Friday we got the gravel moved. If you remember, the site looked like this:
Not exactly conducive to a quick recovery excavation, especially since it’s mostly going to be volunteer labor, the students being back at school and all. It had been looking pretty grim on the heavy equipment front, but Ilisaġvik College came through with a reasonable rental on their new Case loader, and Walter Brower & I headed out around 9AM.
Getting there took a while, but shortly after 10 we were at work. The loader has extra wide tires, and reputedly is not very good in snow, but it did fine in the gravel.
Backdragging proved effective and minimized the need to drive on top of the feature. We were able to take it down to less than 1 foot above the surface, so it will be a lot less work this week & next weekend.
All in all, a great improvement.
The next day Barrow played Nikiski in football. Both schools are in the Greatland Conference, and Nikiski is a perennial football powerhouse. Barrow had never beaten them.
Barrow fixed that.
Out of Ice and Time 
Yay! Go Whalers!
Anne, I’ve really been enjoying your blog. I sure miss Barrow. The main character in my novel, Redneck Ex, is the director of the Nuvuk excavation. The book should be released in early 2012.
Patty Stith–writing as Claire Croxton.