Thule by Helicopter

I had never ridden in a helicopter before. But I am a big fan of roller coasters, I am not afraid of heights and I love to try new things. So of course, I was super excited to go.

We arrived to the Air Greenland hanger on Thule Air Force base with 4 people and a truck load of equipment at 9am. Our plan was to collect two river samples and an ice sample and if possible land on the ice sheet. It was a large helicopter a "Huey", the same helicopters used in Vietnam. It could seat about 9 people not counting the crew  and carry cargo. Weather is always an issue for flying and in Greenland the weather can be fierce but we got a nearly perfect day. Partly cloudy and not so much wind. 

View out the window

Me looking all like "Yep I am in a helicopter"

Tundra view

We flew over South Mountain toward the Pituffik river. The views were incredible and the ride was smooth. We landed on a boulder covered beach and I was braced so tightly for landing and it was the softest landing I ever felt. Even on boulders it was like landing on cotton

candy. 

Our first helicopter stop

This was probably one of my favorite views of the trip. The river curls around a bend and then lets out into a small bay still adorned with large icebergs. Glacial ice unlike sea ice is so pure that the layer where the water meets the ice is a shimmering transparent aqua blue. This is because of the way light is reflected all the red light is absorbed and so it reflects blue. 

Ocean where the Pituffik river drains full of Icebergs 8/27/13

Another view of the water 8/27/13

We collected 20L of water from the river to filter for DNA in the lab and walked around before getting back into the helicopter and traveling further up along the Pituffik. 

Our second stop involved a treacherous walk along the river up and down massive rock piles through an active mud flow in order to get close enough to the ice to take a sample with a chain saw. We were able to carve a nice chunk of ice from the base without sending the whole wall tumbling down and I collected more water samples. 

View from the Helicopter headed of location 2

On the left a wall of ice, in the foreground the active mud flow we walked through and in the background science being done!

A better view of the ice wall and flowing stream

We got back in the helicopter to head over the ice sheet and see if we could land. The clouds coming off the ice sheet made landing not an option but I got a few photos out the window. We were hoping to find some glacial ponds on the surface of the ice but the ice was pretty dry and the weather was not ideal for landing so we headed back to base. We were only out about 2 hours and could have made one more stop but they figured we could use out extra helicopter time in Kangerlussuaq. 

I spent the rest of that beautiful day looking longingly out the window of the lab. With all those samples collected they needed to be processed and the water filtered. 

The next days were mostly packing up supplies. I had to ship home almost 30lbs of personal items so that I could meet the regulations for the flight from Thule to Kangerlussuaq. There is no option to carry excess baggage each person gets one carry on under 16lbs and one checked luggage under 45lbs. We were able to take our science supplies as cargo but there was a lot of slimming down our luggage.

On Wednesday evening, the night before we left, we all attended a science lecture given by the lead member of our team. He also works on the NASA Curiosity rover on Mars. He is an expert in arctic and antarctic surface topography and the arctic/antarctic are the best analogue environments for Martian terrain. He

helps plan the route for the rover making sure it doesn't get stuck in any sand. So he gave a talk in the community center that wasn't unlike a Science Pub in America. With only two days notice, there was over 35 people in attendance. I am very familiar with the curiosity project but a lot of his lecture was on the mechanisms used to land the rover and I really had no idea how intricate it was. It really filled me with awe thinking about the amazing effort and ingenuity it took to pull off such a mission and the fact it went off without a hitch is truly remarkable. Anyone interested in the project should visit the curiosity website almost all the images are uploaded for the public shortly after the scientists get them and the amount of information and outreach allows for anyone to follow the mission from home. mars.nasa.gov/msl they even have a great mobile site and app. After the lecture we had a small barbecue at our dorm and invited a few friends we met in Thule over. It turned out to be quite a feast for only 10 people (we needed to make more friends lol). We had barbecue chicken breast, orange garlic marinaded pork chop, ribeye and pepper kebabs, cheeseburgers, corn on the cob, broccoli, grilled and roasted potatoes, homemade potato salad,  grilled peppers, beer, wine, jack and snacks. 

The Aftermath

I spent most of the evening in the kitchen cooking and serving making sure all the food came out at the same time but that just made the whole experience feel more like home. It was great food, great company and we even had some unexpected guests.

Arctic fox poised and eagerly begging for scraps

Another arctic fox with a morsel

My time in Thule was a truly memorable experience. On Thursday when we left after a week, I knew I was going to miss it. It felt a lot like leaving summer camp. As a kid at sleep away camp we always went for one week at a time and at the end of the week it never felt long enough and you wanted to stay more. But there was more important science to be done and you can't stay at camp forever.