useful things, too, and Boss-man (who was there for about half of it) was happy with my performance. I had to take a crash course in C so I could change a program for one of our experiments. I'll probably try to do a few things with C here now so I can learn it better.