Whomever named this place certainly had a sense of humor. There can't be a tree for several hundred miles. We're on the North Slope, just to the East of the Colville River delta, near the Arctic Ocean. Our camp is the Conoco-Phillips western base up here on the Slope. The native village of Nuiqsut is several miles up the Colville. Aside from that community of a couple hundred there's nothing but flat plains, drilling pads and wells as far as the eye can see.
The CP drilling and exploration base is a modest compound of pre-fab quarters and physical plant facilities. Water is pumped from nearby lakes to hydrate the base and power is generated on site. We drove here over an ice road from the Kuparuk oil fields near Prudhoe Bay. The only sign of life was a flock of ptarmigans, barely visible over the snow and a few isolated caribou. The sky and ground were nearly indistinguishable, making it difficult to chart our progress along the drive. Only the appearance and disappearance of glowing skyscraper-sized drilling pads along the tundra delineated the 40 or so frozen miles.
The CP compound here is bustling with shift workers. Some live as far away as Arizona and Arkansas. 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. And dozens of hours of flying in between. Inside are hallways of small double-capacity dorm rooms with signs posted "Quiet, day-sleepers." There's a dining room with a fake fireplace and no other even ironically charming features. There are "reading corners" in some hallways with pulp fiction and a full spectrum light. Three times a day hot meat and remarkably fresh salad are served up to glazed-eye workers on 12-hour shifts.
Our first day in the field was pretty miserable: 30 mph winds make -5 F feel like -35 F and with blowing snow visibility was down to a few meters. I was sampling snow depth and density and several of my density cores simply blew away.
Our second day was spent over the the National Petroleum Reserve and the weather was far more pleasant. Colder, but less wind. Ice roads had been built to both the lakes we sampled in the Western Operations Area (WOA). This meant we didn't need to bump along the tundra in a painfully slow track vehicle.
Each morning that we were based out of the Alpine oilfield, we were required to attend a 6:00 am "Toolbox" meeting, a.k.a. safety briefing. Since normally we rely on the survey contractors to give us a ride to our field site in the track vehicles, we attend the surveyor's safely meeting. After a discussion of safety hazards specific to the day's tasks or weather and a round-the-room sharing session of personal concerns, we go through a required series of stretches. Imagine eight people in a cramped field office dressed in Arctic weather gear doing toe touches. Though it seems absurd, the emphasis on safety is important. The work here is dangerous (~6 trucks a day were sliding off the ice roads) and medical evacuation could take most of a day.
We left the WOA late Thursday night. It's good that it's already light most of the night here because we got stuck behind a 10-story tall drilling rig. Being back at British Petroleum's Prudhoe Bay Operations Center on the Eastern side felt like being in a classy European hotel after a few days at Alpine. I guess in some sense it is.
Today was my day to leave so our team dropped me off at the Deadhorse airport. I checked in and walked through a cloud of diesel ice smog over to the Prudhoe Bay Hotel. There I could hold court in the galley for the six hours before my flight. In the end, listening to CNN at top volume for six hours was a pretty high price for internet access. The highlights at the hotel included a coed bathroom and intermittent harassment from the workers. There was a funny old geologist who came over to talk to me a couple times. "Excuse me, is the plural for musk ox musk oxen?" And later, "I'm writing a poem about seeing the musk oxen and I want to describe the tundra vegetation. Can you tell me the scientific names for all the tundra plants? I can only remember
Betula."
The time passed eventually and I boarded the 737 combi (cargo/passenger) plane back to Anchorage en route to Fairbanks. I'm one of only two women on the entire plane, aside from the flight attendants and by 20 minutes after take off, most of the passengers are drunk. I'm happy the Slope is dry; I don't see how women could work here otherwise. A couple of months ago Alaska Business Monthly's cover story was "Women of the Kuparuk Oil Fields." I think I discovered one of the incentive packages: free feminine products in EVERY bathroom. Who needs stock options when the boss buys your maxis!
It's been several months without a post; here's why. I'm trying to finish my private pilot's license. Last summer's rainy weather and house renovations slowed my progress. Now, I can see the end in view. With this in mind, I had the opportunity to fly my club's Cessna 172 up to the North Slope this week to install one of my snow sensors. I invited my flight instructor along and he foolishly accepted. We worked through the flight planning, packed the plane, and set off last Sunday to the work camp of Umiat, on the Colville River, with a re-fueling stop in Bettles. Umiat has a modern history dating back to the 1940's when gas was discovered there. Now, there are plans to develop the gas fields and build another pipeline, keeping the camp busy with geologists and hydrologists. The weather record at Umiat also dates back to the 1940's, making it an attractive place to install additional weather sensors. Bettles is a small community on the South Side of the Brooks Range, a starting point for hiking in the mountains, and a perfect re-fueling point for arctic flights.
In Bettles, I got my first mechanical training. We couldn't start the plane after parking it. So we pulled out the spark plugs out and my instructor, F., showed me how to clean them. That worked, we gassed up, and were off. Shortly thereafter, we ascended into the Brooks Range and promptly entered thick clouds, i.e. IFR conditions. We kept a close eye on the carburetor and ice building on the wings and ascended out of the freezing conditions when we needed to. But at one point it was actually snowing in the cabin.
Finding Umiat was no small task as well. We knew from the GPS that we were close and decended through a hole in the clouds. Then we stayed 100 feet off the ground or so, looking for a runway. When we lost visual contact with the ground, we ascended and started over again. Finally, we saw a sodium light in the distance. Soon, a brown strip appeared. We entered the pattern and put the plane down. Phew. So much for my first cross country flight!
For the next day and a half F. and I worked busily to install my sensor. We must have lost 2 quarts of blood to the mosquitoes. Finally, when it was all done, our BLM collaborator arrived on an ATV and announced that we would have to move the whole installation half a mile to the other side of camp. We decided to take a break and go flying. We took off and toured the Colville basin. It was a beautiful day with hardly a cloud in the sky and no wind. The river cut through big bluffs that must have been heavy with fossils. Smaller tributaries formed thousands of ponds when they lost the momentum to move forward. Finally, I told F. that I was ready for some touch and goes. We headed back to Umiat. Three good landings and F. asked me to come to a full stop and let him out. Finally, my day had come. I was too tired to be very nervous about it and I'd just had a lot of hours in the plane. I back taxied to the end of the runway and off I went. My first solo was in Umiat, more than three degrees north of the Arctic Circle. I could not have had more fun in the process. My collaborator at BLM celebrated with us and agreed to move the sensor himself, so we could fly home the next day in clear sky conditions. It was certainly a trip to remember. More pictures here.
