I was lucky enough to get an upgrade from Alaska Airlines, so at least I wasn’t bent up like a pretzel all the way to Barrow. They weren’t any too quick about getting the baggage out, and no-one was to be found to issue the Baggage Service Guarantee vouchers after the 20 minutes had passed, so we took my bag when it showed up (after about 1/2 hour) and went home.
Luckily, today was a holiday so I could sleep late. Once up, there was the usual post-travel laundry pile to start on. Once that was underway, I had to dig out my car. There had been a blizzard in Barrow on Friday, which had blown snow into our arctic entryway, among other places.
It had also blown all over my vehicle, which required significant digging out. Apparently the blowing or subsequent plowing had somehow packed snow around my left rear mudflap, since that shattered when I pulled out (only went forward) although I didn’t discover that until I got home.
The wind had apparently also caused some pretty significant ice push from the Chukchi Sea onto the beach. You can see it in the background of the photo above. The ice is black in places because it was frozen to the bottom. The ice is very thin for this time of year. In some places it is probably 20 or more feet tall.
Once I got to work I caught up on emails, drafted a “mission statement” for a working group on coastal erosion I am helping to organize (contact me if you are interested–it’s global, not just Arctic in focus), worked on an encyclopedia article a bit, and took care of things like time-sheet approvals which can be a time suck, but are fairly important (we all like getting paid!).
Out of Ice and Time 