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January/February 2010 issue	In this issue Table of Contents IPY: What is IPY? IPY: Kluane research station IPY: Inuit health IPY: Arctic mercury mystery IPY: Arctic scientist IPY: Future Arctic research IPY: Multimedia The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte Mosaic Book Reviews

KLRS is also known for impromptu games of ultimate Frisbee on the airstrip.
Photo: Fritz Mueller

• PHOTO ESSAY
• VIDEO
• INTERACTIVE

Home base: Dig Kluane Lake Research Station’s community vibe
Field Report: An interview with Kluane photographer Fritz Mueller

Lay of the land: Investigating climate change’s impact on the Arctic landscape part 1 and part 2

Caribou country: Follow the caribou’s migration patterns on the tundra

“It is often said that the longest way round is the shortest way home.… We have been doing a great deal, but our research accomplishments have been few.” Walter Wood’s journal entry on July 22, 1961, acknowledged that working in the St. Elias Mountains consumed a significant amount of time and resources and didn’t leave much of either for science. Bad weather hounded Wood and his team, and they found themselves preoccupied with logistics, camp construction and an icefield rescue. Nevertheless, the founder of KLRS reported that his first Yukon field season was both challenging and inspiring.

An AINA director based in New York City, Wood began studying the region’s glaciers in 1948 from a coastal base in Yakutat, Alaska. In 1961, he helped launch the Icefield Ranges Research Project (IRRP), an ambitious multidisciplinary study of the high-mountain environment, and oversaw the creation of a field station at an abandoned airstrip beside Kluane Lake. The new base provided more favourable weather conditions than did the coast and easy access from the Alaska Highway.

Station infrastructure was spartan in those early years, mainly Jamesway huts and canvas tents. KLRS was familyrun, with wives and children staying through the summer and helping with cooking and camp chores. In the mid-1970s, a log building was erected to support year-round research projects. Largely funded by a donation from Wood, it remains one of the station’s few winterized structures. Except for the wash house, a lab and a few sleeping cabins, KLRS looks much as it did 30 years ago.

The centrepiece of the St. Elias Mountains is Mount Logan, which, at 5,959 metres, is Canada’s highest peak. The massif dwarfs more than a dozen 4,500-metre peaks in the range. When the American military took a strategic interest in altitude sickness in the 1960s, a team of medical researchers selected Logan for the High Altitude Physiology Study (HAPS), which ran from 1967 to 1979 and was one of the IRRP’s flagship programs. HAPS was launched to study the effects of hypoxia and other altitude-related ailments, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the handful of ballsy, talented pilots — men like Dick Ragle, Phil Upton and Andy Williams — who landed and took off throughout the icefields in turbocharged, ski-equipped Helio Couriers. These pilots enabled researchers to conduct intensive scientific investigations across a region the size of Switzerland.

Williams, a former Outward Bound instructor and mountaineer from Wales who had worked at research stations in Antarctica and northern Quebec, was hired as KLRS manager in 1973. Within a year, in addition to running daily operations and overseeing field logistics, he was routinely landing at the 5,440-metre HAPS camp on one of Mount Logan’s snowy, sloping plateaus. There was little margin for error, yet Williams successfully completed nearly 200 flights, including 11 trips in 1980 to position the equipment needed to take the first ice core from Mount Logan’s Northwest Col — 103 metres of ice that proved vital for paleoenvironmental studies. “Believe it or not,” says glaciologist Gerry Holdsworth, “we’re still analyzing data from that ice core.”

Remote bases are notoriously difficult to staff, but in Williams, AINA found a triple threat: a manager, a pilot and a consummate host committed to sticking around. “It’s totally unique in the history of northern research stations,” says his boss, AINA executive director Benoit Beauchamp. “Andy can land that plane just about anywhere, but more important, he creates a very family-oriented atmosphere,” which keeps scientists coming back, says Beauchamp, in spite of the infrastructure.

Williams is part of the institutional memory at KLRS. Through decades of observation, he has even earned co-authorships on academic papers. But he’s more comfortable holding court at the airstrip, where tourists sometimes stop by as they drive up the Alaska Highway. A few years ago, actor Ewan McGregor pulled in on his motorcycle. Some women at the base were swooning, but the TV-averse Williams had no idea the man was a celebrity. “Sport,” he said to McGregor, “come and have lunch, but frankly, I don’t have a clue who you are.’”