The Uses of Ice

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EA-I. (Vilhjalmur Stefansson)

THE USES OF ICE

       

CONTENTS

	Page
Aviation Uses	2
Lake and River Ice	4
Salt Water Ice	13
Coastal Ice	13
Drift Ice	21
Pack Ice	22

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        This copy of “Uses of

Ice” read & marked

by Roberts.

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EA-I. Donnels: Industrial Structures

       

Storag

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EA-I: (Vilhjalmur Stefansson)

       

THE USES OF ICE

        In the history of transportation, water has been of paramount importance.

We have used oceans as highways between continents; within the continents the

lakes and rivers have had a similar role. Even with the supplement of avia–

tion, inland waterways are still of prime importance wherever roads and railways

have not as yet been built. It is, therefore, of consequence in relation to

the Arctic to note on a globe, or on a pole-centered map of the Northern Hemis–

phere, that the Arctic Sea is a mediterranean sea, central with relation to

Eurasia and North America, the great rivers so radiating from it that they

furnish to boats in summer transportation routes to the heart of their conti–

nents. At least four of them have a relation to the Arctic Sea which is like

that of the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. The Mackenzie reaches 2,000

miles south into North America; the Ob, Yenisei, and Lena reach equally far

or farther south into Asia.

        To Europeans the rivers, lakes , and the ocean have had their chief trans- —

portation use as liquid highways. If they froze at all, they froze so briefly

that wein Third person? have thought in terms of navigation seasons and have left the inland

waterways idle the rest of the year. We have felt similarly about the northern

ocean, as valuable around the edges for boat rather than sleigh transportation.

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        But as our culture moves farther north, and as our thinking looks

farther and farther ahead, it becomes Increasingly hard to reconcile ourselves

[ ?] to using water transport facilities only during summer. In the case of

the great north-flowing rivers, the season of navigation is less than half

the year; with the Mackenzie it is considerably less, for that stream runs

through Great Slave Lake, and big northern lakes hold their ice in spring

several weeks longer than the rivers. Some northern lakes are free of ice

only a third of the year; the time for sea navigation is in places even briefer.

        Accordingly, It is the more important the farther north we are to consider

how the waters may be used during those parts of the year when they are not

wholly liquid. There are also lands partly or wholly covered by ice, derived

from snow which has not melted. This article, then, considers some of the

uses of ice, under thres heads: L l ake and river ice, sea ice, salt water ice, and inland or snow — —

ice. We have in mind chiefly the lands and seas north of 60° N. latitude,

and chiefly the uses connected with transportation but also those which re–

late to encampment or residence.

       

AVIATION USES

        Length of Ice Season . Excepting parts of the south coast of Alaska, the

whole of Iceland, and portions of the Scandinavian p P eninsula, lake ice north

of 60° can be used fox airplane descents landing take-offs for six or more

months a year, and river ice almost as long. In some parts, lake ice is

usable for eight months and even longer.

        Coastal salt water ice is good for airplane use along few coasts for

more than seven to eight months. The variation ranges from no availability

at all in southern Alaska, around Iceland , and around the northern shores of —

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EA-I. Stefansson Uses of Ice

the Scandinavian peninsula, to a maximum of perhaps ten months around Peary

Land and Northern Land (Severnaya Zemlya).

        Salt water drift ice, as distinguished from pack ice (for definitions

see Glossary), is never, properly speaking, usable for air fields, although —

it may serve for emergency landings — has, in. fact, been so used on many

occasions.

        In the pack region of the Arctic Sea, the season for air - base use varies —

between seven or eight months near the outer edge of the pack to nine or ten

months near its center. This refers to landing strips that can be maintained

in first-rate operating condition. Air bases for what type aircraft? can function through, the twelve months

in the central pack, with the qualification that from late June to early

September it will be difficult to maintain good landing conditions.

        Inland or glacier ice, with exceptions which will be brought out, is

suitable for planes at all times of year. This form of ice has been found

especially useful in summer; during winter it has generally proved more

convenient to land upon river, lake , or coastal sea ice. The unavailability —

of these three ice forms in midsummer is compensated for, in some places,

by the permanent availability of glaciers. For instance, at the most northerly

air base permanently occupied before World War II — Rudolf Island in the

Franz Josef group — planes used sea ice during winter but land ice during

summer.

        Rarity of Land Ice in Arctic . It is important to keep in mind, with

regard to the Arctic, that land ice is by no means as common or persistent

as we used to believe. Irrespective of latitude, ice which is formed from

snow does not endure from one winter to the next in large sheets, except on

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mountains or near enough to them so that glaciers can spread from the high to

the low land. Even small sheets are rare in the Arctic, for in only a few

places do snowdrifts persist, then usually in east-west ravines which are so

deep that the sun does not strike, or, in rare cases, along the north slopes

of hills, (The reason that a northward slope often fails to preserve snow,

in the most northerly countries, is that the night sun strikes from the north.)

       

LAKE AND RIVER ICE

       

Air Stations Dependent on Rivers —

        Air Stations Dependent on Rivers . The use of river ice for airplane landings is well known to all who have

been connected with pioneer flying in lands of cold winters; for such fields

have no doubt exceeded in number all others combined, during the pioneer stage.

        Although better than rivers, lakes have been less used because trading

posts and villages are usually located along rivers. There was the advantage,

too, that (in the days before radio aids) airplanes could find their way along

valleys or by hitting them at some predetermined angle.

        Among the well-known river landing fields in Canada were those at Fort

Nelson, on the Nelson River, and at Fort Norman and Norman Wells, on the Mac–

kenzie. In Alaska, the ice of the Yukon, Kuskokwim, Colville, Canning, and

other rivers furnished the usual winter landing fields, although lake ice was

used by a few towns. The history was similar in northern Eurasia.

        Drawbacks of r R iver Ice Fields . In comparison with lake fields, which can —

usually be laid out so that they are wide enough for take-offs in any direction,

a river field has the disadvantage that descents and take-offs are necessarily

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upstream or downstream. However, this difficulty is mitigated by the circum–

stance that in deep valleys the winds usually blow up or down, not crosswise

of the river bed.

        Another disadvantage of river fields, in comparison to lakes, is that

where currents are at all strong it is likely that thin ice will form in autumn

and then break, to refreeze with many of the ice blocks standing on edge at

various angles. If this sort of broken ice cannot be avoided, it has to be

leveled with pickaxes or by other methods. Usually this ice is so fragile

that it is not difficult to break with machinery of the bulldozer type, or

to crush with heavy rollers.

        Except for the difficulties already implied, the problem of keeping a

river ice field level in winter is the same as that of keeping a neighboring

land field in good condition.

        Lengthening the Season . If nature is allowed to take its course on a

river, there is the special difficulty that after the freeze-up a heavy snow–

fall may come along which puts down an insulating blanket such that the river

current eats the ice away to a point where it becomes unsafely thin, or may

even disappear, leaving no roofing over the water, in certain spots, except

the snow. This trouble can be obviated by, removing, rolling or tramping ? tamping down the snow

after each fall, to change it from a poor to a good conductor.

        Care in tramping down or rolling the first snowfall permits the use of

the field earlier in autumn. This is only half the advantage; for the gradual

building up of compressed snow, snow concrete (see (Glossary), will lengthen

the use of the field from a week to three weeks in the spring. The advan–

tages come chiefly under two heads, those of the avoidance of both thaw–

water puddles and candle-ice formation.

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EA I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        Avoidance of Puddles . If the landing strips are rolled after each snow–

fall you gradually build thorn up higher than the surrounding ice and snow.

Then, when the spring thaws come, the water trickles to where it can gather

in the low places, thus draining off the landing s trips, with resulting —

lessened trouble from slush and standing water.

        Besides, the thicker the ice the longer it takes to thaw, and the ice

beneath will be much thicker where the snow has been rolled than in other

places alongside where the better Insulation against atmospheric chill, due to

snow fluffiness, will have prevented the ice from thickening as rapidly. This

advantage, however, may prove to be less than that from the prevention of

candling.

        Candle Ice . One of the differences between fresh and salt water ice is

that when salty ice thaws the process is gradual and works from the outside,

after a manner to which we are accustomed through seeing ice melt in a water

glass. Bat large outdoor formations of fresh water ice, in addition to thawing

in the way we look upon as normal, will disintegrate through a process known.

as candling. This is the formation of ice crystals that are sort of pencil–

shaped and vertical, each of them with a length (at right angles to the surface

of river or lake) equal to the full thickness of the ice. These candles are

separated by films of water so that, when the condition is just right, you

could go out on fresh - water ice which is three or four feet thick and push —

a rod of wood, such as a broom handle, right down through into the water

beneath.

        Few things are more surprising to the inexperienced than the behavior of

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candle ice. For instance, it may happen during the break-up of a river that

chunks of ice as big as pianos will be thrown up on the river bank. If these

are composed of candle ice, then as you walk past them you can give each a

smart blow with a light club and the whole ice boulder will slide apart,

flattening out into a heap composed of Innumerable ice candles. —

        Even more striking is it to watch a dog that has been thrown into open

water adjoining a field of candle ice, which may be as much as three feet

thick. When the dog swims toward the ice and gets his front paws up on it,

preparatory to climbing out, the candles will give way and he will sort of

swim or scratch his way Into the apparently solid ice, making a canal for

himself of perhaps several feet, or even yards, before he comes to the point

where the ice has enough supporting power to enable him to get on top of it.

        But snow concrete, formed on a lake or river airfield by the compression

of repeated snowfalls, does not candle. The field then has on its runways

a different sort of ice from that on either side of them. This structural dif–

ference can by itself make a favorable seasonal time difference, in the

lasting of runways in the spring, of anything from a few days to one or two

weeks.

        It appears that candling (of each ice as will candle) takes place only

under the influence of direct sunlight. River and lake ice seemingly does

not candle so long as it has an unthawed snow cover.

        Qualifying Statements . It is only in a few places that rivers break up

by direct thawing from sunlight delivered at a given spot; they more usually

break up by relatively warm streams beginning to flow on top of the ice, which

streams derive their water from small tributaries and from rivulets flowing

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down the banks. It is, therefore, on lakes rather than rivers that the

full effects which we have tried to describe are noted.

        As we shall bring out later, it is possible so to locate two or more

lake fields in the vicinity of an airport that one shall be receptive to

flying boats when another is in condition to receive wheel or ski planes.

This is scarcely possible on a river. Rivers therefore have longer periods

than lakes during which the ice is not strong enough for land craft and

the water not open enough for sea craft.

        Naturally it is often possible to have a river airport so located that

a lake suitable for airplane landings descents is near; then the difference in

freezing dates of autumn, and again of thawing dates in spring, can be uti–

lized so as to lengthen the active season of that airport.

       

Air Stations Dependent on Lakes

        Air Stations Dependent on Lakes. In most of the Arctic, and in much of the Subarctic, the ground is per–

manently frozen below a certain level. Where the subsoil is frozen there

can be no underground drainage and, without that sort of drainage, there

are bound to be innumerable lakes. In hilly country, where the main determi–

nants are the contours, these lakes will average large but will cover usually

less than 25% of the ground. Where the land is gently rolling or level, the

lakes may cover more than 50% of the surface; but these lakes will average

smaller and more shallow.

        Alternative Landing Fields for a Single Air Base . In rolling country,

it is usually possible to locate hangers and other structures so that there will

be available in different directions alternative lake landing fields. Many

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

lakes differ so in freezing and thawing characteristics , that the time gap —

can be closed, nearly or quite, which on rivers intervenes between the

periods of safe ice and safe open water.

        Deep lakes freeze slowly, shallow ones more rapidly. If a base has

near it both a deep and a shallow lake, then it may be possible to continue

in autumn using the deep one for water gear, perhaps nearly or quite to the

point where the shallow lake becomes safe for land gear. (Naturally, in

order to make the shallow lake usable earlier, the snow will be rolled after

every fall and converted into concrete so as to prevent its acting as a

blanket that [ ?] slows down ice formation.)

        In the spring, shallow lakes thaw out faster than deep ones. Although

we are being repe t itious, overlapping the river ice section of this paper, —

we go here into some detail as to how the thawing of the ice on the deep

lake can be delayed while the thaw on the shallow lake is being advanced.

        Protecting the Deep Ice Lake . As explained already in the river dis–

cussion, a main consideration in spring, to prolong the ski and wheel landing

season, is to prevent the ice from candling. On a lake, even though no more —

than two or three strips running in different directions are needed upon which

to descend and take off, it might be advisable to roll the entire field,

therefore , several square miles. This need not be difficult, for very heavy —

rollers are not required to compress snow if the rolling is done immediate l ly —

after each snowfall. Since the rollers are light, they can be very wide,

and the number of back-and-forth trips in covering the whole field will not

be great.

        If the airfield, then, has several [ ?] square miles of ice, all of them

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

with an upper layer of snow concret e , then there will be sufficient strength —

so that, even if the untreated ice round about becomes very weak or even —

disintegrates, there still is an ice island from which planes can operate.

Obviously, we do not have in mind here indefinite operation, but merely the

lengthening of the possibility of the use of land gear by a few days.

        Accelerating the Thaw on the Shallow Lake . To advance the thawing of

an ice airfield, the principle is [ ?] employed that the sun delivers no heat

hut only light that is converted into heat by absorption. This absorption

is least on spotless white snow; it is greatest on a black surface. Several

methods then suggest themselves for speeding up the thaw on a shallow lake,

so as to prepare it for an early reception of water-equipped airplanes.

        If there is sand anywhere nearby, the easiest thing may be to hitch

a sand sprinkler to the rear of a tractor and sprinkle the lake, or the parts

of it where early melting is wanted. Sand must be lightly spread and Care must be taken to use just the

right amount of sand. Each grain Each grain or pebble must be separated ? must be separated from all others;

for if the deposit is a continuous layer it forms a blanket over the ice,

which, true enough, gets hot with the sun but which has an insulating power

that tends to protect the ice beneath it from thawing.

        The chief difficulty about using this process is the possibility that

snow will fall just after the field has been sprinkled with sand. A thing

of importance, then, is the accuracy of weather forecasting; there should

be at least a day of sunshine between the sprinkling operation and the next

snowfall. When the snowfall does come, the new snow will have to be sprinkled,

to give the sun a purchase.

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        Better than sand may be black, dirty oil, like crankcase oil. The plan

would be, then, throughout the winter, to save all the dirty grease possible,

for use in the spring as a blackener, In place of sand.

        A third way, and perhaps the best, Is to sprinkle lampblack, or some

other dark powder, over the snow from airplanes in the manner used when

dusting an orchard with insecticide, or, Indeed, after the manner of laying

a smoke scree n . —

        The method just described; ordinarily with sand, has been used by polar

explorers when they have wanted to destroy in the spring the ice which was

Immediately around ships that were wintering, so that each ship could come to

float in a basin of water while the ice round about was still strong. It —

has not been uncommon for ships to float free several weeks before the ice

thawed generally in the bay where they were wintering.

        One place where melting with dirty oil has been in long use is Lake

Bennett on the Yukon River, downstream from Whitehorse. What they have done

there, in springs, is to trundle beck and forth with their sprinklers until

they have covered a belt about two or three times as wide as a steamer. This

belt thaws out, making [ ?] a canal through the ice. In some years this Lake Bennett canalizing has worked very well, giving

passage to steamers across the lake from one to three weeks ahead of the

general thaw. (In the North, rivers thaw from one to several weeks ahead of

lakes through which they flow ). .) In other years the canal scheme has not worked —

well because the ice on one side o f r the other of the channel became loose from

the shore and floated in, closing the thoroughfare.

        ¶ To prevent this sort of

thing, one would preferably use, for an air base landing field, a lake of

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

such moderate size that it would be feasible to sprinkle the whole of it

for early melting. Even so, it would not really be necessary to melt away the whole sur–

face. It would be enough to clear one end : for lake ice does not move except —

under the pressure of the wind, which means that, with a south wind, there

is open water in the southern part of the lake; with a north wind, the north

end of the lake would he open. Planes would then descend at whichever end

was ice-free.

        The Cooperation of Rivers and Lakes . Instead of using two lakes, one

shallow and the other deep, the same result can be attained by using a deep

lake which has a considerable river that enters one side or end, there being

no corresponding stream which enters opposite. n the spring the river pours

warm water upon the lake ice in its vicinity, melting out in one part a space

suitable for pontoon craft and flying boats, while at the far side the ice

remains relatively firm. This arrangement may reduce or even close the spring

transportation gap by having wheeled planes descending on ice far from the river

almost or quite up to the time when watercraft can use the river mouth.

        Keeping Lake Ice Level . Unless a lake is very large, say ten or more miles

in diameter, ice will form on it smooth and level in the autumn, except per–

haps right near shore. There will be, then, no such problem in leveling it

originally as one may have on a river.

        If the lake is in a forest, or other sheltered location, there will be

little bother from winds and snowdrifts, so the only problem will be to roll

the field after each snowfall. But many lakes are so windy that snowdrifts

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will form. Then the problem of leveling the drifts, and keeping the ice field —

in the right condition, will be the same as on land.

        Variable Time Element . The freeze-up of rivers and lakes is so dependent

upon a number of things other than the season that a separate timetable is

needed for each section of a river and for each lake. A good library will have

this information available for many rivers and lakes. In the Arctic?

        Lakes are even more variable than rivers. For instance, there will be a

difference of several weeks between the freeze-up of McTavish Arm, in Great

Bear Lake, and that of small lakes in the immediate neighborhood which are,

nevertheless; big enough for air base purposes.

        An example of the difference between lakes and rivers is that, where the

Mackenzie River passes through Great Slave Lake, the ice on the lake will

hinder steamboat navigation in some seasons for more than a month after the

river, both north and south of the lake, is free of ice.

        Speaking roughly, the ice of lakes in northern Greenland, or in the more

northerly Eurasian and Canadian islands, can be used by ski and wheel planes

nine or ten months per year. In the middle Canadian islands the lake ice can

be used seven or eight months. In the northern part of the North American

or Asiatic mainland it can be used six or seven eight months.

       

SALT WATER ICE

       

Coastal Ice

        Coastal ice falls into three main subdivisions: I i ce foot, bay and lagoon —

ice, and landfast ice.

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        Ice Foot . This type, as distinguished from the more general landfast ice,

is found on shores which have considerable [ ?] rise and fall of tide.

        Most arctic shores have small tides; for instance, the north coast of Alaska

and of northwestern Canada into Coronation Gulf, and the channels which run

eastward from the Gulf , have tides that range between six inches and two —

feet, insufficient to form a proper ice foot. But other coasts have consi–

derable tides. There, in autumn, a certain width of ice will adhere to the

land, freezing to the bottom and refusing to fall and rise with the tide.

This is the ice foot.

        The ice outside the tide crack, which does rise and fall, will never

be higher than the ice foot; for, if it were, then there would be a flooding

of water inward along the top of the shorefast ice, this water freezing

and adding enough to its thickness for making the surface of the ice foot level

with the highest tide.

        There are not many places where the ice foot is wide enough so that an air–

field could be laid out which has landing strips at right angles to the shore.

Usually such runways would have to be parallel to the shore. This ice is seldom

very level originally, and so would have to be leveled with pickaxes or mechani–

cal levelers.

        Bay and Lagoon Ice . Bays and lagoons are usually of such limited size that

large waves do not form, so their ice is normally level; or else it has small

snags of broken ice, like those of rivers which have a strong current, and they

are easily leveled with pickaxes or machinery.

