Second Day to Deadhorse

We got up early on Tuesday morning for the trip to Deadhorse. Breakfast started at 5:00 AM, remember this is a work camp. We traveled the short distance to Wiseman for a tour given by a local named Jack. Jack is a year round resident with a wife and a child on the way. He has grown children that has moved to Anchorage.

Living north of the Arctic Circle requires one to be resourceful. His house is equipped with the same stuff we have on offshore sail boats. Solar cells, wind chargers, battery banks, inverter and generator. The Generator needs to be heated prior to starting on cold days, down to -40 degrees and at times -80 degrees, and then placed in a box to heat the air as it is pulled into the generator. The solar is good in the summer when the sun never sets with the wind generator working on windy days. The house is a small house to keep energy demands down. The refrigerator, or cold storage, is a hole cut into the floor with hatch type access. It never gets above 40 degrees, even in the summer time. Heating and cooking is accomplished with wood as the cost of fuel oil is over $3,000 a winter. He spends 3 months splinting wood for the nine months of winter.

Jack is also a trapper/hunter and traps and hunts all winter for income and food. He goes out in the -40 degree weather but has proper clothing, mainly animal skins. He does studies for different agencies in both the summer and winter, along with tours. He was collecting salmon DNA samples for the University of Alaska. Jack was a very interesting person and I thoroughly enjoyed the tour of Wiseman.

The next major site was Atigun Pass where we saw the Dall sheep. It is a major avalanche site. The approaches to the pass are kept open using artillery shells to cause an avalanche under controlled conditions. There are gun mounts placed for the artillery which look like small raised platforms with a steel pole in the middle. 

As we descended from Atigun Pass, the terrain changed to tundra and is refereed to as the North Slope. There had been several fires along the way that burned off the ground cover and some times the trees. After a fire, the fire weed would be the first plant to take root. I don't know if they bloom all summer, but they were putting a beautiful display as we drove.

The tundra, which is permafrost, has an unusual appearance due to the freezing and thawing of the surface. The subsurface stays frozen, which makes it permafrost. The water freezes and spreads the land to make the interesting lakes and geometric shapes in the land with dispersed areas of water.

The pipeline is interesting on how it is constructed. The supports that go into the ground would defrost the ground causing big problems. On top of the supports are cooling fins with a passive anhydrous ammonia cooling system. When the air temp is 4 degrees below the ground temp, in the winter, the cooling system removes heat from the ground, insuring it remains frozen in the summer. Notice the ice, or permafrost, in the picture below.

 

Next, Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay