“I should’ve brushed my hair… it’s a special occasion.” — Jenny Liebig

The above quote was stated by Jenny Liebig as we hopped into the truck yesterday to go to the airport and pick up our boys (Tim Botting and Chase Baldwin). It is Tim’s second year up here in the Arctic, and Chase’s first. We arrived at the airport… a little late… to see their smiling faces:

Note Jenny’s not brushed hair (sorry Jenny). Tim and Chase had some issues getting up here… Tim almost missed a plane due to being in the wrong terminal, and then had to sprint across 3 terminals at O’Hare airport to get to the correct one before the plane took off (not and easy feat). Then in Anchorage, 2 different planes with mechanical issues resulted in about a 2 hour delay, putting the boys in Barrow around 9PM last night . After 21 hours of travel time, they were exhausted. We ended up calling it an early night last night (after a couple episodes of “Modern Family” of course), knowing what was waiting in the field for us today… site set up.

Here’s what the boys got to do on their first day in the field:

They got to carry the heavy things. It’s about a 20 minute walk out to our site, over uneven and wet tundra. I believe Chase said “I didn’t know I was carrying this through an obstacle course!” The hike is definitely not so fun to do with heavy baggage… like a heavy duty tent (on Tim’s back, left) or an action packer with field equipment (on Chase’s back, right). They did a good job though… no one broke anything, so that’s always a plus.

We were able to get the Barrow Dry site completely set up today, which involved putting together 24 open top chambers (OTCs) like the ones shown in the picture below, and putting them on the experimental plots in our site. They warm the vegetation about 1-3 degrees Celsius, and then we compare them to our control plots that are not warmed. We also had to re-string around the edges of the 24 control plots, re-mark the boardwalks with plot numbers, put up the tent, and get everything set up for the busy season to come.

But, we did have some fun today. It was a GORGEOUS day in the tundra. The sun was shining and there was very little wind, so it was pretty much a perfect Barrow day. So, we took some team pictures by the site and out on the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean:

 Just so you can laugh at me, here is my sad attempt to beat the self timer on my camera and run into the picture:

Feel free to laugh at how weak my running skills have become after giving up all forms of exercise the past 3 years. Now it’s time for some quality time with the crew… the end of just another beautiful day at the top of the world.