Eureka, 80o
latitude, population 10 during the
winter, more in the summer. A very comfortable place compared to our tents in
the field. For us, a 5 star resort hotel. For others, total isolation, a
desolate wilderness prison, with only one five-minute phone call per week to
the outside world on a poor satellite phone.
The Eureka
weather station is located on Central-Western Ellesmere Island at 80o
latitude, East of Northern Greenland [1]. It is 2.5
hours flying by Twin Otter from Resolute Bay [1],
the central hub in this area with bi-weekly airline connections South to
Montreal and Edmonton, a 6-9 hour flight by Boeing 737, depending on the
stopovers.
Climate
Winters are cold, around
-45o to -55o Celsius, with 2 month of total darkness.
Summers are reasonable, 4-6 Celsius [1] (Eurkea in late
summer) during the 24 hours of sunlight, the sun at an angle of 30 o
(noon) to 20o (midnight) above the horizon, a mild West Europe
winter sun. The mountain ranges [1] protect this
area from the constant -1o to -5o Celsius Northern winds
of the Arctic Ocean. Still, the
constantly strong Arctic wind gives a chilly feeling when outside.
Transport
Eureka has a wide gravel
air strip allowing large military 4 propeller Hercules transport planes to land
for supplies. The army has a small camp at the air strip [1].
Most visitors travel by a 15 seat Twin Otter plane.
Bulk supplies like fuel and
building material arrive by supply boat in late August when the sea channels
are mostly free of sea ice.
Lodging
The weather station is
spacious and well-equipped, with some 30 or 40 simple rooms, a large kitchen, a
TV room and a sports room. Here I learned to play snooker. Our ex-Vietnamese
army helicopter pilot was beating us at least 21-1 in table tennis without
moving his feet.
Back to comfort
After spending 4 weeks in
the field on Northern Ellesmere Island in June and July 1988, our helicopter
took us back to the Eureka weather
station for a rest. This was badly needed to recover from the past 4 weeks.
Especially the last camp high up in the mountains between the glaciers was
cold. Now mid July, on flying to Eureka
the sea ice in the large sea
straits like Greely Fiord was breaking up [1].
In Eureka we stayed at the Geological Survey of Canada site, two
containers refitted with windows, bunk beds and a kitchen sink. Simple lodging
but free of charge. The weather station would cost a staggering $150 per night
per person, but all meals were included.
The containers were very
simple accommodation but functional. Most important, flat, level ground.
Sitting on a chair that would not slowly destabilize by sinking in the soft
tundra, felt like extreme comfort. A level and stable bed with a real 80 cm
wide mattress was even better but the very best was a warm shower in the
weather station.
'Under the volcano'
The barracks also had a
book collection left by scientists. The only book that looked interesting was
Malcolm Lowry’s "Under The Volcano".
I read the thick book within the next two weeks, highly concentrated
by lack of distractions. This is an
impressive masterpiece about Mexico in the late thirties and the inability to
enjoy life ('lebenskunst') of an older British consul and his young American
wife. The book was said to be impossible to turn into a movie. Indeed, the only
movie ever made covers only 30% of the book.
The violent Mexican culture and empty lives of the main characters is
lacking in the movie. Still, I did enjoy watching it, memories of the story
line in the book guiding while watching the movie.
As semi-government personnel from the university, we were invited
to have free dinners at the weather station by the French-Canadian cook from
Montreal, a real character. These were the leftovers and we always had to wait
a 30 minutes for our turn but cookie
never disappointed us.
A year later, in 1999, I
saw again in Eureka. Now I had to listen to his sad story. While drinking
whisky heavily, he told us that he could not understand why his wife of 18
years suddenly divorced him. He worked year round at the station for the past
10 or 15 years, had a good salary, would spend the yearly 4 weeks of holidays
with his wife from Montreal and would call her once a week.
Some sort of boat captain's
marriage. Très bien, n'est
pas? He was in a sorry
state, missing the exuberance and sharp remarks with his heavy French Canadian
accent as I knew him from previous years. He also put on some extra weight and
now had an even bigger belly. Now around 50 years old, his home was Eureka.
Wealthy tourists
The weather station had a log
book for all visitors. Some of very few tourists visiting Ellesmere Island
would stay here, perhaps on average 5 per week, en route to the recently opened
Lake Hazen National Park, 250 km North, halfway between Eureka and the army
base Alert on the North tip of Ellesmere Island..
Lake Hazen and Eureka are
the warmest places in the region and have
abundant wild-life like musk ox, caribou, wolves, foxes and hares. Lake
Hazen is the only place accessible for tourists. Costs were $ 10000 (in 1988)
for two weeks, lodging and air transport included. Recently, Russian ice
breakers started to offer two-week cruises for € 12000 through the sea
channels, e.g. from Resolute to Tanquary Fiord (close to Lake Hazen), passing
by Eureka halfway.