        Bay ice occurs on practically all coasts in the Arctic. The lagoon variant

of bay ice is found chiefly off low coasts. There are some lagoons to the south-

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west of Point Barrow, on Alaska’s northwest shore. To the southeast of Barrow

is first a chain of lagoons which runs toward Cape Simpson, and then another

chain which begins east of the Colville River and extends to Flaxman Island,

with smaller lagoons east toward the international boundary. We discuss these

as typical for many other coasts.

        Between the sand bars and islands of the chain that fences off the

northern Alaska lagoons are openings deep enough for floe ice to drift in during

summer. Some years there will be a considerable number of these vagrant hum–

mocks scattered through the lagoons, particularly in such places as behind Cross

Island, east of the Colville, where the entrance channels are fai l r ly deep.

It will not be difficult, however, to find areas free from the drifting chunks

(that have been set fast when the bay ice formed) aid which are big enough for

landing fields containing strips laid out in any direction.

        In selecting a bay or lagoon landing field, one would keep in mind, among

other things, that the location should be ordinarily reachable by drifting sand;

for, as explained, sand grains on ice produce an early break-up in the spring,

shortening the season during which the field can be of use. And, for a similar

reason, a field should not be off the mouth of a river, for the warm water from

it will break up the ice early in the spring.

        There is, however, the same consideration here as with lake ice, that it

may be desirable to have in mind landing facilities for both wheeled planes and

flying boats. Usually a bay or lagoon field can be so located that, although

not exposed either to drifting sand or to river water , , it will nevertheless be —

only a reasonable distance from another area base which has early melting

due to sand storms or river flow. The base would then have, in spring, on one

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side of it ice still strong enough for wheeled planes, while on the other side

there would be water lending facilities.

        For hay and lagoon operations, as for those oa on an ice foot, hangars and —

other buildings will no doubt be on an adjacent shore. The field must be

far enough from all buildings so that snowdrifts formed in their ice do not

extend out upon the landing strips.

        Landfast i I ce . Apart from the special variants already discussed, winter —

ice [ ?] in the Arctic which is landfast may vary in breadth, as measured from

the shore, between a few feet and several hundred miles. Among places which

have only a few feet or a few yards of landfast ice, even toward the end of

winter, are promontories like Cape Lisburne in northwestern Alaska, Cape Lyon

in northwestern arctic Canada, Nelson Head, at the south tip of Banks Island,

and various promontories among the Svalbard and Franz Josef Islands. Off the

mouth of the Mackenzie River lie, in winter, from thirty to sixty miles of

landfast ice. The greatest known width of this type is in the New Siberian

Island section of the northeastern Soviet Union, where the landfast ice may

be up to 270 miles in [ ?] width toward the end of winter, as off the mouth of

the Yana River.

        “Typical” Landfast Ice . A case history of the formation of landfast ice

is more explanatory than a description.

        With no slush previously in the sea, the first frost of the year may pro–

duce only a few inches or a few feet of very thin ice which adheres to the

shore along one edge, the rest of it, as a floating apron, rising and falling

with any gentle wave motion. For salt water ice is not brittle like glass,

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but is more of the consistency of ice cream, and, in that sense, flexible.

More often, however, there is adrift in the sea near shore a mass of sludge

ice, a kind of ice porridge, and a night of calm frost may produce a harden–

ing of this to the width of several feet or yards, and sometimes hundreds of

feet or hundreds of yards. This belt of landfast ice may continue growing

for several nights until an expense of it one or several miles wide fringes

the lend, none of it strong enough for a man to walk upon , but all of it, —

nevertheless, a single sheet.

        Now in case of an offshore wind, particularly if accompanied by a rise

of water, all this ice — excepting a few inches or feet near shore — will

go adrift and disappear seaward. But if the wind blows from the sea, and

particularly if there are drifting floes offshore, the ice apron will be crushed

up and pressed toward land. We have, then, in case of only a moderate pressure,

the formation of smell ice ridges, from a few inches to a few feet in height

and lying mainly parallel to the shore, but with others at various angles.

        If this sort of pressure is followed by a calm, there is a cementing to–

gether of the various blocks, which have been pressed upon edge with their

flat sides meeting each other. This makes such a strong fortification of the

shore that, even though stiff gales come later from seaward, and even if these

bring in heavy drift ice, the apron of shore ice will likely become permanent

for the year.

        What usually takes place in such a case as we are describing is that a

big pressure ridge forms anything from several hundred yards to several miles

from shore, this ridge becoming firmly grounded because of being heaped so

high that its weight presses heavily against the sea bottom. For the time

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

being at least, this ridge marks the outer edge of the landfast ice.

        On the outside of the heavy pressure ridge is the shore lead, or whet the

Yankee whalers in northern Alaska used to call the shore flaw (so written, but

pronounced usually as if spelled floe or flow). This flaw is, then, the meet–

ing place of the landfast ice with the moving pack, and may be represented

at different times by an open lead several miles wide, by [ ?] a narrow water–

filled, crack, by grinding ice that is moving past the landfast ridge, or by

ice frozen to the shore ridge and temporarily immobile but ready to go

adrift, particularly with a combined rise of water and increase of wind.

        Take Flaxman Island as an example: The original flaw may be three or

four miles from shore and this may continue throughout the winter. However,

it can happen, under special circumstances, that heavy pressure will pro–

duce another ridge half a mile, or even a mile, farther out at sea, which

will be so firmly grounded that the ice between the original and the new

flaw may remain immobile all winter.

        But experience has taught the seal hunters to the north of Alaska that

this second ridge, and second belt of shore ice, cannot be relied upon to

stay put. There was, for instance, the case of the Stefansson party of

1914 when they were about to start sledge travel northward from the coast of

Alaska at Martin Point and were five or six miles from land upon ice that

had formed between the first and second ridges — ice that normally would

have stayed the whole year. In thin case a gale sprang up so violent and

with such a rise of “storm tide” (probably six or seven feet) that the second

pressure ridge floated free of the sea bottom end went adrift, with its

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

adjacent Ice, carrying the party with it, so that when the gale cleared the next

day they were twenty or thirty miles from land and forty or fifty miles east

of where the camp had been pitched originally.

        The picture we have tried to draw applies to the formation of land ice

that is going to be five miles wide, as off Flaxman Island, fifty miles wide,

as off the Mackenzie delta, or two hundred miles wide, as off northeastern

Siberia. Of course, the process is more complicated the wider the shelf of

landfast ice.

        To make a reasonable determination as to whether shore ice is safe

for the building of temporary winter airports, we need more knowledge and

experience than can be reduced to writing in a brief statement, if it be

desired to have the base as far as possible from shore. However, an

observer can tell by mere common sense, even without much experience, that

certain parts near shore are definitely safe.

        Leveling an Airfield . A landing field on shore ice is, in its pris–

tine stage, usually different from bay or lagoon ice in that a good deal

of it will require leveling with picks or machinery. Leveling an ice field

is simple, compared to leveling a rough field composed of frozen earth.

True, salt ice (unless very young and therefore slushy) is tougher than fresh

ice, and does not splinter so easily; but this difference between fresh and

salt ice is negligible compared with the extreme toughness and unworkability

of frozen muck.

        The problem of using heavy machinery for leveling fields on sea ice

will be discussed in relation to stations maintained on the pack.

020      |      Vol_VII-0650                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        The Time Element . On lagoons and bays, such as those along the north

coast of Alaska, the ice near shore may become firm enough for dog - sledge —

travel in middle or late September. There is, in this respect, a seasonal

variation of perhaps five or six weeks. The very earliest sledging season

begins in this locality around or just before the middle of September, while

a corresponding stage may not be reached in another year until late in October. , —

        Even for the lightest ski planes, the season will be a bit later than

for dog sledging. There will be few years when heavy wheeled planes can

safely descend land on northern Alaska lagoons before late October. However, the

preparation of the landing strips can begin before the ice is strong enough

for planes to use it. This preparation, as already indicated, is in the main

to roll the field after each snowfall, to produce a snow concrete surfacing.

        In a very [ ?] early spring, difficulty with the ice on North Alaska

lagoons may start the first or second week of May. Fields properly selected

and tended, as discussed heretofore, may nevertheless be usable into late May.

        On ice that extends far offshore, autumn use will start a little later

than on coastal lagoons --in practice, at least a month later, because the

risk to men and equipment of working far from land is considerable during the

early part of the season, while near shore the risk is small. Similarly, the

danger that ice may go adrift under a violent gale and a sharp rise of storm

tide also is considerable. The general principle will be, then, that for

both earliness of season and for safety it is better to have the air field —

on a bay or lagoon than to have it on shore ice, unless very near a beach

that has shoal water offshore.

        But a field located on shore ice immediately outside of a lagoon may, in

021      |      Vol_VII-0651                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

some years, be usable later into the spring season than if on lagoon ice, with

a possible maximum difference of two or three weeks. So the leader of an ex–

pedition may think it worth while to level off, outside of the lagoons, a

temporary field for use during two or three extra weeks in the spring.

        The foregoing is with reference to northern Alaska and northern Canada;

the autumn freeze-up begins, however, somewhat earlier to the east of Cape

Parry, and the spring break-up a little later. On the Siberian shore ice, the

sparing break-up will be a little later than off the Canadian mainland, and

the autumn freeze-up a bit earlier.

        Proceeding north among the Canadian islands, the autumn freeze-up be- —

comes earlier and the spring break-up later. For a rough comparison with the

eastern north coast of Alaska, the season of usable bay ice will be a month

longer near islands like Banks and Victoria, two months longer on the north

coast of Melville Island, and a bit longer still in islands farther north

than Melville.

       

Drift Ice

        Outside the shore flaw is the belt of drift ice which separates the nor–

mally stationery shore ice from the heavy pack. This middle area will contain

in winter somethng less than 20% of all the ice of the northern sea. The floes

and fields which make up the drift are in such rapid motion, and are so rela–

tively fragile, that we do not consider them as po possible air stations of semi–

permanence, even if only a month or two were in mind.

        But the floes and fields of the drift are nevertheless of aviation sig–

nificance, for many of them have received safe descents by airplanes in dis-

022      |      Vol_VII-0652                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

tress. Take-offs have usually proved successful also, when it proved feasible

to remedy the trouble which brought the plane down. We do not follow this up,

however, for we deal here not with the general problem of flight safety in the

Arctic Sea but only with the feasible use of semipermanent airports.

       

Pack Ice

        Triple Classification of Sea Ice . On the basis of how things are in late

winter, the ice of the northern polar sea may be classified under three heads:

( 1 1 ) about 15% or 20% landfast; ( 2 2 ) about 15% or 20% drifting and of such —

nature that next summer it will be penetrable by stout surface vessels; ( 3 3 ) —

the remainder, 60% or 70%, also in motion though more sluggish than the “drift”

section, and of such nature that it will not be penetrable next summer even

by the best icebre k a kers we now have.

        As already brought out, we consider that air bases can be maintained

satisfactorily on the landfast ice for a considerable part of the year, on

the drift ice for no part of the year, and on pack ice for the whole year —

with the provision that landing conditions in the pack are not going to be

good during the “summer months,” which poor season is of longer duration near

the edges of the pack than toward its center.

        Natural Thickening of Ice . As to the safety of drifting air bases and

research stations, and the ease and safety of operations like hunting, sledge

travel , and emergency landings, it is important to consider how sea ice thickens —

with age and changes in character.

        It has been considered that, with a “normal” amount of snow covering, sea

ice far from land will develop a thickness of from seven to nine feet the first

year, two additional feet the second year, with a [ ?] maximum of thirteen feet no

023      |      Vol_VII-0653                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

matter how many years are involved. These figures must be treated as rather

vague approximations, for there is no defining what is a “normal” amount of

snow covering.

        From considerations already advanced, it appears that additional snow

hinders the thickening of ice. Also, the insulating qualities of snow vary

with the kind of snow — a fluffy cover of three inches would probably have

a greater insulating power than a wind-packed snowdrift of six inches.

Then, snow undergoes a granulating change during winter; the more granular

the snow, the less efficient it is as an insulator.

        Paleocrystic Ice . For that semipermanence which is desired for an air

base in the pack, and for safety, an extensive field of paleocrystic ice

would be chosen. For this ice, five years or more old, combines the two

necessary qualities: the greatest available thickness and the relative fewness

of snags and high projecting ridges.

        There are considerable areas within the pack where paleocrystic ice re–

presents 5%, 10%, or even more, of the total surface, occasional fields of

it being several miles in diameter — some perhaps twenty or even thirty

miles wide. It is rare, however, that these vast fields are wholly paleo–

crystic, for most of them have cracked here or there, with resulting pressure

ridges formed one or several years ago. These ridges have not yet been

rounded down fully by rain and sun and thus have not attained true paleocrystic

character.

        Thickness of Paleocrystic Ice . No one questions that, for average thick–

ness, paleocrystic floes excel all others, but this is about all that is known

defi d nitely. However, there is some apparently reliable theory.

024      |      Vol_VII-0654                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        A true paleocrystic floe or field, of some age above five years, in the

heaviest ice that can be found within the basin of the arctic mediterranean;

and, it more than 200 miles from land, is in a district of relatively gentle

pressures. Paleocrystic ice presents, on a lower scale, the same visual ef–

fect as a snow-covered rolling prairie, such as in western Kansas, the Dakotas,

or Saskatchewan. All sharp angles have disappeared, the pressure ridges that

formerly appeared like small, jagged mountains now remind of gently rolling

grassland that is sufficiently snow-covered to hide the grass.

        The greatest upward extensions of paleocrystic ice, the knolls, are swept

clear of snow by each considerable wind that blows. From the known greater

temperature conductivity of ice than snow, it is to be assumed that, wherever

there is an upward swell of ice to make a knoll, there is a corresponding

downward swelling on the submerged side of the ice. For the low surface

spots are filled with relatively non - conducting snow almost level with the —

tops of the knolls. These knolls were originally the diminutive but craggy

mountain ranges of broken blocks forming pressure ridges. Each upward–

projecting peak was likely repr e sented originally by a deep and ma xx ss ive base, —

caused by pressure at the time the ridge was formed. Each knoll or peak may

he thought of as pyramid-shaped, with the wide base submerged.

        It does not follow, then, from the known laws of ice buoyancy, that for

every one foot of emerging ice there are five, six, or seven feet of submerged

ice. Actually a pressure ridge that rises 60 feet above sea leve l may not

indicate more than perhaps 100 feet of draft. The observation of the Stefans–

son expeditions is that sea ice rarely, if ever, grounds in more than about

120 feet. Admiral Peary was consulted on this and replied that 20 fathoms

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EA I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

was the greatest depth in which he had ever noticed sea ice aground (sea ice

here not including ice foot chunks and, of course, not including icebergs).

        If a pyramid-shaped or wedge-shaped pressure ridge has, soon after its

formation, a maximum draft of 120 feet, it appears safe to assume that some

years later, in the paleocrystic stage, it would draw at least half of this.

To be very conservative, we will divide that estimate by two and assume here

only a quarter of the draft indicated by the Peary and Stefansson observa–

tions. We would then have a rounded knoll which rises 10 feet above sea

level with a submerged portion of 30 feet, making a total maximum paleo–

crystic floe thickness of 40 feet.

        In the case of those portions of paleocrystic floes which are thickly

crowded on their top surface with knolls, we might assume that the base sec–

tions of the various wedges or pyramids would coalesce on the under surface,

or nearly so. However, the glare knolls are separated on their upper surface

by bowl-shaped and channel-formed intervening spaces that are filled in winter

with snow insulator. From the universal agreement that the sea ice does not

become more than 13 feet thick through successive freezings, it would seem

that a thickness greater than 13 feet would not persist in areas which during

summer are covered with puddles of water, and therefore during winter with

thick snow insulation.

        There is, then, something of a contradiction between two theories. Accord–

ing to one, the thawing of submerged parts of the ice equals the freezing, after

13 feet have been attained; according to the other (a view based partly on

observation), paleocrystic floes would ground in 30 or 40 feet.

        True, the assumption that melting equals freezing, after 13 feet have been

attained, is based on assuming the mentioned indefinite “normal snow cover.”

026      |      Vol_VII-0656                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

This leaves us free to assume that the glare knolls, at any rate, are repre–

sented below the surface by extensions considerably greater than the submerged

portion of a 13-foot ice cube.

        Taking the view that is least optimistic, from the angle of those who

want to maintain a base station semipermanently, we find that, when ice rests

uniformly on water, its supporting power is adequate for anything we desire

to erect, with the exception of possibly a very heavy hangar or machine shop.

        Perhaps the beet positive evidence of carrying power in paleocrystic ice

so far published in some detail is related to e case which is reported on

pages 514-515 of Stefansson’s The Friendly Arctic :

        “On all our ice trips and at every distance from shore we have found ice

with a certain amount of earth or gravel upon it and sometimes fragments of

rock or small boulders. The day after coming upon the sandy hummock we found

on top of some ice that was two years old or over, a gravel and boulder ridge

eighteen paces long. At its highest point it was about [ ?] five feet higher

than the ice on which it rested and had an average width of between ten and

fifteen feet. The ridge was composed of mud, gravel, slate and boulders, the

largest weighing over a hundred pounds. Some lumps of soil with lichens I

took to show that it had been formed by a landslide from some steep and not

entirely barren land. Apart from this earth ridge, the ice was a perfectly

ordinary old floe. It was now lying thirty or forty miles from the nearest

land and the depth of water underneath it was probably over thirty fathoms,

although we were unable to sound right at that point; no sounding we got in

the vicinity showed lees than twenty-six fathoms ( [ 156 feet ) ] .” — —

027      |      Vol_VII-0657                                                                                                                  
EA-I Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        There are other stories, in a way more impress lye than this report, but,

since they are less specific with regard to the weight carried by the [ ?]

paleocrystic ice, they are not repeated here. The reports taken together

attest to the “incredible” load-carrying power which resides in a field of

heavy sea Ice.

        Air Search for a Base Location . Although, by definition, the outermost

floes and fields of the pack can be reached by a well-navigated and stout ice–

breaker, we nevertheless consider that, if an air base is to be located in

the pack, it will have to be established by air transport; for good judgment

would dictate that the location selected be at least 100 miles farther in than

an icebreaker could penetrate. The alternative would be establishment by sub–

marine, which, though considered feasible with the right sort of undersea

vessel, is not dealt with here.

        From an airplane the relief of a white surface is most readily discerned

when the sky is perfectly clear and the sun relatively low, to cast effective

shadows. Fortunately, the winter sun is much lower in the Arctic than nearer

the E uq qu ator, and, at any rate, it will be low mornings and evenings — except, —

of course, right at the North Pole where its height is practically the same

throughout the twenty-four hours.

        A moon near its full throws even clearer shadows than the sun, and moon–

light is, in some respects, even better than sunlight for ice - scouting purposes. —

        Search for a likely air - base site should, therefore, be made by the full —

moon or by the light of a sun that is not too high. The beet month of all

for this type of flying is March, with ample daylight in skies as yet usually

clear. February and April are the next best months, although daylight is a

bit scarce in early February while fogs and snowfall increase gradually through

April.

