I love Eureka. Good hike to the North of PEARL.

I love Eureka. We had a really great day yesterday.

In the morning, I went up to the Ridge Lab with the rest of the ACE campaign crew. They're all going to fly out on the 19th (this coming Tuesday), so it was a good day for a refresher about how to run all the instruments. Lots of the instruments up there work such that you have to press buttons for 3 minutes, and then wait 2 hours while measurements happen. Then you press buttons for 3 minutes again. Given that there were 6 of us at the lab and things were running well, some of us took the opportunity to go for a hike.

 

 All of these photos are in no particular order.

 We walked North from the Ridge Lab. We walked far enough that we could see Eureka Sound (the station is on Slidre Fjord, which is off of Eureka Sound), and we could see Axel Heiberg Island, too.

 See? Gorgeous. It was such a nice sunny day, mid -20s, no wind, and plenty of time to not have to rush back. I saw parts of Ellesmere I'd never seen before. Every time before that I've walked in that direction, I've always dropped down into one of the valleys at one point. This time, instead, we kept high up on the ridges, and were rewarded with beautiful vistas.

 The sun 3:00 PM sun looks low in the sky, we had no worries about getting back before dark - it takes hours and hours for the sun to set. We tried looking for Comet PanStars around 9:30 pm and the sky STILL wasn't dark enough to see it (although I explored the moon and Jupiter through binoculars, sitting next to a bunny trail, and that made it worth getting my snowsuit back on).

 The ridge lab is in the photo above. It's in the middle of the frame. It's just far away. We ended up walking about twice as far from the ridge lab as this.

 Dan, Debora and Paul - veritable Arctic Explorers!

 This is Debora. Turns out that whatever altitude you lose by climbing down, you will inevitably have to work twice as hard to regain on the way home. When you're doubly tired. And kind of hungry.

Ah, taking a break. The legs are tired, but my brain is happy. Just wish I had a wider-angle camera lens to show you all how awesome it is.