Skaergaard Travelog

Week Five Summary:

Rain.
Sun! Fieldwork!
Pitterak alert.
A flower on Puku.

8.9.1989

Rain. Looked like it was going to clear in the morning but no such luck. Played Whist and Rummy again today, and didn't do much else at all. I'm keeping fairly warm despite the damp-to-wetness of everything around me. Blah.

8.10.1989

Seven more days left of field work, maybe 7.5. Hope the rain lets up soon (oh by the way, it's STILL raining, harder than yesterday) because we'll have to go out soon whether it stops or not. Ugh. Washed my hair today, figured I might as well since it's wet anyway. Rob and Jim are bugging me as usual, I can't wait to get home to some decent conversation - I'm so sick of superlatives!! I think I'll take a nap now - not much else to do and maybe it will warm me up.

* * *

Woke up after a nap, at 4:15, and it seemed like everyone had left! It stopped raining and the boat was gone, so I assumed I had been abandoned - turns out Jen and Jim had been abandoned along with me. So us three, and Dave Lambert, all went and hung out in Rune's tent - normal evening except for a pitterak alert kept us all nice and antsy.

8.11.1989

Woke up to the sound of gunshots, LOTS of them, signifying the boat had arrived from Angmagssalik one day early. Also had 20 knot windows blowing, not nearly pitterak force (50 knots) but still quite breezy. (Sødalen had a pitterak, lasted 40 minutes. Temperature went from 6°C to 19°C in 1.5 hours, and then the reverse in 20 minutes.) The winds eventually died down and the sun peeped out for a few minutes, but the fog is rolling in again and a few droplets of rain are falling. So we'll see... Did some manual labor this morning, carrying greasy drill parts and enough 2x4s and 8x8s to build a house. Now we're in the field, Jen and I measuring a strat section up a dike - makes it difficult to orient samples.

8.12.1989

BEAUTIFUL DAY! Sunshine and warm enough for t-shirts alone, although the less clothing you wear the more you realize how much you need to wash. Platinova set up (started to) their drill site and camp site here at Skaergård (proper Danish spelling) - Showers on Monday!! Spent the day helping Rob sample and set up his map area. Had a very good day. Needless today, I was a little surprised. He's a whole different person not around Jim. Then went up to the Wehrlite complex in the late afternoon. 11.5 hours in the field - long day and I'm utterly exhausted.

Late-night sun over the fjord.

8.13.1989

Still morning right now, SUNNY! again today. Dick, Jen, and I are going to Mellemø to set up her cairns and then Dick and I are going to Kramer Ø to do my cliff sampling - he doesn't seem to think we'll need ropes. I hope he's right, he tends to underestimate things A LOT.

Dick and I doing vertical sampling. The little brown thing bobbing in the water is the plastic case to my Brunton compass. I dropped it.

Let's see, including today, 5 more field days. And then 5 more days until home. This book is damp all the way through.

Quotes continued:
(11) "My knees hurt from going down" - Jen
(12) "Fucking Barley" - Jim
(13) "Ripping a Doogan" - Rob
(14) "Ice is Cool" - Jim

Things to do in Binghamton before school starts:
(1) buy pants and underwear
(2) take car to shop to fix timing
(3) get sticker from admin bldg
(4) food shopping - see list
(5) laundry

Shopping List:
milk, butter, juice (apple,grape), fruit (apples, pears, oranges, bananas), dried fruit (prunes, raisins, apricots), nuts (almonds, peanuts), vegetables (beans, broccoli, zucchini), jam, kippered herring, ravioli!! Funny how my shopping list is an odd mix of things I really miss (like fresh fruit and veggies) and things that I'm now so used to eating I can't imagine being without (like dried fruit, nuts, and tiny fish). Hah.

Field Notes:

Layering in Middle Zone on Kraemer Ø Peninsula

KG-853: Sighted to far left peak of George Mt. (labelled G). From Unit 1, Middle Zone Traverse, about 80cm. up from bottom of traverse. Also has an arrow to Joe's Peak, the 1st big peak South of George's Peak along the coast. Just on gross appearance, seems very plagioclase-righ and very well laminated.

KG-854: Very mafic rich, oriented to George Mt., looks laminated but not as much as KG-853, perhaps because there isn't as much plagioclase. Appears to be from an unlayered section of layer 2 but it may have very faint graded layering. From lowermost unlayered mafic unit in layer 2, 10cm. below top of unit 2A. (Unit 2 could be subdivided into A,B,C,D,E where A,C,E are unlayered mafic minerals.)