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        The tentative choice of a base will be a paleocrystic field through which,

or along which, runs a wide and long-frozen lead. The prospecting plane will

be mounted on skis, with a fairly low landing speed, and there should be no

difficulty about a safe descent landing if the flyer is of the “bush pilot” type, used

to snow surfaces. After descending upon the comparatively thin level ice

of the lead, the plane will taxi up onto the safer paleocrystic ice. (By

definition, a lead is a crack in sea ice too wide for a man to jump over —

a sailor may define it as wide enough for a ship to pass through. A lead

may be several miles wide and scores of miles long.)

        Paleocrystic Traits . As stated previously, a true paleocrystic floe or

field, of some age shove five years, is the heaviest ice that can be found

within the basin of the Arctic Sea, sod, at distances of more than 200 miles

from land, is subjected to relatively gentle pressures. Still there is no

guarantee that the chosen floe or field may not crack under an effectively

applied stress from wind or current.

        However, if the floe does crack right across an air field, repairs are —

much easier than one would think, analogizing from land. Nor is it likely,

if ten bases were scattered throughout the suitable part of the Arctic Sea,

that more than two or three of them would be seriously injured each six months.

Here the experiences of drifting ships near land are not applicable — such

ships as De Long’s Jeannette and Stefansson’s Karluk . For enlightening ex- —

perience read the accounts of Nansen’s Fram and of any of several Soviet

vessels that have drifted far from land. One of the best accounts, from our

present point of view, is Storkers e o n’s unpublished narrative in the National —

Archives of Canada, for he drifted far enough from land and had no ship. The

029      |      Vol_VII-0659                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

field on which his party camped six months, living by hunting, was a near

analogue to an airfield that might find itself temporarily out of touch with

supply agencies. (A brief account by Storkerson is found as an appendix in

Stefansson’s The Friendly Arctic .)

        The surface of the paleocrystic floe is rolling, as we have said. The

tops of the knolls look blue, for they are glare ice. The hollows are so

nearly filled with snow that, superficially, the field looks nearly level,

although , the snow in the hollows is too soft for a landing with wheels.

        Leveling a Paleocrystic Field . To prepare the field, then, it is neces–

sary to tramp down the snow in the hollows and cut down some of the hillock

tops with miners’ pickaxes. Picks weighing from 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 pounds are

probably the hast. Accustomed as we are to heavy machines of spectacular

efficiency, we may want to consider the use of one or another of these for

leveling paleocrystic floes. However, it must be remembered that, in addi–

tion to the difficulty of transporting such machines to the drifting air base,

there is the danger involved in case of e breakage of the ice. It is not so

much that the machines would be likely to sink into the water as that they

might get separated from the base and drift off on another floe. Besides,

there is the almost magical efficiency of miners’ picks when used on ice.

        If the need is for a really level paleocrystic field, for extensive and

long use, pumps will no doubt he employed to raise sea water from below the

ice to where it fills the hollows end freezes in them level with the pickax - — —

lowered hillock tops.

        The field once level, the problem of keeping it level will be the same

for a land field in any arctic or subarctic locality.

030      |      Vol_VII-0660                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        Alternative . If, for any reason, the trouble of leveling a paleocrystic

field is considered too great, the alternative suggestion is to select a lead

of this year’s ice that runs through or past a paleocrystic field. Descents

would be upon the lead ice, the planes taxiing up on o nearly paleocrystic

floe where they would be tethered or placed in hangars.

        Problem of Snowdrifts . The Arctic Sea is not stormy, as demonstrated

when Nansen’s ship, the Farm , drifted for three years (1893-96) at distances

of several hundred miles from the margin of the pack to the north of Siberia.

Writing up his scientific reports later, he considered it one of the chief

discoveries of his expedition that the interior of the Arctic Sea is one of

the least windy regions in the world.

        All later explorers have confirmed this finding and the credit usually

goes to Nansen — perhaps rightly, because he was the first to formulate it

and emphasize its scientific and practical importance. However, the first

men to put the same thing on record may have been Lieutenant Commander George

W. De Long, of the U.S. Navy, whose ship, the Jeannette , drifted a course simi–

lar to that of the Fram about fifteen years earlier, in 1879-81. One of his

diary entries says that it is strange how seldom the wind blows and how gently

it blows when [ ?] it does.

        Since the difficulty of keep i ng a land strip level enough in a snow country

is large y ly a matter of the winds, it will appear that this trouble should not

be inordinate when a base has been located several hundred allies from land or

from any extensive open water.

        Timing . Practically anything can be done in the Arctic at any time of the

year, if one knows the ropes ropes and is willing to recognize the difficulties and

031      |      Vol_VII-0661                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

adapt himself to them. However, a first consideration is to discover the

easiest and best way. For locating an air base within the moving pack, about

the most important consideration is the time of year.

        Winter is the Best Season . For practically every form of travel and work,

the beat season within the pack runs from the middle of February to the middle

of April. We list the chief reasons, with part of the supporting evidence.

        Nansen reported from his three-year drift in the Fram that, in the region

of light winds, deep within the pack, there is practically no fog during the

months December to March, inclusive, and that overcast skies are then rare

and snowfalls light. These Nansen conclusions have been confirmed since.

        Peary laid down the principle that, for traveling afoot over the pack, the

good season is from middle to late winter. In autumn and early winter, the

snowfalls, though not as heavy as in places like New England, are still much

heavier than in midwinter. The spring season is snowy, too, with clouds

and fog, though there is more daylight than during the fall months.

        Snow is a Handicap . Fluffy new-fallen snow acts as an insulator over

young ice, protecting it from the chill of the air and enabling the relative

warmth or the sea water beneath to interfere seriously with the strengthening

of the ice, even in some cases producing a thinning — if there is both a

heavy snow cover above and a current below. Moreover, the snow blanket makes

it difficult or impossible to tell visually whether the ice beneath is strong.

        As winter advances, the snowfall becomes lighter and the cold more intense.

It is, however, less the cold itself than the decrease of precipitation which

accelerates the thickening of the ice; for snow is severalfold better as an

insulator than ice can be. Moreover, the flakes that fell some months ago have

now become granular, furnishing relatively poor insulation as compared with

feathery, new-fallen snow.

Unpaginated      |      Vol_VII-0662                                                                                                                  

        Editor:

        In this pgf. DO NOT

change the “you” and “yourself”

Unpaginated      |      Vol_VII-0663                                                                                                                  

       

VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON

67 MORTON STREET

NEW YORK 14

032      |      Vol_VII-0664                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        By Christmastime the snowfall is approaching its minimum and the cold

in gradually working toward that maximum which develops either in January

or February and remains substantially through March.

        The Use of Moonlight . With the winter decrease of clouds the effective–

ness of moonlight increases.

        A questionnaire sent out in 1934 by Stefansson, on behalf of Pan American

Airways, to a number of bush pilots in Alaska and northern Canada, brought

replies to indicate that most of the experienced flyers in Alaska considered

the full moon about as favorable as sunlight for airplane landings and take–

offs, and gave the length of adequate light at two or three days either side

of the full. Canadian pilots tended to be more favorable to moonlight than

the Alaskans, giving a longer period for the moon’s effectiveness, some voting

the moon to be as good as the sun for six days either side of the full, thus

for just under half the lunar month.

        The difference in verdict between the Alaskan and Canadian pilots is it–

self enlightening. You do not readily appreciate, without seeing it you r self,

the extent to which small patches of black (forests, willow clumps, rocks,

ground swept bare by wind) will decrease the effectiveness of the moonlight.

Steep hills throw shadows when the moon is low, and these also detract from

the over-all effect of reflected moonlight. Alaska is, on the average, more

rugged than northern Canada, has more rock exposures and more patches of willow,

even beyond the forests. It was the subtractive effect of these, no doubt,

which caused the Alaska pilots to give the moon only about half the effective–

ness rating that was given it by the Canadians.

        Flyers whose experience is mainly or wholly in the Antarctic are usually

skeptical of the value of moonlight. This seems strange at first, for the moon

033      |      Vol_VII-0665                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

ought to be even more effective there than in the Arctic, since the snow sur–

face is more nearly uniform. The reason for the difference of opinion is

clearly that in the Antarctic, so far, most journeys, whether afoot or by

air, have been made in the sunlight of summer; there has been little travel–

ing by moonlight. Pilots who have never landed by moonlight seem nearly

always to underestimate its usefulness.

        The Values of Cold . The Eskimo point of view is that most winter conditions

are more favorable than those of summer. So the winter is with them the chief

traveling season, the more so the farther north. Whites at first disagreed

with this; but finally the explorers were won over. The first complete con–

vert was Peary. It was gradually established by him that, for purposes like

his, winter is the time of travel, summer the time of rest or preparation.

The reason, of course, is the mobility of the arctic ice and the importance

to the traveler of having a solid footing, without the danger of breaking

through into liquid water. In the Antarctic, travel afoot has been on land

and in a climate where little thawing takes place, even in midsummer. The

explorers there could afford to idle away the winter, for they knew that the

long summer was coming as an uninterrupted working season.

        From For planes the Peary generalization applies almost as well as for sledges. —

The flying is better when clouds are few, when snowfall is rare, and fogs are nearly —

absent. So the good flying weather deep inside the pack starts in late Novem–

ber and improves through December and January. From the light angle, there is

only the moon during the early part of this time, with the daylight steadily

increasing after the New Year, (It is only north of 80° that daylight is wholly

absent on the shortest day. There are various ways of figuring; some would

034      |      Vol_VII-0666                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

put the limit of total absence of daylight on the shortest day at around 83°

N. latitude.)

        Behavior of Moon and Sun . At the season when the Arctic Sea depends on

moonlight, it is important for advance planning to remember that in high

latitudes the moon behaves much like the midnight sun of summer that disappears

in winter. For daring part of each lunar month the moon circles in the sky

without setting; during another part it circles below the horizon without

rising.

        At the very pole the sun is above the horizon a little more than half the

year; but almost as much light (say 80% as much) is lost through having the

sun below the horizon nearly half the year. In the case of the moon, the

loss is negligible through having it below the horizon, for this occurs at

the new phase, when no appreciable light is yielded in any case. The period

of constant revolution without setting is at and near the full, when the moon

is giving its maximum light.

        To a flyer looking for a suitable landing place or air - base site in the —

pack, few things are therefore more Important than to have in mind a clear

picture of this part of the moon’s behavior. In addition, he should have with

him tables or a graph showing what to expect from the sun at any high latitude

at any time. There are available several such graphical presentations. One

was published by the international journal Arktis , 1/2, 1930; Wilh. Meinardus:

“The Seasonal Change of Illum i nation in the Polar Regions” (title translated).

Another, and perhaps the best yet published, was worked out by Dr. Edward M.

Weyer, and published in the Geographical Review , of the American Geographical

Society of New York, in July 1943. This presentation has since been further im–

proved by Dr. Weyer and is included in Encyclopedia Arctica .

035      |      Vol_VII-0667                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        Daylight in the Pack . As February advances, daylight increases a good

deal more rapidly than indicated by conventional astronomical calculations;

for they usually neglect, among other things, refraction, snow reflection,

and the appreciable diameter of the sun. Without any increase of clouds or fog,

there is, then, through February a steady improvement both in the thickening

of this year’s ice and in the increase of daylight.

        In most of the area which is for other reasons tentatively suitable for

the establishment of semipermanent air stations, 24-hour daylight is available

roughly from the last week of February.

        Best Scouting and Building Time . It follows from the above that, in normal

times, the scouting for a prospective air - base site would begin in early —

February and the building of it late in February or early in March.

        Clouds and fog will begin to interfere [ ?] the earlier in the season the

nearer the base is to the margins of the pack. In this matter latitude is

of some consequence but distance from open water is more important. Distance

from land is also material; for when the sun begins to strike dark surfaces

on the islands or continents and to create heat, the humid air from them, pass–

ing out to sea, works for the deterioration of flying weather. There is

going to be ice deterioration, too, but this unfavorable development lags

behind the weather.

        The Lands Produce Summer Fog . On the lands which surround the polar sea

(partially excepting the few which are mountainous and therefore extensively

glacier-covered), evaporation increases rapidly as the sun mounts.

        The slowness of evaporation when temperatures are around 50 ° F. below

zero is indicated graphically by the drying of a linen handkerchief. Hang

one up soaking wet at that temperature and it becomes stiff almost instantly,

036      |      Vol_VII-0668                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

regaining its softness only in a period of between one and two weeks; while

at around zero the handkerchief would be soft in a day or two — at most

three or four days, depending, of course, also on wind and sun.

        The invisible steaming of surfaces, indicated by the drying of our

frozen handkerchief, increases rapidly when the temperatures begin to swing

between thaws in the day and frosts at night, and this produces local fogs

over the lands that surround the polar sea. The third Stefansson expedition

found, in charting the coasts of the islands which they discovered (Brock,

Borden, King, Meighen, Lougheed) and those of the neighboring islands, that

in May there is unlikely to be more than one clear day per week. However,

this extreme fogginess is of more significance for stations located on shore

than for drifting stations out in the pack.

        Fogs are Low . Arctic fogs average lower than those of the temperate

zones. It was a common experience of the whalers north of Alaska and western

Canada that when ships could not see each other from the deck or bridge the

captains and lookouts could see each other from the mast heads, which were

from 60 to 100 feet higher. It is common, too, on the arctic prairie for an

observer to be surrounded by a thick fog on every hand, while, on looking

skyward, he can see birds flying overhead, practically as if there were no fog.

Accordingly, a flyer searching for an established base in the pack would have

no difficulty in seeing it dark against the white landscape, if the plane

were passing over the base and able to look vertically down, or nearly so. This

is a corollary of the general proposition that fogs are less of a handicap

to arctic aviation than would be inferred from a study of the old-fashioned

weather records, as they were taken up to a few years ago.

037      |      Vol_VII-0669                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        Drift Bases Will Not Be in Foggy Areas . The like in true at sea, where

fogs are many (and dense, horizontally speaking), especially in the drift

ice that fringes the pack. However, we are postulating that the drifting

bases will be one or several hundred miles from the margin of the pack, so

that none of them will be in the very foggy area until toward the end, when

each is about to drift into the open water between Greenland and the Franz

Josef Islands, as indicated in this discussion, post , under “Drift of Base

Stations.”

        Even Central Pack More Foggy in Summer . While the margins of the pack

are foggier than its center, and while conditions from the flying point of

view improve at any time of the year as you approach the middle of the pack,

still it is true that, even near the Pole of Inaccessibility, or Ice Pole,

there is as summer advances an increase of cloudiness, of precipitation , and —

of fog.

        As said, this increase begins earlier near the margins, perhaps sometime

in April, and reaches the center of the pack within the next few weeks. So

May is a bad month near the margin of the pack but good near its center; June

is a bad month throughout the pack; July and August are worse. Still, con–

sidering the over-all flying conditions, it may be that things are at their

worst in October, for then occurs a rapid decrease of daylight without a

correspondingly rapid decrease of [ ?] clouds and fog.

        Snowfall in the Pack . It is probable that, taking the pack as a whole,

the snowiest spring month is May or June and the snowiest autumn month either

September or October.

        Rain in the Pack . In 1937 k , liquid rain liquid rain – is this a good term? took the place of snow as precipi–

tation for about five weeks in the immediate vicinity of the North Pole, as indicated by the reports —

038      |      Vol_VII-0670                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

of the Papanin expedition. No one has yet spent a summer in the vicinity of

the Pole of Inaccessibility, which is about 400 miles from the North Pole in

the direction toward Bering Strait; but in all probability the season of

liquid rain liquid rain ? is there about the same as at the geographic pole — thus between

three and six weeks in different years. The rain season grows longer as the

margins of the pack are approached.

        Summer Deterioration of Ice . Rain produces maximum deterioration of the

ice in s given time, but the direct sun is nearly as bad.

        Some conditions which are inimical to foot travel are also handicaps in

air operation. The third Stefansson expedition found, when traveling by sledge

over the pack some 300 miles north of Alaska, that movement afoot began to be

seriously impeded by the climate in May. As the season grew warmer, the

thickening of the young ice on leads became slower. A lead which would have

frozen over in two days during March, giving ice strong enough to support

men and sledges, took three or four days to freeze over in April, five or six

days in early May, and a week or two in late May.

        This slowing up of ice formation was only in part due to the decreasing

chill; it was in greater part due to the increased depth of new snowfalls

which blanketed the ice and protected it against the freezing effect of the air.

There was also the added problem that the level uniform snow cover made it

visually difficult to tell whether you were about to enter upon safe or unsafe

ice surfaces.

        Judging Ice from Aloft . These same difficulties apply to the aviator. No

matter how skilled and experienced he is, no matter how sound his judgment, he

will find it increasingly hard to judge from above whether he is about to land

on safe ice. Its strength may not be what he thinks, and snags will be hidden

039      |      Vol_VII-0671                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

both by the thickness of the new snow and by its uniform whiteness. For there

is a difference in color between snow and ice if both are exposed, while color

differences disappear, and only shadows serve, if the ice is snow-covered; and

even the shadows are decreased by the uniform and considerable reflection of

light from the snow — the light that casts [ ?] shadows no longer comes in the

main direct from the sun but now increasingly from surrounding objects, by

reflection. The more numerous and effective the snow reflectors, the less

clear-cut the shadows.

        Changes in Snow . As the temperatures grow higher, thare are two [ ?]

pronounced changes in the snow — it melts and it turns granular.

        To the traveler afoot, granular snow is more of a nuisance than liquid

water. He splashes easily through ponds which are at first ankle-deep or at

most knee-deep; then he comes to snowdrifts of several feet in depth. Across

these, dogs, sledges , and men used to pass when the weather was cold, leaving —

barely a trail. But now the drifts are slush, and the dogs sink to their

bellies, the men to their hips; the sledge runners cut in until the body

of the sleigh drags like a plow.

        The aviator who wants to come down landing under these conditions in spring will have to allow for un–

safe ice, ponds of water , and snow that no longer behaves like snow. —

        Degradation of Pack Ice . Water runs down any slope, so there are little

rivulets trickling down the sides of the miniature mountains that have been

formed during winter by the crushing of ice under pressure. Most of these

ridges are low, but some reach the extreme height of 60 or 70 feet above the

level of the surrounding ice.

        Near the edges of the pack, these small-scale mountain ranges of crushed

040      |      Vol_VII-0672                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

blocks may crisscross each other every which way at distances varying from a

few yards to a few hundred. Well out in the pack the pronounced ridges are

likely to be separated by miles rather than yards. Whether close set or far

apart, the thaw produced by rain and sun changes them gradually from the

angular peaks and pinnacles of the first year to the rolling prairie contours

of the fourth or fifth year.

        Ice is not as white as snow and therefore melts sooner through more of

the sun’s light being transformed into heat. Surfaces at right angles to the

sun melt more easily than those which receive slanting rays; ice slopes melt

faster than similarly tilted snowbanks and the snow persists while the ice

disappears. This in turn means that instead of open water in the hollow places

you have mushy, water-soaked snow.

