Wk 08 Open water... and a polar bear!?
Date Posted: 4.9.2007
Location: 64º5'N 165º4'W
Nome, Alaska, United States
Weather Conditions: Cloudy 31° F (-1°C)
"Finally, a polar bear!" exclaimed Mille with a jubilant skip. A slightly different reaction than when we meet them for real - breathing and moving across the ice coming at us, but Mille was so thrilled by the sight of the stuffed polar bears in Anchorage International Airport. Finally, in the North! Six hours later she stepped out of the plane in Nome where Paul was awaiting her arrival with the same feeling of relief. This means we are on the move. It even seemed like the Polar Huskies thought so - they exploded when Mille stepped out of the truck. Time to go! We are finally on our way! ...And there is not a minute to be wasted. "Flying into to Nome we made a swing out over the ice-bound sound. There is open water everywhere in every direction" says Mille. "Instead of a blanket of white, open leads in the ice are like big black scars creating a myriad of smaller and bigger pans of ice floating on the open water." Paul continues, "We are told that the conditions are still good on the other side of the Bering Strait in Chukotka."
Soon we will see if this is true. The first plane with Paul and the Polar Huskies are to lift off Monday around noon, to go across the Bering Strait to Provideniya, the expedition starting point. This entire trip will be less than two hours. If all goes well, on Tuesday Mille follows behind with a plane loaded with gear and sleds. "I am a bit nervous" she says, "but that is usually a good sign. It has just been such a long and unexpected haul to get to this point, and for now I am just more than happy to be re-united with the Polar Huskies here in Nome. My first impression of Nome was definitely that of a 'busy place.' When your eyes do not gaze to vast surrounding of tundra or out across the sea, everywhere you look you see machinery and signs of its long history of 'gold exploration.'"
As we told you in last week's report, the greatest Alaskan gold rush was right here in Nome and began with three Swedes (again, really two Swedes and a Norwegian) claiming land for gold mines, soon followed by striking gold. Remember, gold was found 40 miles up and down the coastline and gold miners literally were walking on gold. Well, Mille barely had her bags off the plane and she was on her way to see the mighty Polar Huskies when she hurried down on the beach...to look for gold! "No, not really" says Mille with a grin. "Though of course I did kick the snow around a bit to just make really sure I wasn't standing right on top of a big chunk of gold! But really I wanted to see this very historic place. Imagine 40,000 men, camped out in tents up and down the shore that summer of 1900 sitting by the campfires at night hoping that the dawn would bring more than one kind of glimmer! I think that is inspiring" Mille continues. 
Paul did find his way out to the gold mine earlier in the week. Well, actually, not to the gold mine itself because that is a closed off area and the manager, Keith Lee, was not comfortable with us exploring around (we did try to reassure him that we were just looking for some golden pictures of how a gold mine looks and not gold itself!). Instead, he invited Paul to check out the 'landing yard' where all the materials from which the gold mine will be built is brought in and stored before it is taken to the actual mine site.
The mine site is named "The Rock Creek project" and it is located roughly seven miles from Nome. It was first owned by the Alaska Gold Company, but in 1999 it was bought by NovaGold. The Rock Creek project is part of 5,700 hectares (14,000 acres) of land, which is actually owned by the Bering Straits and Sitnasuak Native Corporations. However, NovaGold has 'claimed' the land and is leasing it for mining. The mine is going to be an open-pit mine and they plan to process something like 7000 tonnes per day, every day of the year. Now, a lot of that is gravel from which the gold is then extracted using a chemical called cyanide, but it still ends up being about 100,000 ounces of gold every year!
"With a little math" says Aaron, "given that we need 1.2 ounces of gold to make 1000 cell phones - that ends up being enough gold to make 83 million cell phones! The price of gold changes everyday, but right now it is around $650 an ounce. 100,000 ounces of gold a year is worth $65 million a year! Which means that is the cost that we all pay to get the gold for that same number of cell phones! When you then think about that, at the current rate in the US alone, we are throwing about 130 million cell phones away and that is sure puzzling."
With that in mind, have you started a 'Recycle Your Cell Phone' campaign at your school or in your community? Make sure you share your experiences and what else you are doing in the classroom in Collaboration Zone 3: the Earth Zone. Also, join this weeks chat on Friday April 13 at 11 CST to talk about 'World Resources.'
The plan is that it will take about 6 years to 'empty' the Rock Creek mine for gold. With between 123 and 135 people working at the mine, it will cost about 22 million a year to operate. Right now, they are working on setting up the mine and the plan is to actually start the mining operation in the fall of 2007. To get to this point of deciding to mine, they have already drilled more than 130,000 feet (~ 43,000 meters), 'holes' as they call it, to figure out where the gold is located in the crust. One step to set up the mine, was to get the approval to mine from the community of Nome. The greatest concern among the local people here in Nome seems to be the possible mine waste and how this waste is managed so it doesn't harm the environment in the long run. "I guess the concern is how to develop the mine for a sustainable future for the community" says Paul. He continues, "the land here has so many resources - wild game and open space - yet if it is not managed right it is also very easily destroyed." On Thursday evening, Paul enjoyed a wonderful dinner of crab ala egg roll (!) with Phil and Erica who live outside of town with a view of the mine site. They talked about how they are concerned about the mine and how it impacts the environment. It is only planned to be monitored for 25 years into the future after gold production ends. We thought that was pretty interesting, so we went to read up on the plans for the mine and storage of mining waste which seems to be the major concern.
