Yeah, it's doing it.

Okay.

Off we go.

So we were driving to Jersey to pick her up with all our luggage because we're off to our, flight to Fairbanks today.

Being in cold regions to me provokes gross.

To deal with that remoteness.

And that harshness is, a challenge to a person.

You fear it a little bit.

It's best to come back and sort of feel like I've been in this extreme environment, and I did that capably.

Starting route to Denver Airport Terminal East and southwest on Dover Street.

I already came in this with an affinity for rivers, but, icy ones and really cold places are entirely new to me.

The Canning or the river that we're going to look at is, is so remote, and so unique that we actually don't know a lot about how these rivers work in the first place.

It's meaning extra meaningful for me.

It's not just the science part of how the river works, but also the planning and following through with the large field trip side of things is just really cool.

As someone who's never been camping below below zero, it's like, it's pretty.

It's a pretty big trip.

One of the big questions in the Arctic community is the quantification of something that's called the permafrost carbon feedback.

And it's postulates that once you start stalling out old organic matter, that's has been active for, like, many millennia.

And you make it available to microbes, it will release carbon to the atmosphere and that will warm the planet even shorter.

What's less understood is how warming Arctic river systems, while they're like wheezing through the permafrost landscape, play a role in the permafrost carbon feedback mechanism.

Maybe organic carbon is being buried in a river corridor, or maybe rivers cutting into their banks and release a lot more of carbon.

So we want to quantify or figure out exactly how much material the river's moving downstream in a year, because we also expect that to be changing, with climate changes that are occurring in the Arctic.

We've been to the river once before last summer, and that was more of a scoping trip where we rafted from the mountains out towards the coast, and we kind of scoped out and looked for places that we could come back to to actually monitor the river.

So one thing we're interested in is erosion or where and what processes are happening across the landscape that remove material and dump it in the river.

And then this trip, we're going to go back and, put up time lapse cameras and other instruments and monitor those locations because we expect to see a lot of erosion there.

And so it plays into this budget of how much carbon in the landscape and how much gets released to the atmosphere, and how much is in transport.

This squeaky snow.

I love squeaky snow.

It's like the little sign that it's been very cold.

And, like, usually the snow is kind of fresh.

And so you hear this like clockwork, and it's like the first moment in the morning where you're like, know that it's going to be like this great cold day.

That's awesome.

We spend a day and a half getting last things organized and buying less snacks and, you know, putting batteries and things.

And I know the turning radius.

It's a crazy bag.

I got a bunch of rope for types of down the sleds.

I got four, eight by ten tarps.

These fit the sleds that cover one slide really nicely.

Awesome.

One of the foam ones.

The other fun ones are waiting to be packed.

And I.

Three of those crazy creatures.

Hopefully we can add more of that.

Thank you for those three helmets in there as well.

There's snowmobiling.

Yeah.

Do you guys want to try them on real quick?

Yeah, like if I get cold, the entire time like this.

We're off in the winter.

Because the time that everything happens in this river system is the time of ice breakup.

And so we wanted to go before the river ice in the spring starts melting out.

And a big pulse of water, sediment, carbon gets transported because you're going to face problems.

And it's helpful to be in a good mindset when you have to deal, when you know you're having to solve problems.

I like to keep a sense of humor, and I hope that I think that's a good quality to have the field work, too.

Sometimes it's not always your place to make a joke, but I think more often than not it is.

The balance between grit and sort of life in general is such a personal thing that it's like different for any different person, but I think I definitely push more towards the center and Ingrid, I'm still working to get better at being a good leader and sort of the, the mentor to people.

Like, I have students and I mentor my students, but I think that's still a part where I'm like trying to grow.

The flight, even of the amazing.

We had fog coming out and some snow.

We're like scratching the frost off the windows with a chocolate bar at first.

And then there's this beautiful views coming off the Brooks Range, which is the headwaters of our drainage.

Okay, then what time would you like to have dinner?

Seven.

Seven.

Seven.

Great.

So we're working with Frank and Paul.

Frank is from the USGS, and he's been to the North Slope a bunch of times.

And then we also have Paul, who's with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

He'll be coming with us.

So it's two people with a lot of experience on the North Slope, which is really awesome.

I work in this, this area, in an effort to capture and, and monitor a variety of environmental conditions, primarily, long, long term permafrost temperature changes by trade.