        The conditions which we are describing appear sooner near the margin

of the pack and also, to a certain extent, earlier the farther south. Be–

cause most people overestimate the effect of southerliness, we emphasize

that with the midnight sun, which means a twenty-four - hour light delivery, —

there are potentials of heat creation that approach the tropical. (This is,

of course, why the U.S. Weather Bureau has recorded temperatures as high as

100° F. in the shade north of the Arctic Circle. That figure has been reached

officially at one spot only, Fort Yukon, Alaska; but records of 95° F. in the

shade are available from many arctic localities, while 90° is a common figure

on all arctic continental lowlands that are far from the sea. ) —

        According to some calculations, the sun delivers a little more potential

heat each twenty-four hours at the top of the atmosphere over the North Pole

on the longest day of the year than it delivers over the Equator. By atmospher [ ?] ic

041      |      Vol_VII-0673                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

absorption, it is considered that this is reduced, so that near ground level

the heat delivery (light convertible into heat) is a little less than at the

Equator. But only a little less.

        That we do not have a [ ?] sudden melting away of all the ice and snow in the

polar sea under this terrific downpour is naturally because most of the light

is never turned into heat, but is reflected back by the snow and, to a less

extent, by the ice.

        But all over the polar sea are dark spots and patches that do not reflect

the light effectively. Some of these are produced by dead crustaceans, fish,

seals, polar bears, or other forms of animal life, and some by the excrement

of live animals, including birds. Other dark spots result from vegetable

matter — seaweed and that sort of thing. Then there are plants that grow and

prosper in snowbanks, most conspicuous ly or are the algae that produce “pink snow” or —

[ ?] “crimson snow.” Whenever there is such a dark or darkened patch or spot,

the sun gets stronger play, turning more of its light into heat; and these

dark things, heated, melt their way down into pockets in the ice.

        When the black object has sunk beyond the direct reach of the sun, the

thaw nevertheless continues to be facilitated, for we have now a bowl of water

which reflects less light than the snow does — apparently also less than the

ice. Besides, there are considerable snowfalls at this time of year, so that

the ice is constantly being clad with a thinner or thicker snow mantle that

stays undampened enough to be white for hours or even days; but the snow that

falls in water melts at once, or at least darkens upon becoming soaked, so that

the surface there creates more beat by the increased absorption of light.

        In the whole of the polar sea there is animal and plant life beneath the

042      |      Vol_VII-0674                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice

ice. One animal which lives there, the seal, has the ability to make holes up

through the ice with his teeth. Each hole so made becomes a funnel down into

which flow the thaw waters of spring. As it flows, the water enlarges the

hole of the seal, while the network of affluent streams drains a small sur–

rounding area of ice.

        There are other holes in the ice, produced, as we have indicated, by melt–

ing that [ ?] starts around some dark object. As each pit finally breaks

through and becomes a hole, a new drainage area is set up, with rivulets

coming in from all sides.

        We have said already that there is no floe or field in the entire pack

which is so strong that it may not crack under pressure. Some of these crocks

were made early last in winter and are now healed by six or seven feet of ice; —

others are covered with thinner and thinner ice, according to their relative

youth, and the thinner the ice the more likely it is to have numerous seal

holes in it. Accordingly, there is an intensified drainage wherever leads

are covered with relatively new ice.

        Then, of course, any fresh lead that forms by cracking of the ice after

the beginning of the thaw period is a ready-made drainage outlet. Little

streams begin at once to pour their thaw water into these leads.

        When a lead forms in cold weather, it divides a floe into pieces which

freeze together again quickly into a floe of new composition, perhaps bigger

than the old. But toward s spring the ability of the ice to heal its own —

wounds in this way decreases. Under very slight pressure the floes will now

break along their lines of growing weakness, and these breaches cannot heal

before autumn. The number of leads increases steadily as summer advances ; , so —

043      |      Vol_VII-0675                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

that ice fields of ten, fifteen, or twenty miles in diameter become more and

more rare.

        Toward the end of summer there are probably not many fields in the polar

sea which are more than ten or fifteen miles in their minimum diameter. ‘The

average diameters are, of course, greatest near the center of the pack and de–

crease toward its edges. At the extreme margins of the pack, wave motion, not

appreciable without precision instruments if you are more than ten or w s o miles —

from open water, begins to cooperate in the breaking of fields into floes and

of floes into cakes.

        Landing Places in Summer . From the point of view of travelers afoot, every

seal hole that provides drainage and every open lead in a blessing, for now

the water is draining from the slushy snow, and some of the slu s h itself flows —

along with the miniature currents into the drainage holes. The ice along the

shores of leads now seems dry and it becomes relatively easy to walk and sledge

along their banks.

        For a pilot in case of a forced landing, or a desire to land, the beat

hope now — practically the only one — is to come down alongside and parallel

to a lead. This must not be a lead through paleocrystic ice, for the hilliness

of the very old floes is now at its maximum. To find even tolerably smooth

ice, the pilot will have to select a new lead that runs through an older lead.

        As the summer advances , the drainage channels, which were a blessing to foot —

traveler or aviator, have less and less merit. For instead of remaining a few

inches wide they become a few feet wide, and instead of being a few inches

deep they are now several feet deep. These channels, however, are seldom wider

than four or five feet, nor is the water in them often deeper than three or four.

044      |      Vol_VII-0676                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        But the channels come from or run through small ice-surface lakes. If

the ice is paleocrystic, the lakes are innumerable, but seldom of a diameter

of more than a few score yards and usually only a few yards, though relatively

deep. On the third Stefansson expedition men sometimes had to wade across lakes

of this type that were hip-deep. (They used empty kerosene or gasoline con–

tainers lashed to the sleds to float them across? the dogs had to swim.)

        Where the channels between lakes cut through ice ridges they may be four

or five feet deep, although the water in them would not likely be deeper

than two or three feet. Where the lakes within the pack have been formed on

relatively level ice, they are much larger, at times several hundred yards

wide; but they are shallow, seldom deeper than two feet.

        Near the margins of the pack this process continues until the channels

have cut their way right through the ice in which the waters flow, or until

the ice is so weakened that a minor stress breaks it. Toward the center of

the pack the likelihood decreases that a stream will cut all the way through

to the sea below.

        At this stage of ice deterioration even a ski plane can hope for little

better than a crash landing. It may be that it can descend along the edge

of a lead and slide along far enough to reduce its speed considerably before

it stubs the toe of a ski into an obstruction.

        Possibly special types of skis could be designed for this sort of lead–

shore landing, ones more curved up at the tip than now usual.

        Leads Carry Fresh Water in Summer. The condition we have described is

at its worst — or at least at its height — toward the end of summer. The

leads are then fresh-water rivers, or canals. If, when traveling afoot, you

045      |      Vol_VII-0677                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

come to a lead which is less than a few hundred yards across, you can scoop

up drinking water with confidence that there will be not a trace of salt

discernible to the palate.

        For the third Stefansson expedition a rough measure of the depth of this

fresh layer was furnished by the seals that were shot. When dead, the seals

would sink through the fresh-water layer and float on the top of the salt

ocean water beneath. They were seen at depths of ten and twelve feet. Probably —

in some instances the fresh water that lies upon the salt water in a lead

has a depth of more than twenty feet.

        But if leads are one or several miles wide they are not fresh at the

surface, except that they are relatively fresh after a calm of several days.

For in a wide lead the winds produce a wave action that stirs up the sea,

mixing the fresh water with the salt.

        Autumn in the Pack . When autumn frosts come in clear weather, ice forms

rapidly over the lakes and channels; but if snow falls, to rest upon the new

ice, thickening is retarded. The combination of thin ice with thick snow makes

a situation that is doubly dangerous for men afoot, insofar as getting one’s

feet wet is concerned; for the flow of thaw water continues through the

channels as the lakes are being drained. When the lake is big the ice, with

its weight of snow, will collapse down into the water; but if the lakelet

is small, only a few feet across, the ice may be strong enough to act as a

roof, maintaining an air space of an inch or several inches between itself and

the water. W T hen a man afoot readily breaks throug h , even if he is walking on — —

snowshoes.

        As winter advances, the freezing of the small lakes is slow, for they are

located, in bowls that are filled with drifting snow. In some cases the

046      |      Vol_VII-0678                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

traveling parties of the third St e fansson expedition were able to get fresh —

water out of such lakes six or eight weeks after they originally froze over.

        Skis vs. Snowshoes . There is enough rough ice on the pola e r sea to inter–

fere with skiing. Several members of various traveling parties of the

expedition were Norwegians, or otherwise accustomed to the use of skis, and

the sledging parties always had skis with them; but they carried snowshoes

also. It was only on rare occasions (when traveling before a fair wind,

and usually in the early spring) that skis were used at all. Snowshoes are

easier to carry, and should be preferred, unless both are carried.

        Natural and Artificial Strengthening of Ice . We described some way back

how a base can be located on a paleocrystic floe or field. We might explain

here how a floe that is being used as a long-term camp site may be strengthened —

for safer residence.

        As indicated, there are weaknesses in a typical floe or field at the end

of summer, due to the lakes which have been absorbing more sunlight than

the surrounding ice, and due to the network of channels connecting the lakes

and leading to drainage points. These weaknesses tend to be perpetuated as

winter advances; for the lowest places, where the ice lo thinnest, have the

softest and deepest snow that most retards the thickening of ice.

        Now if there is a crew of men around an air base or scientific station,

they can be sent out after each snowfall, armed with long poles that have at

their ends some kind of knob or masher. They can follow along the “river”

channels, walking on the solid old ice at the sides, and can break the snow

and ice roofings, pounding them down into the water, where the snow gets

saturated immediately and becomes a good conductor, a quick freezer. By a

047      |      Vol_VII-0679                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

sensible adaptation of method, you can do similar things with the lakes.

        Later, when the ice roofing on the channels and lakes has become too

thick for breaking, the men can stamp the soft snow down after each snowfall;

they can roll it with a mechanical roller or drive back and forth over it

with a track-laying tractor. Thus they will promote an equality of freez–

ing, the weak parts of the floe being strengthened to where they nearly or

quite match the originally strong parts.

        When midwinter approaches, with decreased snowfall and intensified cold,

pumps would be used to fill with water the little lakes and the stream beds.

This will produce not merely a floe with a surface level above but also one

which can be visualized as fairly level below, on its water side. For thin

ice will conduct cold a little faster than thick ice, with consequent equaliza–

tion of the freezing, the hollows on the lower side of the ice being gradually

filled in.

        Special Applications . The principle of helping along the thickening of

ice by removing snow or tramping it down has long been known. Special appli–

cations of this have been reported by Soviet explorers. There is, for instance,

the creation of a drydock in ice.

        If a disabled ship which is not too large is wintering in the pack, the

crew may, for drydock reasons, promote the thickening of the ice around the

vessel in the manner we have indicated. When the ice is thick enough, they

can cut it away from around the sides of the ship and expose parts where repair

is needed. (This method is described and diagrammatically illustrated in “Ice

Dock,” by Engineer K. Zhukov, Teknika Molodezhi ( Techniques for the Young ),

1944.)

048      |      Vol_VII-0680                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

       

Drift of Base Stations

        In discussing the locating of air fields on sea ice we must keep in mind —

that there are two sections of the arctic mediterranean in which the general

trend of ice motion is problematic. One of these is the region to the north–

west and west of the islands from Ellesmere to Prince Patrick; the other is

the area of probable, or at least possible, eddy to the north of Alaska, east

of the Point Barrow meridian. For all other sections we have enough drift

records to make the trend of ice movement reasonably clear.

        Ice Motion North of Greenland . On his various sledge journeys toward

and eventually to the North Pole, Peary found that, as he advanced farther

and farther north from the Greenland-Ellesmere region, the drift to the east–

ward became more and more rapid, until he got to that zone of maximum frac–

ture which he calls the Big Lead. Since the intensity of ice motion, and

sometimes even the direction, will depend in most parts of the Arctic Sea

upon winds blowing at the time, or during the preceding few days, the Big

Lead will not necessarily be at the same distance from Greenland at the same

date of successive years, nor at different dates of the same year. However,

this “lead” can he reckoned as being roughly 70 miles offshore from Ellesmere

Island and 35 miles offshore from the Peary Land part of Greenland. It doubtless —

continues approaching nearer land the farther east we go. We can safely think

of it as practically hugging the shore when we get as far southeast as North–

east Foreland, Greenland.

        Speed of Ice Drift . The betl belt of greatest ice speed, in the direction

of the Greenland-Norway gap, will be along the poleward side of the Big Lead.

Soviet writers have spoken of 3/4 mile per hour as the maximum speed, and this

049      |      Vol_VII-0681                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

may be right for any motion that depends in the main on winds of large scope.

But, under the pressure of the violent local gales which blow near land, a

motion estimated by the third Stefansson expedition at two 2 miles per hour has —

been observed to the north of Alaska — this being the notion, of the pack in

relation to landfast ice.

        It may be that what Soviet writers have in mind is that, within the pack, —

the greatest differential motion of opposite sides of a load, with respect

to each other, is 3/4 mile per hour. But in such case it is possible that

the ice on both sides of the lead .is moving in the one direction and that

the absolute motion with respect to the sea bottom is, in the case of one

side of the lead, 2 miles per hour, against 1-1/4 miles per hour for the other

side of the lead.

        Charles D. Brower, who had more experience than any other Alaska white man

in whaling off Cape Smythe (Barrow), used to speak of ice drifting at two 2 —

miles per hour. However, his estimate, and the mentioned one by members of

the third Stefansson expedition, should be marked down as no more than esti–

mates. It may be that they represent considerable exaggeration.

        If there is anywhere in the Arctic a motion of wide streams of ice as

high as two 2 miles per hour, even for a few hours at a time, this will most —

likely occur in the gap between Northeast Foreland and Spitsbergen, in Bering

Strait, or in some other of the straits leading out of the arctic basin into

neighboring waters.

        Direction of Ice Drift . We know, then, that to the north of the islands

Axel Heiberg, Ellesmere, and Greenland the motion of the ice, although occa–

sionally reversed by a contrary wind, is to the east, and that the speed in-

050      |      Vol_VII-0682                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

creases as we approach the slacking-out region between Greenland and the Franz

Josef Islands. Since theoreticians have long believed, and since the Papanin

expedition demonstrated, that the drift from the North Pole is in the direction

of Iceland, we may consider ourselves to know that any floe which at a given

time is located east of a line drawn from Axel Heiberg Island to the Pole, will

move thence in a general Spitsbergen direction and with increasing speed.

        A doubtful area in this quarter, mentioned above, would then begin not

far to the west of the Heiberg meridian. Little is known about the movement

of ice in that region except what was learned from two sledge journeys, those

of MacMillan at to the northwest of Heiberg in 1914 and of Stefansson north–

ward from Borden Island in 1917. Both journeys indicate that there was little

movement, or at any rate slow, with evidence on direction inconclusive.

        But the Stefansson sledge trip of 1915, to the northwest of Banks Island

and in the region west of southern Prince Patrick Island, showed a definite

though slow movement southerly. This trend is open to alternative interpreta–

tions, that the main pull was toward M’Clure Strait, or that it was toward

Alaska. It is known that the movement of water ail the year, and of ice

when Melville Sound is not frozen fast, is easterly through the waterway

represented by M’Clure Strait, Melville Sound, Barrow Strait, Lancaster

Sound, to Baffin Bay; therefore it might be contended that southward movement

of ice located westerly from southern Prince Patrick was only an effort by these

floes to get into the eastbound stream running through M’Clure Strait.

        However, that the movement observed in 1915 to the west of southern Prince

Patrick and northern Banks i I slands was really toward Alaska rather than toward —

M’Clure Strait becomes evident when those observations are studied together

051      |      Vol_VII-0683                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

with the ones taken to the west of northern Banks Island by the Stefansson

sledging party that made a fishhook-curve track in 1914 from Martin Point,

Alaska, to northwestern Banks Island, especially the observations of late

May to June 20. (See the separate route maps for 1914 and 1915 in Stefansson’s

The Friendly Arctic .)

        Since it is obvious that there cannot be much movement of water easterly

through the tortuous and shallow channels just north of the Canadian mainland,

it follows that the ice which moves southerly along the western coast of Banks

Island must turn west and drift parallel to the north coast of Alaska. P el le nty —

of evidence of this was found by the Stefansson party on their mentioned

journey north from Martin Point, Alaska, in 1914; but this was only confirma–

tion of what had long been known, from the British explorers of the middle

nineteenth century, from the Yankee whalers between 1889 and 1907, from the

Leffingwell-Mikkelsen expedition of 1906-07 — all of which was re-enforced

by the drift of Stefansson’s Karluk from the Colville mouth to the vicinity

of Wrangel Island in 1914. This westward movement from southern Banks Island,

parallel to Alaska, appears to be chiefly along a line running westward at

a distance of 150 or 200 miles north from the mainland shore.

        Stations in Doubtful Area . Since there is between the Axel Heiberg

meridian and a point northwesterly from Prince Patrick Island a region where

it is anybody’s guess what the trend of drift would be, an air base established

on a floe in that realm of uncertainty might take either of two courses. It

might drift woard toward the Spitsbergen-Greenland a aperture, and then probably at —

first with a rate of a mile or two per day; or it might start out southwesterly,

and then probably at a much slower rate, perhaps half a mile or less per day.

052      |      Vol_VII-0684                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        The Y-drift n N orth of Barrow . It has been demonstrated by the drift of a —

number of vessels caught in the ice, among them the Baychimo and the Karluk ,

that there is a Y in the current to the north of Point Barrow. A ship caught

in the ice between Bering Strait and Point Barrow will drift northeasterly

par a llel to the coast, while another ship caught in the ice along the north

coast of Alaska between Barrow and the Colville, will drift northwesterly;

the tracks of the two will meet at a point north of Barrow, when both will go

northerly for a while, then turn west, to pass north of Wrangel Island, likely

at some distance between 50 and 150 miles.

        The Karluk Drift . The Karluk drift of 1913-14 began at a point about 20

miles offshore just east of the mouth of the Colville and took s northwesterly

course parallel to the land, She stopped frequently and occasionally reversed

herself, but in the long run she forged ahead so as to pass Barrow only a

little out of sight of land — having been in sight from the lowland to the

east of Barrow theretofore. With many zigzags the vessel continued westerly

from Barrow until she sank about 50 miles north and a little east from Wrangel

Island. This drift occupied the time from September 1913 to January 1914.

        The Jeannette Drift . The previously mentioned 1879-81 drift of De Long’s —

Jeannette started east of Wrangel Island. She first moved northerly until the

island was well cleared and then began a trend somewhat north of west, which

course she followed during the next year and a half, getting a little farther

offshore constantly, until she was crushes in the ice off the islands she

discovered — Jeannette, Henrietta , and Bennett. —

        The Fram Drift . In the 1890’s it was the belief of Nansen, based largely

on De Long’s work, that a ship placed in the ice in the vicinity of the New —

053      |      Vol_VII-0685                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

Siberian Islands would drift approximately across the North Pole on her way

to the North Atlantic. During 1893-1996 his ship the Fram actually continued

in the sort of spiral curve which is forecast by plotting on a map and con–

necting the Karluk and Jeannette drifts. This line does not trend offshore as

much as Nansen would have liked and does not go across the immediate vicinity

of the Pole. The Fram’s drift curve is actually about 300 miles from the Pole

at its nearest point, where the trend became westerly and then southwesterly,

coming into open water to the west of Spitsbergen.

        Drift of Soviet Vessels . In the 1930’s and later a number of ships be–

longing to the Soviet Union were caught in the ice in the New Siberian Island

region and carried on Fram -like drifts. One of them, the Sedov , followed a

course roughly parallel to that of the Fram but consistently farther from

Asia, and made an approach closer to the North Pole by about 50 miles.

