Want to know where Eureka, Nunavut is? It’s in Canada. It’s at the 80th parallel north latitude, where the sun goes on vacation in mid-October and doesn’t show it’s shiny face again until late February. Specifically it’s on Ellesmere Island, and it’s the third-most northern populated place in the world. The other 2 are Thule, Greenland, and Alert which is on the farthest northern tip of Ellesmere Island. We are in a Covid-free bubble thanks to isolation and rapid-testing. We threw our masks away the moment we got off the plane.
What the hell is in Eureka? A bunch of buildings - housing, water tank farms, generators, fuel, equipment, people, polar research labs, and weather observation equipment (AND several lifetime’s worth of toilet paper). And, a runway which sees air traffic once a month in winter but is much busier in the summer. When I got here in late October there were 11 people and 3 flew out last week. So that leaves 8 happy folk, toiling crazy hours in the dark, keeping this place going. Last week the sewage tank had an overflow but the alarm was unplugged so no one noticed all the water (thank god it was just water) for a few hours. Fun stuff to fix at -40.
I work 11-hour shifts, and I am happy to have survived my first full week of night shifts without falling asleep at my desk. Luckily I am required to go outside every hour to do my observations so the cold air will snap you back to wakefulness pretty fast. I am developing buff shoulders as I don and doff my heavy arctic gear several times a day. It has to be anti-static so nothing fancy like Canada Goose, unfortunately.
What to do in Eureka…well, work and sleep takes up most of everyone’s time but we do have satellite TV and a million DVDs and VHS tapes to watch. Eating is important, too, and we have a cook who is determined to make, and keep, us all nice and fat. Fresh fruit and veggies arrive on the monthly supply flight, and when it runs out then there is the frozen variety. The warehouse of food and the 3 walk-in freezers contain enough food to tide us over for several months if the flights ever get delayed. There are obscene amounts of desserts in the fridge, never mind the ice cream freezer next to it. We do have a pretty good gym but I am too damned tired to make the effort after working night shifts. Hopefully I can get in there later this week when I’ve caught up on sleep.
I am a bit pissed off at my new coworker (we started on the same day) since he has seen wolves and hares on his trips outside and I have seen NOTHING. Well, we saw an arctic fox on a site tour in a truck but it wasn’t a wolf so anticlimactic. There is a resident pack of arctic wolves that patrol through Eureka regularly as they like to use our road. A herd of muskox roam around here, too, so where they are, the wolves are not far behind.
How much snow? On average about 5" (12cm) at the moment. The high arctic is basically a desert and the air is incredibly dry, so there isn’t a lot of snowfall. We do have ice crystals which don’t really pile up but shine in the light and make things pretty. How much wind? A bit, around 4 knots right now, which is no fun when it’s already -40. A couple of weeks ago the temperature went way up and so did the wind so the windchill was still insane. Right now I’m not minding the bitter cold if the air is relatively still. It’s dark 24 hours a day but I haven’t found it to be an issue, and people tell me in the summer it’s really hard to get enough sleep with the 24 hours of sunlight.
So that is my life in the high Arctic, I’d love to hear about other people’s stories of living in unusual or isolated locales, whether for personal reasons or if one’s employer said to go.