I'm a landscape ecologist and studied large processes that are happening.

The environment, whether that's something like migration for large mammals or, how climate change impacts landscapes.

It's, an extremely unique part of the world.

More often than not, I just am sort of in awe.

And I'm very careful and respectful of traveling and being in such a remote location.

One of the biggest hazards being out here is just exposure.

It's easy to break through a couple layers of ice and and get your feet wet and machine whip, and that's really dangerous.

When arenas started this, this effort in this region, she asked me if I was interested in helping and collaborating on on the project, essentially utilizing a lot of my experience with logistics and snow machine and travel in these conditions.

So I talk about this a lot with my colleagues, which is being really secure in the skills of the people around you, and in a lot of cases, your life is in the hands of your coworkers and your colleagues and the people that you have in the field with you.

The Brooks Range is sort of over here.

And then we came from Fairbanks flying over it.

But then there's like these like three smaller mountain ranges that are the subject of a set of rockets and, Franklin Mountains and the cannon wraps around them like it originated from the range.

And it goes like that.

At the end of the trip, that we're going to a second spot to where the channel splits into the tributary channels, and installing the same instruments to try to get, not just like how the system works in one spot, but also just the variability of how certain processes could be different in different locations on the river system.

And.

So this is.

So we had to get the snowmobiles with big sleds over this river.

I had anticipated that everything would be completely icy and ice covered.

And that was not true.

The river held quite a bit of, ice and water.

But there's also slush on top of the ice.

Frank, help to scope out what would be a good crossing where there's not much water on the ice.

One crossing.

We walked it all the way and we were like, oh, that's probably not good.

And then the other one, he walked with me and showed, okay, it's wider.

Here's the ice.

Seems better.

So the snowmobiles, you have to super carefully and very gradually have them go over the ice, because otherwise they lose traction.

When they start spinning, they won't move anymore.

And you could actually sink yourself in and get the snowmobile stuff in, in the front because there's no friction.

You can't get it out anymore.

So we were super gradually motoring over the ice.

Oh, this is the place.

Yes, I've been here before.

I've never been here.

Really?

Yeah.

I am getting our gear ready for our first full day of fieldwork.

So we're gathering supplies to set up a, seismic station with the Geophones.

So basically listens to vibrations moving through the ground from rocks traveling down the rivers.

And what that's going to be used for is observing when the river starts really making loud noises.

So that kind of break up of the ice happens.

We're hoping to pick up like when the timing is with this.

So it's going to be left until the summer, and then we can pick it up and like process those signals.

And I mean, the project that we just got funded about permafrost is also machine learning.

So the idea is like to take so many measurements that you have, like, all the parameter sets to, like, train up what we're finding from, like the local sites to like a bowl, more like landscape scale the winds missing.

We are like made a big mistake by like starting early.

That we'd love.

So you connect like, all the power to everything and then check it again.

Okay, turn that up.

That's 14.7.

Great.

Okay, now it says the whole box should be facing south.

What did you want this to be?

Her box.

So this morning, we came out and it was really, really windy.

We had to, like, basically hide behind the snow machines to set up this, solar panel mounted solar panel on.

And that took a few hours, which is only took about 10 or 15 minutes in the lab.

All right.

We are we've just set up the Geo phone, and now we have to test if it's working.

So if arena, stomps on the ground, I should see spikes in the seismograph on all three channels that are in that sensor.

So we're going to test it out.

Ready?

Hey, I got it.

Yep.

Now this geo phone can, listen to the river and record when river ice breakup happens.

This is a story of failure.

I think that success would have made it no more worth telling.

It's about the next boring party.

The party that so often fails.

Today, men and women explore for the Iron Crown of science.

They say that they do at least it's dark.

I mean, I think it's kind of cool.

The feeling kind of calls us out.

It's like we're it can't all be science.

The race is out here.

Yeah, exactly.

The true spirit of the explorer is a primordial restlessness.

I do have a preference for a boring or yield restlessness.

Yeah, like you've been drugged and you're like, fuck, we're good.

I'm gonna go next.

It's so close.

Maybe we woke up to a big, raging flapping of the tent storm.

We basically hung out.

It's breakfast and lunch and coffee, and I cleaned a little bit.