        The Storkerson Drift . In late midwinter 1918 a party of four men of the

third Stefansson expedition traveled by sledge roughly 200 miles north from

Cross Island, which itself is about 20 miles off the north coast of Alaska,

somewhat east of the south of the Cl Colville. The leader of the party,

Storker Storkerson, decided that they were then probably in the most favorable

location for drifting westward on a course that would be parallel to and off–

shore from that of the Karluk . So they made camp on a stout floe, planning

to drift either one or two years, living by hunting.

        It turned out that the drift was not nearly as straightforward as had been

expected on the basis of the Karluk and Jeannette tracks, so that, with a total

drift in various directions measured by Storkerson at around 400 miles, the

party made good only about 90 miles during six months in a resultant direction

somewhat north of west — thus, however, approximately parallel to the trend

054      |      Vol_VII-0686                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

of the Alaska coast.

        Travel Afoot Over Pack Ice . When the party had been encamped on the

drifting floe about half a rear, Storkerson developed asthma, with repeated

attacks of increasing severity. For this reason, but no doubt also because

the drift was not so rapid or clear-cut in direction as he had hoped, he

decided to take the party ashore, the landward journey is instructive in that

it was made at what is for foot travelers the worst time of year — there was

little daylight, much snowfall and a depth of newfallen snow which both

hindered the thickening of young lee and concealed Its weakness.

        The report of Storkerson is therefore one of the most significant in

the annals of polar exploration: “We started on the 9th of October and reached

shore the 8th of November, without any trouble.” So, for men experienced as

Storkerson and his companions were, even a 200-mile ice - pack journey by sledge —

at the worst time of year has only routine difficulties and is without great

danger. Storkerson believed that the risk to life was perhaps comparable

to that of coal mining or taxi driving.

        An Eddy in the Pack ? As said, there is, in addition to the doubtful

area north and west of Axel Heiberg Island, a second area where the direction

of drift is highly problematic. From the zigzag nature of the Storkerson

drift, from his making good only 90 miles in six months (when the Karluk , a

little to the west, cleared 600 miles in four months), and for other reasons,

some think there may be an eddy between the Point Barrow meridian and Banks

Island such that, if a floe were caught thereby, it might continue drifting

around and around for many years, doubtless, however, to emerge finally south–

bound through the Greenland-Franz Josef gap.

055      |      Vol_VII-0687                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        Drift of Projected Air Bases . It is our best guess, then, that if a

drifting scientific research base were placed on the ice about 150 miles

west from Borden Island; it would follow slowly the spiral curve indicated

by the mentioned drifts and by the Stefansson sledge journey observations to

the west and north of the Canadian islands. The slowest movement would probably

be near the starting point, the floe moving southwesterly parallel to the line

of the Borden-Prince Patrick coasts. The speed would no doubt increase

temporarily, especially in summer, upon approaching the waters of the south–

eastern Beaufort Sea, which are kept open in part by the tremendous volume of

relatively warm waters brought north by the Mackenzie River, the second largest

stream in North America. Then, after passing the Alaska-Canada meridian west–

bound, the speed might be about like that of Storkerson, later working up to

the Karluk rate, requiring at least a year between meridians 140° and 180°,

and another year of two until abreast of the New Siberian Islands. Two

or three years would then be required to duplicate the Fram or Sedov drifts

to where they approach the warm North Atlantic Drift waters.

        It may be suggested that if a drift station were established 300 miles

west of Borden Island, instead of only 150, this drift would also follow a

curve parallel to the drifts of the Karluk , Jeannette , and Fram, keeping that —

much farther offshore; but the chance of this is no more than fifty-fifty,

since there is a strong possibility that a base so located might start imme–

diately toward the North Pole and the Greenland-Norway gap.

        Eventual Gulf Stream Destination of All Floes . It is an important and safe

generalization that the destiny of every floe of the Arctic Sea, excepti on ing those —

right at the margin of the revolving pack which melt locally, is to float even–

tually southward into the Greenland-Europe sector to be melted by Gulf Stream

waters.

056      |      Vol_VII-0688                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        Initial Location of Various Bases . If the reason for establishing drift–

ing bases in a comprehensive study of the Arctic Sea, the thing to do might

be to locate them on the map along a curve which would start at a point 150

miles west of Borden Island. This curve would be drawn on the circump o lar

chart to run toward the mouth of the Mackenzie, and then westerly parallel to

Alaska, keeping 100, or more likely 200, miles off the Alaska shore until

connecting with or beginning to parallel the drift of the Karluk . After that,

the curve would parallel the Jeannette , and Fram - Sedov drifts. The first base,

with its attached air field, should then he located at the Borden end of the —

curve, the second perhaps off the Mackenzie, the third at the International

Date Line, the fourth off the New Siberian Islands, the fifth off Severnaya

Zemlya (northern Land).

        Other bases might he located on a similarly curved line lying 100 miles

farther offshore than the one we have plotted (at all points except the initial

one where we would not dare to go that far offshore for fear of drifting at

once in the Iceland direction), We might place the bases as far apart on the

second curve as on [ ?] the first curve, or, rather, on the same meridians.

        Abandonment of Bases . If all these stations were established during the

same midwinter and early spring period, we would expect to remove the per–

sonnel and records of the most Europeward station after [ ?]one year, and

those of the other stations after about two, three, four, and fire years.

        Suggested Base at Ice Pole . It might be interesting scientifically to

place one more research base approximately at the Pole of Inaccessibility or

Ice Pole (near 84¼ N., 160¼ (near 84° N., 160° W.). There we would have,

theoretically, the maximum ice stability. Presumably, that station would

057      |      Vol_VII-0689                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

drift so as to cross the Severnaya Zemlya meridian only a short distance

to the Asiatic side of the North Pole. The drift from the Ice Pole to the

vicinity of the North Pole would presumably be slow and might use up a year,

so that the removal of personnel and records, perhaps 200 or 400 miles north

of Iceland, would occur between one and two years after the establishment of

the station.

       

Equipment

        Clothing . For parties spending the whole year at such air-supplied re–

search stations as here discussed, the recommended winter clothing would he

somewhat of the type used by lumber jacks in the north woods or by miners in

the Yukon and Alaska. These clothes are, on the whole, considerably better

this [ ?] , its clothes [ ?] and not [warmer ?] , therefore [ are ?] discarded with E.A. Mahi his statement? than any issued by the U.S. Army during World War II. Furs, though warmer

for their weight, are not essential; for during the cold part of winter most

of the time would be spent within doors, in snowhouses.

        For water boots, useful in summer, follow the Alaska prca practice,

especially the one used with hydraulic mining. The fresh-water lakes and

channels on top of sea ice may attain a four-foot depth toward the end of

summer. It would be well, therefore, to supply hip boots or wading pants,

such as those used by sports fishermen. Waterproofs are a necessity, for it

rains a lot in summer.

        Eye Protection . The advantage of spectacles over goggles is that, in cold

weather, spectacles fog less easily from the moisture of the eye and from the

“invisible perspiration” which is usually emanating from the human skin.

        Differing shades of amber glasses are better than a variety of “patent”

substitutes; for they are more effective than anything else yet devised in

058      |      Vol_VII-0690                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

combining adequate snowblindness protection with improvement in vision. Not

until cameramen begin to substitute new inventions for amber in the light fil–

ters of their cameras should the scientific staff of a floating research station

of the Arctic Sea discontinue the use of amber glass as a combined protection

and visual aid to the human eye.

        It is among other advantages of amber glasses that with them on you are

less likely to walk over a precipice, or to stub your toe against an obstruc–

tion, than you are when using either the bare eye or patent spectacles, You

can follow a trail in the snow more easily and can better discern a white object,

on a white surface — as, for instance, a ptarmigan, hare , or polar bear on a —

snow field.

        Housing . The Papanin expedition of 1937-38 brought to its original loca–

tion, right at the geographical North Pole, ten tons of pay load on four ski- —

mounted planes, a materiel part of which load was a portable house, with appur–

tenances. The expedition narrative shows that this dwelling proved extremely

uncomfortable. However, many Europeans are so wedded to the idea of living,

wherever they are, in the kind of house to which they are accustomed, that .it

may be necessary to furnish the proposed drifting stations with conventional

dwellings.

        If one gives in to this emotional pressure, there are many choices as to

the sort of portable house. Some are naturally much worse than others. It

would seem best to leave an actual choice until the expedition has been pretty

well formulated.

        Among the material considerations as to portable house is the location of

the depots at which ships will unload supplies that are later to be flown to

059      |      Vol_VII-0691                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

the drifting stations, and this we consider below. You can afford heavier

and bulkier materials if the depot from which they are brought is near at

hand.

        No fetched-in winter housing is necessary. For, without any exception,

those men who have used snowhouses extensively in the Arctic have found them

to be most comfortable dwellings. But snowhouses are at their best only when

outdoor temperatures are below zero degrees F . ahrenheit ; in warmer weather tents serve better. —

The tents should foe double; one thickness outside the ridge pole in the ordi–

nary way, the inner one inside the ridge, suspended from the outer tent so

as to yield an air space of an inch or two between. Bamboo-ribbed, conical

double tents of the Shackleton type are good.

        The principles of living in snowhouses and tents are discussed elsewhere

in this encyclopedia. Attention is drawn here particularly to the risk of

carbon monoxide poisoning — which is no greater in a snowhouse than in any

other type of house but needs constant vigilance wherever a chill climate

tempts people to be stingy with ventilation.

       

Supply Bases for Air Stations

        We need not consider supply of ice-pack base stations from land in Norway,

Iceland, or East Greenland; for the sea ice to the north of these is in such

rapid southward motion that any drift station readily established from these

lands would soon find itself on a melting floe.

        West Greenland . For western end northwestern Greenland, the ease of north–

warn penetration by ship differs a great deal in different years. However, with

the precious help of airplane scouting and radio reporting, of which the early

explorers had not the advantage, it ought to be feasible, at least on the average

060      |      Vol_VII-0692                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

of every other year, to get as far north by ship as the steamer Roosevelt did

in 1905 and again in 1908, to Cape Sheridan, near 82° 30′ N. latitude, which

the Alert of Nares had indeed reached in 1875. It is certainly easy, practi–

cally any year, to supply by steamer a land base at the Danish settlement of

Thule, near 76° 30′ N. latitude.

        No Ellesmere Base Needed . It does not seem that there is much advantage

in an Ellesmere Island supply base, as opposed to a Greenlandic one. Sovereignty

may, however, introduce a material factor, Ellesmere being Canadian and Green–

land Danish.

        Melville Island . Probably the best all-round arctic steamship base

locations, from our present angle, that of supply far drifting stations, are

in Melville. Bathurst , and Cornwallis i I slands. — —

        Hudson Bay . If desired, a supply base may be readily established at the

northeastward rail terminal of Churchill, on the west shore of Hudson Bay.

This is, roughly speaking, less desirable by at least a thousand miles, when

comparison is made with a base in the Melville Island region.

        Mackenzie River . Westward, the next feasible water supply route is by

way of the Mackenzie River. There we have the serious difficulty that the

Mackenzie flows through Great Slave Lake, where the ice persists from four

to six weeks longer than it does on the river itself; and, moreover, the

steamers on this lake are such that they may be held up for days at a time

by strong winds.

        There is (as of 1950) an all-season motor road, the Grimshaw Highway, from the —

rail terminal in the Peace River section of Alberta to the town of Hay River on

southwestern Great Slave Lake. However, as long as the road terminal is Hay

061      |      Vol_VII-0693                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

River, there is bound to be trouble with the c or ro ssing of Great Slave Lake. —

But it would not seem to be e vary great part of any large-scale preparation

if an all-season road were laid out to branch off from the Grimshaw Highway

at or near Alexandra Falls, going thence past the west end of the lake and

tapping the Mackenzie near Providence. This would lengthen the season of

navigation by four to six weeks, besides avoiding storm delay on Great Slave

Lake.

        Waiving the Great Slave difficulty, we can say that supplies may be

shipped down the Mackenzie to its mouth during June, so that there would be,

even by the 1950 arrangement, nearly a four-month river navigation season.

In recent years, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

have both used this route, supplies being transshipped from river boats to

ocean-going ones t in the eastern part of the delta, at a point on the main–

land, opposite Richards Island s . —

        The draft of river boats is now ordinarily not much more than four feet;

but up to and including the summer 1907 there was on the Mackenzie an ocean–

going type of boat, screw-propelled, called the Wrigley , which drew six and

a half feet. With expert pilotage and careful buoying of the channel, it

would no doubt be possible to return to a six-foot draft, if that were desired

for any large-scale operation. At any rate, the present, four-and-a-half-foot

draft will no doubt deliver all the supplies needed for a Beaufort Sea drift–

ing scientific station and air base, if it be desired to use this supply route.

        Delta Facilities . There is no good harbor, properly speaking, at or near

the eastern side of the Mackenzie delta; but about 90 miles west of the West

Channel of the Mackenzie is the excellent, though small, harbor of Pauline Cove

062      |      Vol_VII-0694                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

on Herschel Island, which in the great days of Yankee whaling, 1889-1906,

accommodated probably s maximum of 16 ships of tonnages from 100 to 400.

The depth, however, is adequate for any freight steamer that customarily goes

into the Arctic, 20 to 25 feet. Supplies could then come down the West Channel —

of the Mackenzie in a river boat to watch for a chance to dash for Herschel

Island, where freight could be transferred to ocean - going ships with a —

capacity of several thousand tons.

        The depth of the various channels of the Mackenzie delta, as in other

great deltas, varies not merely from year to year but practically from day to

day. It is not definitely known, but is probable, that you can carry as much

water down, the West Channel of the Mackenzie as you can down the East Channel.

(The reason why the Police and the Hudson’s B a y Company have used the East —

Channel is that they are chiefly interested in supplying the region thence

eastward, as far as Bellot Strait.)

        Yukon Supply Base . If a Yukon route of supply if desired, shipment can.

be made by steamer from Seattle to Skagway and thence by narrow-gauge rail to

Whitehorse. If desired, freight can be shipped thence by river steamers to

points down the Yukon River.

        ( The winter use of northern rivers, such as the Yukon end Mackenzie, is —

discussed farther on in this article. ) —

        Central Alaska Base. Central Alaska Base. If an Alaskan overland route is wanted, shipment —

is by steamer from Seattle to Anchorage (Seward or Whittier) and by standard - —

gauge U.S. government railroad to Fairbanks. Thence it is possible to ship by

water up and down the Yukon.

063      |      Vol_VII-0695                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        Bering Coast of Alaska . The Pacific route proper will run from any

North Pacific coast port north through Bering Sea and. Strait. The last good

North American harbor on this route, however, is Port Clarence, near 65° N.

latitude. It is considered a bit on the large side and also keeps its ice

late into the season. There is an inner harbor for small ships at Teller,

within the Port Clarence basin.

        Alaska North Coast . When a ship once rounds Point Hope, to move eastward

to and beyond Point Barrow along the coast, it she finds no good harbor at all in —

the whole of Alaska and does not reach one till at Herschel Island, Yukon

Territory, Canada. Thence eastward there are many harbors, some of them good,

along the north coast of the mainland and among the islands to the north.

        Ships of moderate draft — perhaps ten or twelve feet — can get in

past some of the north Alaska islands into the lagoons that stretch east–

ward from Point Barrow toward Cape Simpson. It used to be that any of the

whaling ships (with a maximum draft of sixteen feet) could get in behind

Cross Island; but the last time that Ste f ansson was there (1913) each changes —

had taken place from the year before in the submerged sands pits or reefs —

that it would seem advisable to have annual reports from this shelter.

        Changes of depth are sudden and spectacular along arctic shores, for we

deal not merely with the power of liquid water that is moving as a current

or wave but also with the ploughing effect of vast ice fields which may have

projecting snags that are placed almost as though they were a graver’s tool

in a in a giant hand. Stefansson has reported such ice snags to scoop out —

a ten-foot channel through a sand bar at the tip of Shingle Point sandspit

(halfway between the Mackenzie River and Herschel Island), where immediately be–

fore the depth of water had been less than two feet.

064      |      Vol_VII-0696                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        Sometimes when ice moves gravel to open up or close a channel, its work

is undone during the next few days or weeks by a current which may sweep away

gravel that was heaped up, or may redeposit sand into an opening. Some of the

ice-made channels, however, will persist for years, if not decades, and may

conceivably become “permanent” [ ?]

        If some point on the north coast of Alaska is to be a base for supplies,

the ship-shore movement of cargo will need to be handled by lighterage methods,

which can be employed almost anywhere, or ships of extremely light draft

will have to be used. Generally speaking, the lighterage method, has been in

the past the main one, in Alaska, from the south of the Yukon north past Nome,

Kotzebue, Wainwright , and Point Barrow east to the Canadian boun d da ry; on the —

Canadian north coast, unloading in harbors has been general; on the north

coast of Siberia, both methods have been used, for there are long stretches

of shoal coastal waters intervening between the excellent harbors.

        The North Coast of Eurasia . The establishment of drifting stations for

scientific research is relatively easy from the Soviet Union for, unlike Canada

and northern Alaska, the north coast of the Old World has a commercial seaway

in operation every year with (according to 1940-50 figures) more than a hundred

ships in regular operation as against two or three supply vessels that ply

the arctic coast of Canada. This relatively heavy traffic has required the

development of seaports with facilities both for the handling of large car og go es —

and for the interchange of cargoes between ships and planes. The biggest of

these ports are Dickson, at the mouth of the Yenisei ; , Tiksi, at the mouth of —

the Lena ; , arid Ambarchik, at the mouth of the Kolyma. To Dickson and Tiksi —

supplies for a drift station could be delivered either through the ocean

065      |      Vol_VII-0697                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

shipping of the Northern Sea Route or from downstream river traffic by the

Ob-Yenisei and Lena routes.

        Murmansk, a port otherwise well located, would not be used for the estab–

lishment of the discussed research drifting establishments, because of the same

reasons we gave for the non-use of Norwegian seaports — there is too little

ice to the north because of the warm North Atlantic drift; and the ice move–

ment in any case is southward, thus precluding a long-continued drift even if

an establishment were set up on a floe a thousand miles north of Murmansk.

Dickson Island is also too westerly for convenient use. In the Soviet Union,

then, the discussed ship-plane liaison would need to be with Tiksi — or a

port on the Gulf of Anadyr.

       

INLAND OR SNOW ICE

        From the point of view of air - borne supply for research stations located on —

land, this section will deal with ice formed from snow. We consider this ice

in its principal forms, which are: ( 1 1 ) permanent snowdrifts, ( 2 2 ) glaciers, and —

( 3 3 ) inland ice inland ice or icecaps icecaps . —

       

Permanent Snowdrifts

        Snow p P reservation and Transmutation . Broadly speaking, snow in nature is —

preserved on land from one winter to the next, and thus turned to ice, only

upon mountains or through the if influence of mountains. There are some par–

tial exceptions, as will appear, ever, on land. At sea, a certain relatively

small amount of snow may last on drifting floes from one year to the next.

066      |      Vol_VII-0698                                                                                                                  
EEA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        Permanent Snowbanks . There seems to be general consent that certain drifts

of snow, which in a few places are known to have been preserved from one year

to the next, should not be called glaciers. For one thing, glaciers are

thought of as large, and normally moving, while these “permanent” snow–

drifts are thought of as small and stationary.