"It is pretty amazing to read the plan for the mines, and I was really surprised actually to see that 4.2.4 in the report was titled 'Impacts of Global Warming'" says Mille. "I had not thought that this could possibly affect mining!" But it does make sense. See, the waste products from this mining operation will be stored in large in-ground pits to be dug out in the tundra. Then, the pits are lined to make sure that, for example, the very poisonous chemical cyanide does not leak into the ground, and maybe even into the ground water from where it could then poison plants, animals and people. This is much like a landfill where our waste down south goes to, that is lined in a very similar manner. The trick here is that the ground is indeed permafrost. Mille continues, "This report from the gold mine explains how the air temperature at Rock Creek might increase with 9ºF to 15ºF (3 - 5ºC) in the next 100 years. Right now the average temperature in a year at Rock Creek is about 26ºF (-3ºC), which is why there is permafrost - the ground is frozen year round. That would all change if it got that much warmer here, and I guess it is a serious concern what will the happen to the storage of these chemicals. Would they maybe collapse?"
We don't think there will be much risk to potato mining from climate change! You don't know what potato mining is? Neither did we. On the plane from Anchorage to Nome, Mille was given a bag of potato chips from the Alaska Chip Company. Named "Matanuska Thunder Chips," the chips are supposedly made from potatoes mined in the Matanuska Valley. Now, the Matanuska valley is a couple of hours outside of Anchorage and is the place of an almost 30 mile long glacier. This glacier is about 12,000 feet deep and is very active, moving more than one foot (~ 30 cm) a day! That means it takes almost 250 years for the ice to form a glacier before it gets to where the glacier ends. This valley is renowned because it is one of the only places in Alaska with large-scale agriculture, or crop farming. This is because, unlike much of Alaska and all of Chukotka which has permafrost throughout, this valley actually has silt for dirt which is good for crop farming. On the back of the bag of potato chips read "Potatoes in the Matanuska Valley aren't grown, they are mined. The elusive potato miners experimented on the Alaskan spuds by hand stirring them in kettles of hot peanut oil and the result 'Matanuska Thunder Chips'." The potato chips were sure good, but we have to say we sort of doubt that there is really such a thing as mining for the so-called Thunder potatoes to make these Matanuska Thunder Chips!?
On the note of names, Nome was named as a result of a 50 year-old spelling error. In the 1850's, an officer on a British ship off the coast of Alaska noted on a map that a nearby prominent point was not identified. He wrote "? Name" next to the point. When the map was recopied, another draftsman thought that the "?" was a "C" and that the "a" in "Name" was an "o". Thu,s a map-maker in the British Admiralty christened "Cape Nome." So, what would we name it? "Sitting in a nestled bay on the Bering sea surrounded by a gently rolling landscape ,one can really easily live off the land with crabs, seal, whale, cod - the salmon running up and down the rivers - musk oxen, grizzly bears, moose, caribou, reindeer, snow hares... There is so much more here than meets the eye. Including gold!" says Paul. Paul continues, "So I would name it 'Land of Plenty." Mille grins, "I would name it 'Vent' - that means 'wait' in my native-tongue Danish." Guess why?
Share your place names and 'place nick names' in the Earth Zone too!
Several of the Polar Huskies are named after place names like Disko, Kodiak, Baffin, and Xena. This week's first Polar Husky Superstar, Good Thunder, is named after the town where Aaron is from - Good Thunder in southern Minnesota. The town is in turn named after a brave Native American, "Chief Good Thunder." Good Thunder goes mostly by his nickname 'Goodie,' but he is indeed, even at his young age of just over two years old ,shaping up to be quite the 'chief.' "I watched as Good Thunder was born, and it was only minutes after his mother Rubi was done licking him clean that Goodie pushed and shoved everyone aside with great power and determination to get some milk, cause he was hungry!" says Mille. But while Goodie demands respect, he is also very fair and extremely happy. An honest guy with a powerful nature, great attitude and terrific pulling technique, Goodie has all the potential to become a strong leader of the pack one day. 
Jupiter, this week's other Polar Husky Superstar, is Goodie's brother. Jupiter is, as you might have guessed, named after the fifth planet from the Sun, the largest one in the solar system. It is 2 1/2 times as big as all the other planets in our solar system combined! When you look at the night sky (have you uploaded your sky maps to the Explore Zone yet?), Jupiter is the fourth brightest spot in the sky and the planet is known for a storm that has lasted more than 175 years, named the 'Red Spot' for its red appearance when seen through a telescope from Earth. Fittingly perfect with his name, or is his name fitting perfect with him? "Jupi", as he is nick named, is indeed a huge Polar Husky with a very bright nature that loves to 'storm around.' Jupi would like to run, play, run, play, get petted, play, run, all the time! Though he looks very grand with his bright red coat flowing as he leaps around, Jupi is still very much a puppy at heart - a heart of gold just like the rest of the Polar Husky gang... ready for open water, leads and polar bears alike.
