Wednesday June 25th.  No shower for 12 days.

Today I’m taking some time to review my notes of what’s going on in the bay since a couple of days.

The melt happened suddenly eight days ago. The physicists say that the situation is quite exceptionnal. A local confirmed it saying that it has been forty years since she has seen something similar happening.

To make it short, it didn’t snow much last winter in Cambridge Bay. The sea ice sheet grew anormaly and got two meters thick. With the month of June, the temperatures didn’t rise. In spite of it, the bay has been gone through precipitations: a couple of storms that left a foot of snow and some rains that turned into a sheet of “superimposed” ice. It’s a hard and white ice , while sea ice looks blue (a good thing to remember for the samplings). When the temperature started to rise, last week, the snow turned quickly into water and it drained under the ice. Now, we wait for the superimposed ice to disappear so the melt ponds can form.

On paper, it looks simple and clear but in the field, it’s a mess. Our trips are complicated with these massive changes that occur practically overnights. We went from snow to water and then ice in almost three days ! It’s challenging for the machines and the pilots.

Now, we are in water again. It’s a huge lake out there, with a level that rises along with the hours. We also see the effect of the tides on this frozen ocean with the cracks. Their width allow to drive through them with the quad only early in the morning and late a night. We try to be careful to the holes, these dark spots in water, that started to appear. Waiting for the melt ponds, I collect the water of this giant paddling pool, ice cores and brines as well.

Most of the time, after the samplings, we skip lunch and we rush to the lab. We carry dozens of pounds of material and samples: on the ice, in the sleds, on the shore, into the back of the truck, at the lab. It’s physical but we have to adjust quickly, there is no choice.

Our days are sixteen hours long on average but, the landscapes, the midnight sun and the exceptional character of this job compensate and the hours fly…fast.