        Permanent snowdrifts large enough to serve for airplane landings are said

to occur in a few valleys of the Brooks r R ange in northern Alaska. In more —

southerly Alaska ranges these drifts have developed into glaciers and bear

that name. There are also a few glaciers in the northward face of the Brooks

Mountains.

        Except in mountains, permanent snowdrifts do not seem to occur in northern

Alaska nor have they been reported from the northern Canadian mainland,

which contains no mountains except in Yukon Territory. However, snowbanks

have been seen in the vicinity of the Coppermine, northeast of Great Bear

Lake, as late as mid-August, so it is possible that permanent snowdrifts do

exist somewhere in the nonmountainous northern parts of the North American

continent.

        In Victoria Island no permanent snowdrifts large enough for airplane use

were observed by the third Stefansson expedition, nor have reports of them

come to notice. Almost certainly there are none in Banks Island, unless

possibly in some valley along the north coast. Probaby there are few permanent

drifts of size anywhere in the southernmost tier of the Canadian a A rctic i I s- — —

lands until we get as far east as Baffin., where mountains come into play.

        But permanent snowdrifts, or ones that last rtoug through some summers, are

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

found in a number of places on Melville Island and in all Canadian islands

equally far or farther north.

        The situation in northern mainland Siberia appears to be about the same

as in northern mainland Canada and Alaska.

        Permanent Snowdrifts as Landing Places . Particularly in the islands

Borden, Mackenzie King, Ringnes , and Melville, Stefansson has seen snowdrifts —

in late summer upon which aircraft could have landed in emergencies. These

drifts have usually been in the bottoms of narrow ravines, trending east and

west, and, of course, have been on the southern sides of the ravines — on

the sides that face north. The valleys have usually been so narrow that it

would be difficult to set a plane down without a wing touching the cliff within

the shadow of which the snowbank was preserved.

        Since these snowbanks are so unfavorably situated locally, it will probably

be better in most cases not to use them but instead to make belly landings in

wet grassy fields.

        In Melville Island, up on some of the plateaus, snowbanks remain large

enough to the end of summer, and exposed enough, so that they would make

fairly good emergency landing places.

        It occurs to one that these snowbanks could be used the year round as

landing fields; for obviously a bank which is still there in late August is

bound to be there through all the other months. This is true, but of little

significance; for in the period from September to June, in islands like Mel–

ville, the ice of lakes is much better for aviation purposes than any snow–

bank. What aviation significance these embryonic glaciers have is, therefore,

confined to the summer period.

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Glaciers

        Glaciers as Landing Fields . Glaciers are more numerous in southern

Alaska than in most other parts of the world, so it is natural that extensive

use or glaciers for airplane landing purposes has been reported from this

region.

        According to United States press correspondents who were in Norway at

the time of the struggle between the British and the Germans, Nazi planes

landed invasion troops at the heads of glaciers in the mountains back of

Narvik.

        It has been stated concerning the establishment of what was before World

War II the most northerly permanent air base in the world (at Rudolf Island

in the Franz Josef Archipelago, about 500 miles from the North Pole), that

the pioneer airplanes which went in there landed on glaciers, and that

glacier landings have continued to be used during summer. No doubt most winter

descents and take-offs at this air base are now on land or on landfast sea ice

near shore, for that will be more convenient to the village.

        Selecting Glacier Landings . The first rule about the aviation use of

glaciers is that the very head of each glacier is usually the safest place,

for up there you have little motion and few or no crevasses. Besides, the slope —

is not likely to be steep / .

        Glaciers are like rivers in that some parts of the bed have a steep

grade with a rapid flow, others have gentler grading with slower movement.

If you cannot land at the head of a glacier, you will then select those lower

sectors which are level and slow-moving — this for the double reason of few

crevasses and a relatively gentle slope of the surface as a whole.

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        In spring and summer, when thaws have melted away the snow bridges over

crevasses, it may on rare occasions be advisable to come down at right

angles to the trend of the glacier, which means coming down parallel to the

crevasses. This will he only when the pilot’s judgment tells him that the

belt between two crevasses is level and wide enough so that his plane is

not going to slide sidewise down one slope or the other.

        [?] In winter, when crevasses are hidden by snow, the plane will come down

at right angles to what the pilot thinks will be the trend of the crevasses.

        If the descent is upon a glacier which is so large that it divides Into

two or more branches, or rivers, then a good place for landing will usually

be back of the peninsula of land, or the land hummock, which has divided

the ice stream; for there is less ice movement back of an obstruction than

there is back of an open channel.

        Comparative Safety of Ice Landings . Bare earth in the Arctic is seldom

smooth. In summer it is either rocky or muddy, often both. In winter the

frozen mud is as hard as rock and sometimes angular. During winter in the

Arctic it is usually safest to come down on lakes. Sometimes in summer about

the only way you can make a good landing in many arctic islands is to come

down on a glacier, which can often be done successfully with wheels down.

The next choice will be a belly landing in a meadow (wet grassland) or on a

part of a glacier which looks smooth. (Most arctic islands are either flat

enough, to have meadows or rugged enough to have glaciers.)

       

Icecaps

        The nature of icecaps is most readily understood, and the misconceptions

usually connected with them are most easily avoided, if we consider theory

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

first, particularly the history of the theory.

        Icecap t T heories and Beliefs . The icecap concept derives from the ancient —

mediterranean theory of Five Zones: a middle or torrid zone, considered too

hot for plant or animal life, because the sun was too near and too vertical;

two temperate zones on either side, where the sun’s distance and slant were

thought to be just about right; and two end zones believed eternally frozen

and without life, because they were too far from the sun, with its rays too

slanting.

        While the theory of Five Zones is considered to rest upon Pythagorean

speculation of 500 or 600 years before Christ, there were after that sons

centuries during which the philosophers, the scientists of that day, still

continued to believe the stories found in Herodotus and elsewhere to the effect

that the tropics were habitable and crossable. The rigid theory, with both

tropics and polar regions looked upon as unlivable and uncrossable, seems not

to have won full sway until in the second or first century before Christ, after

which time it retained its unbroken control of Europe’s thinking until the

fifteenth century, when the concept of the burning and lifeless tropics was

finally broken down by the southward voyages of the Portuguese.

        A part of the concept of the frozen polar zones was the idea that life

is difficult or impossible if snow covers the ground for a considerable time

each year. This view doubtless came in part from the observed fact that when

mountains are very high, and therefore snow-covered, no readily noticeable

life is found above the snow line.

        So from the concept of the Five Zones with equatorial superheat and

polar supercold, developed the concept of icecaps which were thought to have

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their centers at either geographic pole and to stretch their ice toward the

Equator uniformly in all directions.

        The Shrinking Icecap . In the first century after Christ, Strabo, destined

to become the controlling geographical thinker for the Middle Ages, considered

that the southern edge of the northern icecap was a little north of Scotland.

That was the main reason why he refused to believe the narrative of Pytheas,

which claimed that around 330 B.C. the Greeks had sailed from Scotland to

Iceland, a day’s sail beyond which (thus north from northwestern Iceland)

they finally met the dense fog and sludge ice of the East Greenland current.

        Although the Pytheas narrative was generally disbelieved by the learned

of Europe for more than a thousand years, northward exploration still gradually

broke down the concept of the northern icecap; or, rather, moved its southern

theoretical edges farther and farther north upon the maps. Finally, almost

complete superficial exploration of the Arctic has now shown that there is

no northern pole-centered icecap of the nature postulated by the Greeks, who

thought of the Arctic Sea, and the North Atlantic to the vicinity of Scotland,

as frozen to the bottom.

        Contrast between Arctic and Antarctic . Antarctic exploration has shown

that there is in the south an icecap which fits in roughly with Greek theory.

Therefore, in the sense of cosmographic thinking, it has been proved that the

Greeks were right about the Antarctic although wrong about the Arctic.

        Greenland Has an Icecap . But it has turned out that there is one notable

icecap in the Arctic, though not pole-centered. This covers the island conti–

nent, or continental island, of Greenland, a land which has approximately the

area of those twenty-six states which are east of the Mississippi, from Maine

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to Florida and back to Wisconsin. This semicontinent is now estimated to be

about 84% permanently snow-covered. However, the estimated percentage of

snow - free land has thus far been increased by every advance of exploration, —

and it way turn out that snow which persists from one season to the next

does not cover more than 80% of Greenland. The largest free areas are on

the southern west coast, on the central east coast, and on the central

north coast.

        What has been called the largest natural airplane landing field in the

northern Hemisphere is the said 80% ice coverage of Greenland. However, the

crevassed portions of the edges of the inland ice ear hardly be called natural

landing fields although planes have made safe descents upon them. (The

first of such descents was made by Bert Hassel and Parker Cramer in 1928,

and was, indeed, the first airplane descent ever made upon any sort of Green–

landic inland ice. This was back of the Holsteinsborg district.)

        The Theory of Inland Ice Formation . The most popular theory to account

for the permanent snow coverage rests on the premise that there are in Green–

land two fairly continuous coastal ranges of mountains, along the east and

west coasts, and the eastern ones occasionally rising above 10,000 feet,

the western range being 2,000 or 3,000 feet lower.

        The supposition is that with the rise of these mountains, or perhaps with

a combined rise and a change of climate, snow that did not melt from season

to season began to gather in both eastern and western ranges. Glaciers then

flowed seaward from both coastal mountain chains, to break up and float away

as icebergs. But those glaciers that flowed inland from the two ranges were

destined to meet near the center, there to build up gradually until now the

east-west contour of Greenland, along most parallels, is something like that —

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that of the upper half of an old-fashioned watch placed face down on a table:

fairly steep gradients upward from the seaward margin of the ice at each

coast to an elevation of 3,000 or 4,000 feet; a gentle gradient thence to

6,000 or 7,000 feet; and from there to the center a grade which is not per–

ceptible to unaided human faculties and determinable only by instrument.

        One of the disputes about this theory is in relation to the “original”

height of the mountains. Some think there might have been, at the start of

the ice formation, fairly high mountains pretty well all over Greenland, and

that those not at the edges have been squashed down since by the tremendous

weight of the central ice. This variant of the theory would seem to imply,

then, that if the ice were removed, a geologically - speaking rapid re-elevation —

of the land would take place.

        Theory of a Local Wind System . Although not first to climb the inland

ice, Peary, who made his first icecap journey in 1886, may have been the first

to emphasize the prevalence of down-slope winds. He found that when —

he advanced eastward and upward from the west coast there were strong winds in

his face most days, and that on his return journey they were usually at his

back.

        From the confirmation of Peary’s observation by travelers, on both east

and west coasts, there has developed a theory of gravitational flow of the

winds. According to this there will be, along the north-south median line of

Greenland, or a little to the east of it, an area of relative calm, with snow–

falls that are level and remain soft until gradually pressed down through

gravity and the physical changes that take place in snow with time.

        The theory does not necessarily deny, however, that there are occasionally

in this area of relative calm some strong winds, which are considered to be of

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large cyclonic character. These winds have been looked upon as interrupting

temporarily the gravitational circulation.

        A necessary part of the concept of a central calm area is the one that

when you go east from the calm belt there are winds of increased frequency

and strength at your back, with a predominance of violent gales when you

reach the steep downward slope in the vicinity of the ocean. The like would

be true of increasing east winds at your back as you move west from the postu–

lated calm area.

        By this theory, the winds blowing westward toward s Baffin Bay would not —

be as violent as those blowing eastward toward Denmark Strait and the Green–

land Sea. The difference would result partly from the greater height of the

inland ice in the east, and the resulting steeper descent, but would be

influenced even more by the relative warmth of the eastern sea. (At all times

of year the air would be colder over the inland ice than over the ocean on

either side, but the difference would be less to the west, where Davis Strait

and Baffin Bay are colder than the main body of the Atlantic which lies to

the east of Greenland.)

        [?] The Glacier Broom . The above theory leads to the concept of the Glacier

Broom — winds that sweep eastward and westward toward either coast, brushing

the snow along before them.

        Surface Characteristics . There would be, then, near to central Greenland,

a prevalence of level snow. If this levelness is not of fundamental importance,

it is nevertheless significant. For one thing, the hard snowdrifts ( sastrugi sastrugi ) —

from the occasional gales would usually be covered by soft snow in a manner to

make them [ ?] visually hard to detect, particularly from an airplane.

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        So, as we approach either coast, coming from the inte n ri or, we find an in- —

crease of harder and harder snowdrifts, which will make landing with ski

planes,, and belly landings, more bumpy and more likely to cause injury to

aircraft.

       

Central Icecap Research Stations

        If it be desired to establish research stations with airplane landing

fields near the north-south median line of Greenland, it will be necessary

to try out, through long-continued and varied tests, the usefulness of snow concrete.

        Snow Con c rete . It is a commonplace in the Arctic that, if a sledging

party travels in cold weather during or immediately after a fall of snow, and

if a gale comes within the next few days, the trail will stand up in the

form, of what has been called snow concrete. Where the runners have passed.

and especially if the load on the sledge s was heavy, there now are two ridges

that look like the rails on a railway track. The footprints of the men will

be elevated, each on its pillar and of the same area as the sole of the foot.

These elevated footprints, altar a stiff gale, may be as such as two or three

inches higher than the rest of the snow surface; for the gale has swept away

the uncompressed snow but has not been able to carry away the hardened

columns underneath each footprint. The prints of the dogs will be elvetaed

elevated similarly, each standing on its slender stem, like a flower.

        Here and there the rail-like trail of the sled, and the elevated foot–

prints of the men and dogs, will, he hidden by snowdrifts. Between these new

drifts is where you see the old trail as described.

        Perhaps even more impressive than the hardness and consequent durability

of this kind of snow trail, is the difference between snow blocks and soft

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snow when you are building a snowhouse.

        The workman cuts the house building blocks from drifts which are bard

enough so that a man who walks across them leaves barely a trace of his steps

— snow that is so hard that, although a block 30 inches long, 18 inches wide , —

and 4 inches thick may weigh 50 or more pounds, still the material is [ ?]

strong enough so that, if he avoids jars, he can handle it with safety. As

he builds the snow wall he leaves cracks between the blocks. When the house

has been completed, he finds some soft snow in the neighborhood, or he makes

some by grinding fragments of broken blocks under his heel till they are

powdery. With mittened hand he now rubs this into the crevices or seams

between the blocks. If, with a fingertip or a pencil, he feels this snow

immediately after it is pressed into the crevice, it will be soft in compari–

son with the blocks on either side. But next morning this erstwhile soft

snow will be much [ ?] harder than the blocks, so much harder that if a house

is being demolished it will prove that the breakages are more likely to be

athwart the blocks than along the seams.

        In a way this greater strength of what were last night the weak places of

the wail is analogous to the case of a broken human bone, which, after a good.

healing, is stronger where it broke than it is on either side;. However, this

analogy should not be pressed; for apparently the increased strength of the

bone is due mainly to a greater amount of osseous tissue at the location of

the previous break, while the seams between the snow blocks are, on the con–

trary,, nearly always thinner than the blocks themselves, so that the greater

strength in the seams is not due to a greater mass of snow but to its superior

quality.

        It is important to remember that the formation of snow concrete, of which

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we are giving this s uperficial description, does not take place readily or —

spectacularly at temperatures that are only a little below freezing. So far

as we know, the process works the better the lower the temperature.

        The formation of snow concrete must not be confused in one’s thinking

with that formation of ice which results from slushy snow when a thaw is fol–

lowed by a freezing. For one thing, a crust formed by snow freezing after a

thaw reminds of fresh-water ice, or of glass, in its t exture, and breaks some- — —

what after the manner of glass. Snow concrete reminds, rather, of ordinary

concrete — hence its name.

        Hardening Icecap Airfields . So far as we know, it ought to be feasible,

with mechanical rollers and the power, to produce, by rolling after every

snowfall, an airfield of snow concrete such that even the heaviest wheeled

planes could eventually land safely.

        It would be a matter of experiment to determine how long this would take

and what the best method would be. For instance, we do not know at present

whether it would be a wise thing to have the rolling continuous during a

snowfall, so as to do the field over again for each one or two inches of

fluffy snow, or whether it is better to wait until the snowfall is over and

then compress several inches, perhaps a foot of fluffy snow, at one operation.

Neither do we know what the optimum pressure would be. Probably the heavier

the rollers, the stronger the snow concrete.

        Artificial Surfacing for Snow Airfields . If it should prove that stamping

or rolling the surface after each snowfall does not, in course of time, pro–

duce a surface hard and strong enough for large wheeled planes, the alterna–

tive will be to use steel, or other matting or aprons, after the manner customary

where planes have to land on muddy or otherwise soft ground. About this there

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will be the difficulty, however, that the mats are going to get buried in snow.

This is not serious on land in the Arctic, tor the snow of winter is going

to melt away the next summer. It might be serious on the inland ice where

no melting ordinarily takes place.

        However, should it be decided to use matting to give a sustaining surface

to a snow landing field, and should the matting get buried, it might prove

feasible to thaw it out next summer by the use of lampblack, crankcase oil,

or some similar dark material, after the manner we have detailed in connection

with lakes.

        Winds at a Central Station . If the icecap station is located in the belt

of relative calms, the blizzard element of the problem should be less serious

than in prairie districts like the state of North D a kota or the province of —

Saskatchewan. Apart, then, from the production of snow concrete, which we

have just dis uc cu ssed, we could no doubt take over for Greenland in a body

the winter upkeep practices used in the northern prairie states.

        It will always be important on the icecap, though of less moment near

its center than near the margins, to see to it that buildings are not near

enough to the landing strips so that snowdrifts formed in their lee during a

blizzard can extend out upon the runways. Similarly, one would have to be

careful that tractors, and even small gear like a sledges, shall never be left —

as snowdrift gatherers on the field, or just to windward of it. The prevail–

ing winds, or the direction of the strongest winds, would be determined and

the buildings placed to leeward of the field.

        Temperatures in the Relatively Calm Area . It is possible that the Cold Pole

of the northern Hemisphere will, eventually be discovered on the [ ?] inland ice

of Greenland, then probably somewhere near 78° or 79° N. latitude, between

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W w est longitudes 30° and 50° . If so, the minima of certain winters may drop to —

lower than 93° F. below zero, 125° below freezing, which is about the lowest

temperature ever recorded in the Oimekon-Verkhoy i ansk “Cold Pole” region of —

northeastern Siberia.

        A temperature of −90° may seem forbidding to those not used to it. An

apparently reliable man who spent two winters at Verkhoy i ansk reports, first —

that he never observed extreme cold there unless the air was “perfectly

still,” meaning that smoke would go straight up. When the air was still, at

Verkhoy i ansk the weather was not considered too cold for children to play out —

of doors. On being asked what games the children played at this temperature,

he reported that during recess the pupils would divide into equal groups

on either side of a school building and throw a ball over — which is our

game of “ante-over,” and which is played in states like North Dakota at

temperatures which sometimes drop to the vicinity of −50° F. (Sixty degrees

below is the lowest temperature reported by the Weather Bureau from North

Dakota; towns in Montana have minimum records of 63° below zero; in Wyoming

the minimum record for a town is −66°.)

        If it be suggested, then, that an inland ice research station and air base

should be established at or near the Greenland pole of cold, the planners

will not be facing any insuperable difficulties, and there will be some ad–

vantages.