What are the tasks that we can accomplish today?

If the weather we were improving?

Our schedule concern is we have a lot of things we want to do, but, only so many days.

And then on top of that, unpleasant weather.

Frank and Paul, now they're going to service their stations.

We're going to split up for a while, but, eventually they'll come back here and we'll head back to Cavite together.

I was really excited to work with Marina because she couples these awesome field trips and field measurements with, really cool numerical modeling.

So it's not just about going and taking observations of land in the field, but then also using those to inform models, which we can use to test our theories about how the land works.

I think a lot of the projects that she is affiliated with are going about answering their questions and really cool and unique ways.

The pressure system moves through like we have really high winds and some snow, so it's drifting around.

Things are just they're not happening.

And we think like even the easier tasks are like going to be hard.

So we're just waiting it out.

If this were just an adventure, I would be less worried.

But we're here to collect critical data for Josie's research project, and that makes it a lot more important and a lot more urgent.

A little bit of anxiety is motivating you a little bit.

A little bit is good in some instances.

And I think this is one of those.

It's not like it wasn't a worry to be worried about, but it's enough anxiety to motivate you and then make you aware of all your senses and where you are in danger.

And I think Iryna has talked about this a little bit like a little bit of a restlessness or like, ambition, like, how much can I do and how much can we get out of this?

And we want to make the most out of this experience.

We're basically installing timelapse cameras.

We're installing, small devices that measure the pressure of the water standing in the floodplain.

We have seismic stations, and they are listening for, like, how much water is moving through, like just the turbulence of the water making noise.

And then also they can listen for sediment transport that's happening at the same time.

Or like cobbles at the bottom of the river, make enough noise that you can find it back in the seismic sensing.

We were calculating when things are moving and so we're trying to match the model with like when we listen from in the field for the clunking.

I was walking to the ice on the river.

And it like, totally blue and snowy and safe and whoop, I'm feeling myself punched through.

And so there was, like, a layer of slush like this deep on the ice, and you couldn't see it.

And so I stepped through and my, like, super warm, comfy Baffin boots are now soaking wet.

Like, I think a large part of my outdoor life.

I sort of like the idea of challenging myself and being out of my comfort zone.

I felt I was feeling something.

I was in there with Josie and I'm trying to make sure that she's comfortable and, like, doesn't have to feel that she's taking too much risk or that we are taking too much risk, which is, oh, between layer.

So cool.

I want to be open to the fact that not everybody comes in with the same risk taking level, and that everybody needs to find their own place tomorrow.

We knew we were planning on going to downstream to our the riverbank that we want to monitor for erosion, and we know weather changes from now.

Yeah it is.

It's going to be challenging because we lose this time now that we're like sitting like idling.

And that makes like, so like, we have to, like, travel with the snowmobiles and that may take a couple hours, but it's on both sides of the day.

And then like, still, we need to deploy quite a bit.

So I'm a little worried about downstream.

There's a large outpost field, which could have some like active surface water that could make it a little slushy.

But I already got my boots.

Yeah.

We're heading downstream with hopes of crossing the river from the right side of the river to the left.

On the way out here, we cross the river from the left side to the right.

But when we were doing that, we're able to cross the river initially because we had Frank and Paul helping us, who've done it before.

And now Frank and Paul are often, servicing their stations and away from our camp.

And now we have to head downstream and cross by ourselves.

So there's, concerns about the case that it's now possible to cross down there safely.

It's the kind of here where it's making me aware and keeping me on my toes.

Without going to the canyon, I think I would have continued to think some things are happening that maybe aren't important.

And we go out there and I see how the river actually works, and it's like, oh, some things we thought were important are, but some other things definitely aren't.

I feel like I've changed a lot for better, because I never saw myself as like a field scientists.

So I have a lot of freedom in how I think I should be going about being a scientist, which is really awesome.

Well.

I think I learned that's I enjoy it a lot, to see a person grow and to see them gain this confidence.

I think Josie came out with a lot more confidence in her ability.

Part of risk taking gives you sort of this unique perspective into some of the processes, or some of the data that you collect is more unique because you took some risk.

I think that it's entirely your personal philosophy.

And to deal with that remoteness and that harshness is, a challenge to a person.

It makes you bring back like a sort of a strength that then sits in you and you draw from it later.