KG-855: From 2B (middle of 2B), may be the top of a graded layer, looks like the B & C units in 2 might just be the result of layering. If it is the top of a graded layer, it is a very thick felsic layer and a very thin mafic layer. Sighted to George Mt., but arrow is on the BOTTOM of the sample.

KG-856: Small sample from 2C, middle of unit, unoriented. Looks like Unit 2 is not five units, but just one. The opaque oxide poor portions (B,D) appear to be the result of just graded layering.

KG-857: From layer 3, an unlayered portion, about 60cm. above base of layer 3. Well laminated, unlayered, arrow sighted to George Mt.

KG-858: Sample is oriented with one surface pointing to 58° and George Mt. is 80°. Arrow to George on top of sample is approximate. In unit 4, 90cm. above the base of the unit in what appears to be a homogeneous layer (perhaps -faintly- layered).

KG-859: Arrow to George Mt. Well laminated, from unit 5, 50cm. up from the base. An unlayered rock.

KG-860: Arrow to George Mt., from an unlayered part of layer 6, laminated, about 140cm. above the base of the layer.

KG-861: Oriented to George Mt. from nonlayered portion of a leucolayer, layer 7. Sample is from 50cm. above the base of the layer.

KG-862: Arrow to George Mt., unlayered mafic rock from layer 8, about 1m. above the base of the layer.

KG-863: Sighted to George Mt., from layer 9, unlayered, plagioclase-rich rock. 25cm. above the base of the layer. The dip just at the base of layer 10 is 26° towards 210°. Dip in layer 1 is 26° towards 190°. In layer 3 Dip is 27° towards 240°.

KG864: IN TWO PIECES, oriented with a very short arrow to George Mt. Contains the 1cm. top of a leucolayer and then a 3cm graded layer which looks like it has a series of layers at its base, tapering off (can see on the weathered surface), then a 8cm. thick graded layer, again with a series of decreasing intensity mafic layers at its base, then a 2cm graded layer followed by a 3cm graded layer (from bottom to top), in unit 3.

Layer ZERO (mafic layer below layer 1) dips at 3° towards 195°.

KG-865: Sighted to George Mt. In mafic layer 10, about 1m. up from the base of the layer. Unlayered.

KG-866: Sighted to George Mt. About 70cm. into layer 11A in a felsic layer, with no fine scale layering.

Got dropped off first at camp, had mail waiting: 5 letters for John, 2 for Jen, 2 for me, and 1 for us to share from Sara. Had a message from patty delivered by Neil that someone should stop over to the drill camp before 10 GMT and learn how to work the showers. So since it was 9:15 already and nobody else was due back, I went. But nitwit Neil forgot to tell me that Patty wanted me to bring a 1/2 gallon of clean gas over to run the pump to fill the water tank. So I hiked over just to find out that I had to hike back again. But when I got back Rob and John where there and they took over the fuel. Later we all took GREAT HOT SHOWERS. First time in a month!

8.14.1989

Today, since my fieldwork got finished yesterday, I went with Rune in the canoe over to do some profile sampling at Puku. But of course he couldn't find the right profiles so we spent lots of time just hiking all over the face of Puku. Eventually got everything done, and once again, I'm exhausted. But neat thing first: actually saw a FLOWERING PLANT on Puku. I was so amazed I layed down on my stomach to get a closer look and take a picture. When Rune looked up he was startled, thinking I had fallen and was injured, but then he also enjoyed seeing the flower. Three more days of fieldwork.

8.15.1989

Spent the morning wrapping samples (in all the paper garbage left over from our food packaging) and now we're going out. I'm going with Rob again to Uttental Plateau and Jen is going with Rune in the canoe to Ivnarmiut and Mellemø.

* * *

Later. Had a very good day. The top of Uttental Plateau is beautiful, and what a view! Not even too hard to climb up.

View of Uttental Sound.

Worked late and got back very tired and hungry (I can't eat cheese anymore, it just makes me nauseous even thinking about it.) Well not sure what I'm doing tomorrow - Dick mentioned working with Jen on the strat column. Today is Tuesday, and there's one week left until back home. Here's the schedule for the next week: Two more days in field (Wed and Thu). To Sødalen on Friday by helicopter (much faster than the way we came in!), to Iceland on Sun, probably Akureyri. One day in Akureyri, then to Reykjavik on Monday, then to NYC on Tuesday.

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