        For the pole of cold will necessarily have, in winters at least, a pre–

ponderance of weather which is both calm and clear, and these are cardinal

advantages in aviation. Being very cold, the air will be very heavy in rela–

tion to altitude, so that it will have a greater lifting power on airplane

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wings than would be expected, at the given altitude in less cold regions. So

far as we know, the concreting quality of snow improves with a drop in

temperature. If this theory be correct, it will follow that rolling the land–

ing strips will produce a stronger and harder surface at the pole of cold

than elsewhere.

        Keeping the surface in condition by rolling will be easier at the c C old —

p P ole than elsewhere, since the snowfalls will be relatively light and the —

snow will tend to lie both evenly and long enough to give time for rolling.

        With some of our machinery, as it is now, there will undoubtedly be

difficulty in operating at 90° below zero. But experience in operating

machinery at extreme low temperatures would add to the importance of a scien–

tific station connected with an airfield located at the pole of cold.

        Buildings at the Pole of Cold . The more uniform the cold, and the lower

the minima, the greater the need for insulation in buildings. But there are

few better insulators than snow. The problem is, then, to make effective

use of this inexhaustible and superior local supply of insulating material.

We do not go into that problem here for it is covered in this Encyclopedia

under housing housing and under snowhouses snowhouses . — — remove underscores

       

Air Stations in the Marginal Areas

        As you move east or west in Greenland, from the median line of relatively

few strong winds, you naturally progress into more and more windy areas. This

produces a progressive change in the snow surface as you approach either coast.

        Effects of Strong Winds . Since the winds are stronger and more numerous

near the margins of the inland ice, the snowdrifts [ ?] become both harder and

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larger — especially harder. So the problem of keeping an air landing strip

level becomes more and more difficult as you approach either coast.

        Working Hard Snow Surfaces . The very fact that the wind pounds the snow

to a certain degree of hardness makes it more difficult to secure the further

hardening that is available through rolling soft snow. Trial [ ?] may show,

however, that it will be feasible to use rollers so extremely heavy that they

will crush down even the hard drifts. Alternatively, it may prove feasible

first to level the drifts by appropriate machines and to follow this process

immediately by a rolling of the field. For next in ease to forming snow

concrete from new-fallen flakes comes forming it out of snow that has

recently been finely crushed.

        Perhaps some kind of rotary machine could be developed which at [ ?] one

and the same time could take off the tops of the snowdrifts and convert the

removed portions into fine powdery snow. If that can be attained, the

concreting process through rolling will be facilitated.

        It is clear, then, that the nearer you get to the margin of the inland

ice, the less suitable the conditions are for an air base. The snowdrifts be–

come more and more of a handicap; blizzards that interfere with visibility

will increase in. number and violence. Crevasses become more and more numerous,

as well as tending to be wider.

        Landing Fields Below the Margin of the Inland Ice . A number of places have

been found in Greenland which are close below the margin of the inland ice and

are areas of calm. In these it seems that the air which comes off the edge

of the snow-covered island continent is behaving like a vast Niagara; and just

as it is possible to walk behind Niagara Falls, so is it to walk under or behind

this aerial cascade. Air is lighter than water and will overshoot much farther

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than possible with a waterfall. So there are, in some places, several square

miles of calm territory right in under the edge of the ice. When there is a

violent gale pouring off the ice escarpment, it strikes the ground to the

seaward of this overshot space, and tears along the earth’s surface from there

outward until it is neutralized by a local static condition of the atmosphere,

or by a contrary wind.

        The calm under - cascade places of this nature that have been reported —

so far are without a permanent ice covering. But it does not seem unlikely

that if a search were made on e could discover a number of peninsulas, on —

either coast of Greenland, that have upon them relatively static ice, with

few crevasses and a comparatively level surface, and where an area large

enough for a landing field would be sheltered on our behind-a-waterfall

principle.

        If temporary landing fields are in view, areas like those just described ,

can no doubt be found in glacier-free localities that have lakes. The ice of

the lakes can then be used in winter for wheel and ski plane landings, while

the liquid water will give boat facilities in summer.

       

USE OF ICE FOR SURFACE TRANSPORT USE OF ICE FOR SURFACE TRANSPORT —

        Introductory . This paper began with the aviation uses of ice; for in the

current stage of progress the natural transportation approach to a vast un–

coloni s z ed region, like the combined area of the northerly Subarctic and Arctic, —

is through the airplane; it is as natural now to pioneer by air as it formerly

was to do it by water, the plane taking the place of every water [ ?] device,

from canoe to steamboat and ship. In the North the plane attempts also to

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take the place of land devices, such as sledges drawn by dogs, reindeer , and —

horses. The plane will have growing arctic competition from other transpor–

tation agencies, among them railways and highways.

        In liquid water transportation, lakes and rivers now compete with the

combined forces of airway, highway , and railway. However, the rivers and —

lakes, and even the sea, are handicapped in the North through being frozen

over during a part of the year; end this handicap increases the farther north

we go, the open season on some parts of some of the great rivers being only a

third of the year; some lakes, and parts of the N n orthwest and N n ortheast sea —

passages, are still more handicapped for boats in that the open season is

only a quarter of the year , in some places and during some years even less —

than that.

        Motivation therefore Increases northward for using ice roads for sledges

to supplement the water routes of boats. Especially river ice, but also the

sea ice along coasts, has been used extensively for freighting with sledges

drawn by animals. Now tractor trains are coming in. It seems that, through —

tractor freighting, the rivers are on the threshold of great development.

        This brings us back to what we said in the introductory pages of this

article about the strategic relation which the Arctic Sea and [ ?] its tribu–

tary rivers hold to northern transportation, particularly in the developmen–

tal stage before railways and highways are built. For the north-flowing

streams radiate, like the spokes of a wheel, away from a hub which is the

arctic mediterranean sea, each of the four greatest rivers navigable by steamers

In summer for 2,000 miles and penetrating to the heart of their respective

continents, the Mackenzie for North America, the Ob, Yenisei , and Lena for —

Asia.

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        These roughly estimated mileages refer to the main streams, not to their

tributaries. Some branches of the Mackenzie, like the Athabaska, have been

navigated commercially by steamers drawing as little as 20 inches, which

practice will add a thousand and more navigable miles to each of the four

great systems. But then winter comes, closing the steamer season but opening

that of the sledge; and sledges can travel over ice made from less than twenty

inches of water.

        So each of the four greatest northern river systems will furnish in

winter a system of ice roads of at least 5,000 miles and fanning out, or rather

palming out like the fingers of a giant hand, southward into the regions of

wheat farming and of east-west railways. The southward river traffic [ ?] carries

the people and produce of the Arctic and Subarctic to the railways; the north–

ward traffic carries people and manufactured goods through Subarctic and

Arctic to the Arctic Sea. Food supplies move both ways, the beef and mutton

north, the reindeer meat and fish south. Incidentally, traffic in fresh meats

is easier by sledge in January than by boat in July, through the convenience

of natural refrigeration.

        The additional factor, freezing, which increases the winter transportation

mileage of northern rivers beyond that of summer, is also a factor of con–

venience, as illustrated on the Mackenzie system between Edmonton and Aklavik.

        In summer, a northbound railway freight car loaded at Edmonton has to be

unloaded at Waterways for transfer to a cargo steamer; the steamer is unloaded

at Fitzgerald for trucking to Smith, and the truck unloaded at Smith for trans–

fer to a steamer that covers the rest of the distance to Aklavik. But in

winter a freight package, say a ten-ton piece of -machinery, can be placed in

Edmonton upon a sleigh that does not have to he unloaded till it reaches its

085      |      Vol_VII-0717                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

final destination, at the end of steamboat navigation in Aklavik or even at

some farther destination, perhaps on the arctic shore of Canada.

        The Former Role of Northern - Rivers. In heavy freighting the northern —

rivers have long been important during summer, for they have connected the

railway belt of the middle north temperate zone with the Arctic, serving the

multitudinous and growing industries of the greet valleys. But the steamers

operate less than half the year, because of the freeze - ups, and they do not —

reach far upstream along the smeller branch valleys because of the shoal water.

So winter sledging has a field longer in time, larger in the area served.

        Walking is older than rafting or canoeing and there is no doubt that man

walked along the smooth ice of the northern rivers in winter long before they

were anything but a transportation handicap to him in summer. The sledge may

also be more ancient than the canoe, and snow-covered frozen streams are

ideal for sledging. The reindeer may be as old a domestic animal as the horse,

and the dog precedes both; so it may be that winter travel and freighting by

dog and reindeer is more ancient than the invention of the wheel and the use

of wagons anywhere. The use of [ ?] frozen rivers may be one of the earliest

of man’s great strides of cultural advance.

        Speculation aside, the first European explorers reported sledging by

reindeer and dog as an established practice along all the north-flowing rivers

of the Old World, and of dog sledging along those of the New. When the Russians

began to spread through northern Siberia they introduced the horse in places

to supplant or supplement the reindeer; in other places they developed further

and improved upon those methods of reindeer and dog travel which they found

in use among the local people. In North America the horse never competed with

086      |      Vol_VII-0718                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

the dog on the lower Mackenzie. In Alaska the horse did compete with the

dog, particularly on the upper Yukon and its branches end especially during

the first two or three decades after the 1893 Gold Rush. Then came that

railway development which made steam boating unprofitable on the Yukon [ ?] in

summer; it also made horse travel impractical on most sections of that river

in winter.

        But a new era for ice travel started with the development of the track–

laying tractor, able to pull long trains of heavy sledges. Before the be–

ginning of World War II this art had been advanced to a point where an

estimated 1,100 tons of green logs were hauled on a sledge train behind

a single tractor. Such s feet is impossible on the best overland snow roads

that traverse even gently rolling country, for so big a load is at present

not mov e able by an ordinary tractor except on a water-level highway where —

the upgrade, if any, is imperceptible to human faculties and shown by in–

struments to be of the order of a foot to the mile.

        Dog Freighting on the Yukon . Although not geographically comparable to

the Mackenzie and the three great northern rivers of Asia, since it does not

reach from the Arctic Sea into the farming and transcontinental railway belts,

the [ ?] Yukon is nevertheless of great transportation importance, almost comparable

to the big four in length and with a climate which gives a longer season to the

sledge than to the steamboat. However, its winter freighting has not been impor–

tant in the past, nor is it easy to forecast a great role for it in the near

future.

        Before the arrival of whites, all winter river freighting was haphazard,

and chiefly a service to a local community — the s el le dges seldom arrived from a —

distance of more than a hundred miles or so, and their business was things like

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visiting around to join in midwinter festivals and then the transport of a

family with its goods from one district to another — usually to no great

distance since there were tribal hostilities and other reasons for not going

far.

        Our present discussion centers upon the use of the ice, so the details

of this freighting will be reserved for an article on the transportation section in another — —

volume of the Encyclopedia, where we are going to be concerned rather with the

uses of the sled, under its [ ?] various motive powers of dog, reindeer, horse , —

and tractor. We shall there discuss the rather extensive use of the upper

Yukon for horse sledging during the early decades of our century.

        Dog Freighting on the Mackenzie . In prewhite times, and during the pioneer

stages of the fur trade under the North West Company and the early Hudson’s

Bay Company, the winter use of the Mackenzie was similar to that of the Yukon.

But things changed when the Hudson’s Bay Company became more tightly organized,

particularly under the administration of Sir George Simpson (1826-1860). Most

of the heavy river freighting was still done in summer, for canoe transport

was traditional both to the Europeans who made up the Company and to the

Indians with whom the traders dealt throughout the valley. But the needs of

administration soon brought about a moderately systematized winter transport

where packets were carried by toboggan northward from Edmonton in relays

of 100 and 200 miles from one Hudson’s Bay Company “fort” to another, as far

north as where the Peel joins the main stream of the Mackenzie at the head of

the delta.

        Around the middle of the nineteenth century, La Pierre’s House was estab–

lished on the Bell River, and Fort Yukon where the Porcupine joins the Yukon.

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This opened several decades in which the Mackenzie sledging was continued over

the divide from the Peel to the Bell and then down that river to the Porcu–

pine end thus to the Yukon proper at Fort Yukon. This system was still in

use at the time of the 1898 Gold Rush, and the Mackenzie became one of the

routes to the Klondike, at which time a few horses were used on the lower

Mackenzie. (The last use of the horse appears to have been when the brothers

Willoughby and Reuben Mason had a pair which they turned loose to shift for

themselves in 1912. That the country is in a way suited to the horse was

shown by the sporadic appearance of that team for a number of years when they

were sighted either by whites or by Indians. They may have died of old age,

but it is likelier that they were destroyed by wolves — which, after all,

pull down the moose, an equally strong animal and native to these woods.)

        Dog f F reighting in Siberia . Many of the northern rivers in any part of —

the Arctic have soft snow on them for long reaches; only North America had

the best sledge for such going, the toboggan. The Lapp sled, a sort of cross

between a toboggan and a snow boat, is fairly good for soft going; but this sled

is not found to [ ?] the east in Siberia except that there were toboggans among

the Evenki of the forest between the Yenisei and Lena. Only the North

Americans developed the tandem manner of hitching dogs, the one harness

suited, for thick brush. This harnessing was a great step forward, since the

pre - white users of the sled had frequent occasion to leave the clear ice roads —

of the rivers for the woods and bushes.

        We can generalize, therefore, that dog freighting on river ice was, in

northern Asia, of the same sporadic nature as in North America, but less

developed because of less adequate sledges, harness , and hitching. —

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        The Reindeer on Northern Rivers . When the domestic reindeer was intro–

duced into Alaska, through the gradual importation of 1,280 head between 1892

and 1902, it was done from the point of view of a charity, where the beast

was intended by the whites as a food supply for the Eskimos. However, the

industry was to be; developed under the tutelage of Lapps who were imported

to teach herding. But they were in the habit of driving reindeer in their

home country, and so there took place along Bering Sea end Strait a slight

development of reindeer driving for a few years. However, the Lapps soon

agreed that, for most Alaska uses, and in view of the fashions and prejudices

of the whites, it was better to use either dogs or horses. Historically

speaking, then, the use of the reindeer was of slight extent and small sig–

nificance upon and around the lower Yukon.

        Although reindeer were introduced to the lower Mackenzie in 1935, and

although they are having there a moderate development, this has been strictly

as a food animal and there has been no reindeer freighting anywhere on the

Mackenzie.

        On the Siberian rivers, reindeer freighting was in extensive use when

the first Russians got there, and they presently developed it still further.

In Siberia the reindeer, besides continuing to serve the purposes of the

local people, now began to play its role in the special activities of the

Russians, among them fur trading and the exile system. Many a group of

exiles, coming from European Russia, made direct and speedy progress north–

eastward, first by horse and then by reindeer, until they reached the deltas

of the great rivers. Overland routes, from one arctic river to another, dis–

tributed both traders and exiles along she smaller streams as far as to and

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beyond the Kolyma. Measured lineally from starting point to destination,

and considering both the horse and the reindeer, the longest of these were

by far the longest sledging routes that history chronicles.

        Tractors on Northern Rivers . After this slight historical sketch of

river ice, in its relation to dog team, reindeer , and horse transportation, —

we turn to motorized river traffic, without attempting any history, consider–

ing only generalities and so-called principles. The Arctic is so new for

tractors that there has not been time for much history, nor have methods or

routes been stabilized as yet. For Alaska and arctic Canada, the information

has been scattered and difficult to come by, but these difficulties have

now been largely overcome, especially as regards Alaska, through the gather–

ing together of data for this Encyclopedia. (See various articles, dealing

wholly or partly with transportation problems, elsewhere in this volume

and in other volumes.)

        For the Soviet Union there are the same difficulties of scattered and

hard-to-find information, and the additional one of secrecy. It is difficult

to guess even approximately the degree to which northern freighting by river

ice has been developed by the Soviets since World War II. The development is

no doubt considerable. For, in comparison with Alaska and Canada, they made

extensive and efficient use of river roads as winter highways in the stage of

the reindeer and horse, which it would be natural for them to follow up with

h correspondingly greater emphasis upon motorized river freighting. For one

thing, many of those now highest in the Soviet government, among them Stalin,

were during Cz Ts arist days carried by horse and reindeer sleigh as prisoners —

down, the Yenisei and Lena, also crossing by sledge from the great to the

091      |      Vol_VII-0723                                                                                                                  
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smaller river valleys and thus becoming personally familiar with, the Cz Ts ar’s —

extensive network of horse and reindeer winter transport. This network they

would in consequence naturally include, when they came to power, in the

general mechanization program of the Soviet Union — we know they did before

the W w ar and may presume they have so continued. —

       

Northern Rivers as Winter Roads

        Rivers as Winter Roads . Rivers as winter freighting routes have been so

little used as yet in the United States or Canada that their possibilities

appear to be little appreciated and even misunderstood. For Instance, it is

commonly said that sledges will break through the ice, and that the river ice

in many places is too rough even for the use of caterpillar tractors. Both

statements are true if the rivers are used carelessly and without knowledge

of their nature as well as without any preparation. However, knowledge of

the the nature and behavior of a given river is readily acquired [ ?] and the —

preparation of winter roads, though it has to be repeated every autumn, does

not entail, on the average, more work than does the ordinary yearly upkeep

of paved motor highways.

        Laying Out of the Road . In the autumn, when the river begins to freeze

over, the proposed winter trail should be staked out or flagged. The first

objective is that, when feasible, the road shall not follow or cross any

places where the current in the river is so strong that ice is going to be

kept thin thereby, This is sometimes difficult on narrow rivers but in seldom

difficult on wide streams, where the current will usually be swifter at one

bank than the other. Difficult stretches are possible even on great rivers,

as on the Mackenzie at the Good Hope ramparts; but the difficulty will not be

insuperable, as appears below.

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        The trail can be so chosen as to avoid a good deal of the second diffi–

culty, roughness; but it is not compulsory to avoid this, for it can be

smoothed out readily.

        Formation of Rough River Ice . Rough ice at sea is formed through pres–

sure of wine and current; on rivers the case is special. An extreme case is

a swift northern stream like the Coppermine, where two things happen at

once, that the freeze-up comes swiftly through a rapid drop in temperature

and that the river level drops fast because the freezing of the land stops

water from seeping into the river. Take, then, a boulder-strewn rapid. Ice

an inch to four or six in thickness will form on the water surface and then

settle down, upon the rocks as the water level drops. At first the stones

support the foe as if it were a flat roof said up by pillars; but sooner or

later the ice will break and huge, irregular flakes of it, like plate glass

from a smashed window, will fall into the water, which starts carrying them

along. But there come a time and a place where the water cannot transport

the broken ice farther and it heaps up, most of the plates irregularly rising

on edge, some of them a few inches, and others a few feet, higher than what

is now the water level. The water freezes, holding the slivers of broken

window-glass ice in a matrix. The next blizzard fills all the interstices

with snow and you have what may look from a distance like a level surface

but where a man or dog will find difficult walking.

        Leveling Rough Patches . It has been suggested that this kind of rough

river ice can be leveled with bulldozers, which may be advisable in some cases;

but ordinarily; when a winter road, is being laid out, the ice is not as yet

strong enough to bear heavy machinery and the work should be done with miner’s

093      |      Vol_VII-0725                                                                                                                  
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pickaxes. For the time to do it is as soon as the river has set firmly, as

soon as it becomes probable that the ice will not break again, forming more

rough patches. There are at least two additional reasons for doing the work

early: it is the easier to splinter ice with a pick the less snow there is

in the crevices; and, in any case,, you want to get such things done in that early, —

idle part of the season when the main body of river ice is not as yet strong

enough for heavy freighting.

