2001 Deployment

Photo Credit: University of Washington
Photographer: Rebecca Woodgate





Afternoon sunshine glints on the ice near a plane stop on the route North between Ottawa and Resolute.


An aerial view enroute from Resolute to Alert.


Welcome to Alert, a Canadian AF Station. It serves as a stopover going to and from the Pole.


At Alert snowmobiles are both a means of transportation and a way to move equipment.


Equipment shipped to Alert, such as this compass, will be put aboard a Twin Otter and flown to the ice camp.



Aagaard pulls a sled loaded with an ADCP and the compass. The horizontal magnetic field is weak at the Noth Pole so the compass is important for calibrating direction.


Woodgate and Johnson at Alert about to calibrate the compass.


The Twin Otter carries a full load of equipment between Alert and the North Pole camp.


Just north of Alert, large ice floes are embedded in fields of ice ridges. A small lead has opened and refrozen.


At the North Pole ice camp, the process of melting an "ice donut" is underway. When the donut is freed from the ice around it, the hydraulic winch will haul it up.



Johnson and Aagaard start lifting part of the ice plug.

Almost out of the sea, the ice plug weighs about two tons.


The melt hole is the pathway through which the mooring line is lowered. A thin icy layer has formed overnight. Note the "frost flowers" that have formed on it.


The mooring tripod is used to hold and lower the packages of instruments into the Arctic. To the back left of the tripod, the team has lined up the next group of floats that will be lowered through the ice hole. In the background is the Twin Otter runway.


A wood cover provides a footing on which to stand when the team attaches instruments to the mooring line.



Johnson and Aagaard await the next instrument package to attach to the mooring line and lower into the Arctic.


Kiyoshi Hatakeyama of JAMSTEC helps to deploy another one of the mooring line's ADCPs.


The team is lowering another instrument into the sea. To their left is a float that will be in the JAMSTEC buoy.


Gathered at the tripod (left to right) are Johnson, Stewart, Morison (UW-APL), and Hiro and Hatakeyama (JAMSTEC). They are about to deploy a salinity /temperature recorder that they have attached to the JAMSTEC drifting buoy.


The JAMSTEC team makes final preparations to deploy the drifting buoy.



Just another day at the office... (Aagaard).


Johnson in his sleeping and eating quarters.


Deployment over, Johnson and Hatakeyama relax next to a Canadian C130, which will fly the team from Alert to Trenton in Canada.


Inside the C130 are members of the Canadian crew, Aagaard (protecting his ears from the plane noise), and Johnson, who catches up on his reading.


Between Alert and Thule are snowy hill that are scored by glaciers.



A view of Thule, a USAF base in Greenland, that is used for refueling.


Some team members view the mountains off Baffin Bay enroute from the North Pole to Ottawa, Canada. Other team members enjoy a well deserved sleep after successfully deploying 2001's mooring and buoys.