The tourists we met were
generally retired, very rich people from the US, like Mr. and Mrs. John Smith
from Palm Springs, the only tourists prepared to pay the $ 10000 for just two
weeks of curiosity, not including the $ 1500 flight from Montreal or Edmonton
to Resolute Bay. At the weather station, in
1988, they were charged double rates compared to government personel, US$ 70
per meal and the simple accommodation
in bunk beds was over US$ 100 per person. Hilton Hotel prices at less than YMCA
comfort.
Normal tourists would get
stuck in Resolute Bay, the last real airport for jet planes. They would wander
around a bit, unable to get very far as the threat of polar bears would prevent
this, visit the Inuit village composed of small wooden cottages and stay in the
only hotel. Still interesting.
Dirt road
The only dirt road runs
from the airport, to the station and a further West to a cape with satellite
dishes for communications. These were built at this location as the high
latitude required an open space for receiving signals as they were aimed to the
South to a satellite at only 1 or 2 degrees above the open sea. The dishes
allowed us to make satellite phone calls South with its annoying half second
delay and one way traffic.
On a trip to the satellite
dishes, not paying attention, I nearly drove of the trail driving the old PCSP
government truck. This would have been an embarrassment as it was the only
truck for our group of scientists. Renting a truck from the weather station was
very costly. Our truck was flown in a few years ago as a favor of the Canadian
Air Force getting a free ride on a Hercules transport plane.
My student took the truck
once for a night ride, and he got stuck in the mud by driving off the road.
Great student joke and very typical so I let him dig it out first and gave him
a hand finally using wooden planks to get it out. I hope this was a good
learning experience.
Garbage of the world
On a trip East along the coast we borrowed the stations mountain
bikes that were meant to encourage the stations personnel to do some physical
exercise but nobody used them. After a few kilometers along the beach having a
fierce head wind we got stuck in beach gravel and sand and walked along with
the bikes.
The beach had a lot of
plastic, rope, plywood, glass bottles, etc., more than you would see on a beach
in Europe on a winter day as they are cleaned up regularly. This must have
drifted in along the sea straits from Baffin Bay or even the Arctic Ocean, and
kept on accumulating, enhanced by the strong wind in the fiord. Another example
how every corner of the world is already polluted, a new world-wide geological marker horizon.
I was told that the
visibility was 100 km in this area in the fifties but now it reduced to only 0
km, air pollution.
Local wolf
One night as I was walking
from the station to our camp a wolf was crossing our camp site probably looking
for scraps. It looked at me for only a few seconds and steadily wandered off.
It is very typical for wolves to always keep a fair distance so you can never
take a close-up picture. Also see [1].
National Geographic TV has
shown documentaries of the white Arctic wolves of Eureka that have a den
nearby. The cook often feeds them left over food.
Weather Girl
The personnel consisted
mostly of young or middle aged men except one, a girl recently graduated in
Atmospheric Studies. She was from Montreal and in our imagination she could
only be good looking after spending 4 weeks in the field, perhaps she was.
She explained that it was hard to find a job down South in a
weather office and the first few years you would have to take isolated
postings. This implied you would spent
the next 4 to 5 years in the highest Arctic with only 4 weeks holidays. She
thought this was great showing no signs of being home sick. She loved being in
such isolated places. As males, we had second thoughts, running away from
something?
North border post for
the North Pole and Russia
Eureka is the official and
only border post to leave and enter Canada in the North. North Pole expeditions
start from the North tip of Ellesmere Island (Ward Hunts Island) to cover the
800 km to reach the North Pole. Others start in Russia and do a cross Arctic Ocean trip but this is rare.
Stations in the North
There are several stations
like Eureka in Northern Canada, all spaced at a distance of 300 to 500 km:
Resolute Bay in the center, Tuktoyaktuk
in the West, Alert at the North end and the well-known Thule which is also an
American air force base on NE Greenland. Isachsen on Elef Ringness Island and
Mould Bay on Banks Island have been abandoned. They were already built after
the Second World War, also to avoid
Norwegian claims to the lands as they were the first to explore and map the
region in the late nineteenth century. The stations were expanded during the
cold war for NORAD, the Northern defense system against nuclear rockets from
the Soviet Union.
Bye, bye Eureka
The last time I visited
Eureka was in July 1989. After waiting 3 days for a helicopter at Expedition
Fiord, on the West Coast of Axel Heiberg Island we were evacuated, see [1], but we could only take one helicopter load due to
the poor weather [1] and left half the equipment at
a glaciologists shed at Expedition Fiord, the only building of Axel Heiberg Island.
As we landed, a Twin Otter
was fueling up carrying three female biology students. We recognized the siren
voices we had on the unrestricted chatting channel of our radio for the past
two weeks. Their voices still sounded wonderful. The girls were well equipped
to handle the cold, big!