Day 1.

Got to meet all my expedition mates today. There are two other teachers through the Earthwatch program, 6 Shell employees who came from all over the world, including Australia and Malaysia, and a few eco-science tourists.
After a long lecture this morning on the enormous science of snow (did you know there are 72 different kinds of snow?) and the importance of the work we are doing here, we finally got to do field work (that is scientist lingo for grunt work I think.) Field work consists of a bone-rattling trip in a wooden box being dragged behind a snow mobile to get to the right location in "the field". Once we get there, we dig pits about a meter square until we hit dirt. In some places that means one to two feet of snow, in others it goes up to 9 feet deep. Once the pit is dug, we count the number of different layers of snow, figure out what type they are, measure the density, resistance and temperature, and write it all down on worksheets. The point is that all this information is entered in a database to compare it to data that has been collected for the last 3 decades. All in all a very noble undertaking. The tricky part is to do all this in minus 20 degrees Celsius and wrapped up in 5 layers of clothing, three pairs of gloves, and a pair of boots that looks like it would fit Lebron James comfortably. It makes moving around and handling a shovel rather tricky. To get a sense of this I suggest you put on three massive pairs of gloves on top of each other and try to write something with a pencil. The difficult part is to not get too cold or too hot and wet from sweating because that would then freeze and quickly make it rather miserable out there.
I must say that it really is much more fun and exciting than it might sound.