        It will not be appreciated by those who have not tried it how easy it

is to work ice if one has the right tools, or rather the right tool, a medium

weight miner’s pick. For this job, on a river like the Mackenzie, Indians

or other residents along the stream would be employed. It is not likely that

there are many stretches where it would take more than two days with the local

manpower readily available to smooth sufficiently the comparatively few rough

places between one village and the next. It may be true that on certain parts

of the river more than two days per year will be needed; but surely the aver–

age for an entire river, Mackenzie, Yukon , or Lena, will be less than a week —

a year. Naturally the number of days needed will increase if manpower is re–

duced.

        Snow Blanketing . It is well known to all travelers on northern rivers that , —

although no warm weather has intervened, ice which is a foot thick this week may be only an inch or two thick next week , —

although no warm weather has intervened, if there has intervened been a heavy snow- —

fall and if there are involved stretches of river which have rapid currents.

This is the reason why so many travelers make the general statement that sledge

travel, and more especially tractor travel, on northern rivers is unsafe. How–

ever, the difficulty can be dealt with in several ways , . —

        We have already indicated the main way of circumventing the difficulty --

094      |      Vol_VII-0726                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

by staking out in the fall a trail which avoids parts of the river where the

current is swift.

        The trail should he so staked as to avoid locally known places of heavy

snow accumulation, as under certain cutbanks.

        There are in certain stretches of any river well-known “blow holes,” where

the wind sweeps the snow from certain stretches of ice and piles it up on

others. Stretches thus swept free, possessing no w snow insulation, will a l most — —

necessarily have thick ice — it would have to be a terrifically strong cur–

rent to keep them open. Therefore we have in these stretches sections of the

trail that are automatically safe.

        What makes the snow such a marvelous insulator that it allows a current

to eat away ice previously thick, is its fluffiness — the numerous and com–

paratively large air chambers which it contains. Snow which is packed down by

traffic, thus converted into snow concrete, contains relatively few and small

air spaces; indeed, with continuous traffic and packing after every snowfall,

the snow is pressed almost to the consistency of ice. But ice, unlike snow,

is a good conductor. Therefore it will be true that the river ice will be

considerably thicker beneath the trail itself than it is at either side.

        If it is desired to make the belt of thick ice broad, this can be attained

by rolling the snow. The difficulty of this roiling will be no greater than

what we are used to with snow plows and other means for keeping ordinary high–

ways open during winter in districts near cities like Minneapolis, Helsinki , —

or Irkutsk.

        If it should prove that more work is required on a river road each year

than the equivalent of the upkeep of an ordinary Vermont highway, then it is

095      |      Vol_VII-0727                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

to be remembered that, with a river, the ice highway was provided by nature,

free of charge except for the improvements and upkeep. If we hold this in

mind, we become reconciled to considerably more seasonal work.

        Rapids in Rivers . The foregoing presentation does not apply in places

like the Whitehorse Rapids of the Yukon system, the Smith Rapids on the Slave,

or Bloody Fall on the Coppermine.

        Numerous winter journeys up and down the Coppermine River, one of the

swiftest in North America, have convinced Stefansson that heavy tractor freight–

ing can be done on the ice of even this specially difficult river at all points

except Bloody Fall, where a portage is necessary — and still this is not quite

certain, for Stefansson did sledge past the Fall by a ledge along the cliff

which, although narrow, was apparently thick and strong.

        Portage Roads . However, there are sure to be along most great northern

rivers a number of places where it is advisable to portage rather than to

follow an ice ledge along a bank. This may be merely because the stream

in crooked end distance can be saved by cutting off an ox bow; it may be

also because there are difficult river stretches at points where the portaging

is not difficult and where time can incidentally be saved. Therefore, it should

be a part of the method of staking-out the river road in autumn not to follow

the stream slavishly but to go up on the land whenever that is desirable. On

such portages it will no doubt be necessary to “construct a winter road,” mean–

ing the elimination of trees and the preparation of a few grades, especially

where there are cutbanks.

        Grades at Cutbanks. In some cases it will no doubt be advisable to construct

a permanent grade from earth, as customary in road - building farther south. In —

many places, however, it will probably be advisable to make the grade construction

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

afresh each autumn. This will be done by cutting down trees or bushes, piling

them up in a suitable way, and filling the interstices with snow which can then

be soaked in water pumped or sluiced, from the nearby river or from a lake.

        Portage Roads and Muskegs . When there is difficulty on portages with

tractors sinking down into a muskeg during winter, this must be either because

there are warm springs in the neighborhood or because the snow is extremely

heavy, blanketing the ground. Warm springs are rare in the [ ?] North and will

simply have to be avoided. The difficulty with the snow b al la nket decreases, —

and nearly disappears, when traffic is heavy — for the reason already given,

that heavily packed snow gets the qualities of ice and ceases to be an effec–

tive blanket.

        The difficulty with muskegs is, on the average, less the farther north;

for the permafrost approaches nearer and nearer to the surface. It will not

be long, then, until the autumn chill of each year reaches down to the perma–

nent frost, making everything solid.

        Type of Tractor . There is said to be s considerable difference in tractors

with regard to how easily they break through ice. It has been used as sales

talk for certain tracklaying tractors that they will go over places that

would break under certain others and that most any tracklayer will, go where

ordinary wheel trucks sink in. It is, of course, advisable that the pressure

on the ice by any vehicle be applied to as large a surface as possible, and

as uniformly as possible.

        The Use of Sledges . Especially on rivers, freighting should be on trains

of sledges. A heavy truck, carrying its own load, will break through thin

autumn ice where a track - laying tractor of medium weight can pull a train of —

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

several sledges with a great total load.

        Crossing Rivers . When rivers have to be crossed, instead of being followed

lengthwise, the crossing will be in those parts of the stream which are wide

and therefore have a sluggish current. But even in wide places there are some–

times localities of comparatively [ ?] swift current. Where those places are

is easy to discover in the autumn, during the time when the stream is freezing;

when a road is being staked out for crossing a river, such patches should be

avoided.

        The Use of Corduroy . There may be places where rivers have to be crossed

under such conditions of swift water that it is believed the ice is likely

to be thin, as in November just when traffic is opening. Those places will be

marked in advance, from local knowledge of the river, and across them an impromptu

or one-season road can be prepared by laying willows at right angles to the

direction of motor traffic, imbedding them in snow or shoveling snow upon

them, and then pouring on water. (Sea [ ?] transportation over land and over ice and Sea bridge) (This is analogous to the process used by

motorists in Australia when they have to cross dry rivers, the beds of which

are filled with such soft sand that vehicles sink down. The travelers then cut

down bushes and hew the branches from trees, laying them in the sand at right

angles to the direction of [ ?] traffic. Frequently each Australian traveling

party makes its own corduory; there are other places where a sort of permanent

corduroy is laid each year, soon after the water disappears from the river bed

after the rainy season, the corduory serving until the next rainy season. In

northern Canada and Alaska we would, then, be doing on the ice of northern rivers

in autumn what the Australians do on their rivers also in autumn.)

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        Fuel Supply . With an exception to be noted for the Mackenzie, petroleum

fuels for winter use on the northern rivers have come from outside their

basins and have been distributed along their courses, and up some of their

branches. The distribution has been generally by steamers pushing scows up

and down stream, or else by scows floating downstream from a railway or an

overland tractor terminal. Thus depots have been established at villages and

other convenient spots from which trucks and tractors could refuel during the

winter.

        The Ob, Yenisei, and Lena are supplied in either of two ways — from the

south, where railways or trucks bring the supplies to the head of navigation;

or from the north, where ocean - going ships reach ports in the deltas or at some —

distance upstream. (In the case of the Yenisei, ocean - going steamers continue —

several hundred miles upstream to Igarka where they unload varied cargoes,

chiefly in exchange for lumber.)

        There [ ?] are three ways of supplying the Yukon River with winter fuel —

by rail w road from Skagway to Whitehorse on the upper reaches; by rail from

Anchorage to Fairbanks and the Tanana, hitting the middle Yukon for both upstre m am

and downstream distribution; and by ocean steamer to the delta, where unloading

in the past has usually been at St. Michael.

        The case of the Mackenzie is special, for of the five great northern

rivers this is the only one which has both its own petroleum and its own

refineries.

        To consider supplyi g ng the Mackenzie with petroleum by way of the delta

is merely academic; it can be done probably nineteen years out of twenty from

the Pacific by roundabout passage through Bering Sea and Strait and along the

north coast of Alaska; but this would be a costly, tedious , and uncertain way of — —

099      |      Vol_VII-0731                                                                                                                  
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of carrying coals to Newcastle. To supply the Mackenzie from the couth would

also be [ ?] open to the coals-to-Newcastle objection though not in itself diffi–

cult. The problem would have been solved long ago had there been any need for

solving it.

        The need for outside petroleum supply to a Mackenzie winter freighting [ ?]

system is obviated through the Mackenzie Valley being recognized as potentially

an oil-producing region through its whole length, from the oil fields of central

Alberta through those of northern Alberta (the Athabaska Tar Sands) to Norman

and beyond. As indicated in the petroleum sections of this Encyclopedia, there

has been for many years intermittent small-scale production and refining in

northern Alberta; while the Norman Wells ref i nery, just south of the Arctic

[ ?] Circle, produces fuels of all the required grades, from aviation gas down.

These are shipped up and down the Mackenzie, and sideways from it, as the neces–

sities determine. The chief diversions, thus far, have been eastward shipment

through Bear River and Bear Lake for theuranium and other mining operations

around Great Bear Lake, and eastward and northward shipment through Great Slave

Lake for the gold mining which centers at Yellowknife.

       

Lake Ice

        The history of European pioneering in northern parts of Siberia and North

America goes to show two things which appear contradictory at first glance, that

tivers by nature have greater transportation significance than [ ?]lakes, but that

lakes have actually been used more than rivers, or at least have been used on a

larger scale and with more extensive application of what we think of as modern

engineering techniques. For instance, winter transport has apparently been of

great er military significance thus far on lakes than on rivers.

100      |      Vol_VII-0732                                                                                                                  
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        Although we intend to arrive at general conclusions, we find it con–

venient to discuss particular lakes as theaters of winter transport — in

North America, Great Bear and Great Slave lakes; in Eurasia, the Lakes

Baikal and Ladoga,

        Importance of Big Lakes . The importance of winter transport on the

greater lakes becomes obvious when we see that, of the dozen largest in North

America, five have ice on them for more than half the year and two others for

a third of the year. Indeed, two lakes which have ice through two-thirds of

the year are larger, each of them, than Lake Erie or Lake Ontario; these are

Bear and Slave. Five North American lakes which are frozen between five and

nine months (Bear, Slave, Athabaska, Reindeer, Nettilling) aggregate beyond

30,000 square miles, and that is the combined area of Massachusetts, Rhode

Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, with half of Vermont added. Such

great waters are useful to steamers in summer; they are correspondingly

significant for tractor-drawn sledge trains in winter,

        Importance of Small Lakes . Of lakes that are frozen half the year, only

a half dozen or so are larger than the state of Connecticut, while a dozen

or two are larger than Rhode Island; the total area of those which are 1,000

square miles and over is perhaps only something like that of New England.

        But in the combined Arctic and Subarctic, the region underlain by perma–

frost in the Old and New worlds, lakes that range in area between an acre and

a thousand square miles will add up to at least as much as the states east of

the Mississippi, from Wisconsin to Florida and back to Maine. For a permanently

frozen subsoil necessarily means a large number of lakes, since there is no

underground drainage. Now permafrost underlies nearly half of the Soviet

Union, more than half of Canada, and most of Alaska, adding up to a permafrost

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

area more than double the size of the 48 States. Such land, except in the

few mountainous regions, is from 20% to 50% covered with lakes. So it is

a reasonable guess that during half the year we have available for tractor

transport, in northern North America and northern Eurasia, a million square

miles of level ice strong enough to bear the heaviest loads that tractors

have ever pulled anywhere.

        Roads from Lake to Lake . These innumerable lakes, ranging from Baikal’s

13,197 square miles down to pond size, are often connected by streams, the

ice of which can be used as a winter road. When not water-connected, lakes

are frequently separated by stretches of swamp that freeze rock-hard in

winter, at least if the snow on them has been concreted by traffic or by

rolling. When there are divides to be crossed between lakes, they are usually

low; for, be it remembered, those lakes which are due to the prevention of

underground drainage by underground frost are of necessity on flat or rolling

land, since a steep gradient, as in mountains, would produce surface drainage.

So it is ordinarily feasible to lay out winter sledge routes that connect

lake with lake and which do not wind about much more than motor highways

usually do in hilly country like New England.

        Laying Out Overland Roads. Since we deal here not with ice transportation

as such, but rather with the advantages and disadvantages of ice in its relation

to winter transport, we leave the main discussion of northern winter roads for

our section on transportation; but a paragraph might still perhaps be inserted

on the laying out of such sledging roads as depend in the main on chains of

lakes (the remarks are necessarily applicable also to those river portage

roads which become necessary for avoiding unfrozen stretches or to save

distance by cutting across an oxbow, and to such lake-route portages as may

seem advisable for crossing islands or peninsulas.)

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        When the overland road of today is run through a forest, there may be

available giant machinery that breaks trees or uproots them and shoves them

aside; but, on the reindeer and horse roads of the past, the method s was to —

use axes and to out the trees so low as to be nearly or quite flush with the

ground. In summer a gang of shovelers might pile in dirt to level the rough

places; in winter the same result was attained with snow, sometimes iced by

pouring on water. If the right-of-way was prairie, there would be merely

the leveling use of dirt or snow. In forest or prairie, rocks were blasted

away, buried in dirt or snow, or circumvented. The chief construction work,

formerly as now, would be where the road descends to a lake or river and

climbs up again on the far side. Here a uniform and fairly gentle grade

would have to be provided, against the hauling of big loads, through building

a ramp of hard-packed snow or blocks of ice, the whole likely cemented by

water. In some cases the ramps would he constructed in part from trees or

brush, with iced snow for binding. The annual repairing, or building anew,

of these structures is, from the engineer’s point of view, a nuisance. But

here the qualification applies that this is maintenance work which in part

takes the place of repairs to bridges and culverts on all-season roads.

        It is sometimes urged as a material advantage of an overland road that

the season is longer than upon a river of a lak d e . This may or may not be —

true, according to the special nature of the case. Generally speaking, an

overland road will thaw out in the spring and turn into mud even before the

river road becomes impassable through disintegration of the ice, and much

sooner than a lake breaks up. But an overland road will usually become

passable in the autumn, through the mud freezing hard enough, before river

or lake ice becomes strong enough. This is true, with a margin of several

103      |      Vol_VII-0735                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice

weeks, if the river flows through one of the great northern lakes. A

special and perhaps the most striking case is that of Great Slave Lake,

where the present winter road around the west end of the lake becomes

passable some weeks before sledges can use Slave River and several weeks

before they can cross from the delta of the Slave to the outflow of the

Mackenzie proper.

        Bear Lake Seasons . Great Bear, irregular in outline, 12,200 square

miles in area, is the fourth largest lake in North America but navigable

by steamers less than a third of the year. Indeed, it seems to be wholly

free of ice, during certain years, for only about two months. One statement,

furnished by local steamboat operators to the Meteorological Division of the

Department of Transport, Canada, gives the navigating season as commencing,

at the latest, July 29, and ending, at the earliest, September 9, thus a

possible Minimum of only about seven weeks. The same authority places the

longest observed navigation possibilities as between July 4 and November 3,

or about seventeen weeks, making the maximum navigation period only about

a third of the year.

        By mid-September some years, by mid-October most years, people who

live around Great Bear Lake can start foot travel and dog sledging, but

only along the shores, in small bays, and other sheltered parts. Gradually

the ice thickens so that horses or mechanical tractors can be used, but open

water persists on the larger bays and outside the promontories. It is

late October or even November before a traveler can make a diametric crossing

of the lake. (These remarks are diffident, for even now it is hard to iron

out disagreements among informants.)

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        According to the cited Department of Transport information, the naviga–

tion season of Great Bear Lake may class as early as September 9; but this

need not mean more than that harbors are freezing over so as to interfere

with the arrival and departure of ordinary fragile lake steamers.

        A qualified witness on Bear Lake is Dr. Charles Camsell, who, as Deputy

Minister of Mines and Resources for Canada, has had the best information and

who was, indeed, long a resident of Fort Simpson on the middle Mackenzie, in

a similar climate. He said in the Canadian Geographical Journal , March 1937,

that the ice of Bear Lake “seldom breaks up before August 1 ... and (is)

drifting usually til l August 15. It reforms early in September and covers —

the entire sheet of water by the end of that month or the first week of

October.” Conditions were similar a hundred years earlier, for in 1837 the

boats of the Dease and Simpson expedition were delayed by ice at Gros Cap

“till the beginning of August;” and the Report of the Select Committee of

the Canadian Senate for 1891, on conditions in the Mackenzie Basin, has it

that “the lake (Bear) is very deep and clear and ice is said to be seldom

absent therefrom for much more than two months of the twelve.” Richard

Finnie, one of the well-informed writers, says for the 1940’s, in his

book Canada Moves North , that “between the head of Great Bear River and Echo

Bay,” meaning the east and west ends of the lake, the season of navigation

lasts until “at least the end of September.”

        So the Bear Lake navigation season, and reciprocally the sledge-freighting

season, varies a good deal, and not merely from year to year but also from

witness to witness, optimist to pessimist, navigator to sledger. But even

if the lake is ice-free for a good deal more than the two months given it by

the Select Committee, and even though the season of navigation will lengthen

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with improved boats and methods, still it is clear that the sledging is

longer than the boating season — about six months for sledging t as

compared to four boating months, with a spring month and a fall month out

of the reckoning because of too much ice for boating and not enough for

sledging.

        But, most significantly, the sledging season varies according to whether

the need is to cross the full lake, a wide bay, a small bay, or merely to

travel along the shore.

        Generally the places that freeze earliest in the fall are the first to

thaw in the spring; these are the shore belts which congeal readily, because

of being shoal and sheltered from the wind, but which melt early because the

warm thaw water streams down upon them from the land. The middle of a great

lake, such as Bear, stays open several weeks after the small inlets are good

for sledging. The first few weeks of spring thaws account for only a narrow

ribbon following the beach, and our lake remains 98% covered by a vast and

immovable pancake of ice that behaves like a floating island. This behavior

is on record as having deceived even the initiate, which appears from the

case of George M. Doublas, in his Lands Forlorn , New York and London, 1914,

pp. 234 ff.

        Behavior of Summer Ice . The Douglas party had been wintering on

northeasternmost Great Bear Lake, at the mouth of Dease River. The spring

of 1912 they did not want to break camp, to begin canoeing along the north

shore of the lake, until the advance of the season would allow a passage a

little hindered by ice. The evidences of high summer must have been convincing. On the lower Dease, mosquitoes start biting early

in May; by June 20 temperatures may run into the nineties in the shade a

few miles up that valley. So by June 26 the travelers thought the time for

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nearly uninterrupted canoe passage must have come; it would have been difficult,

on the Dease, for men sweltering in its typical steaming heat to believe

otherwise. Douglas tells us: “Until we actually got out on Bear Lake we

did not know in what condition the ice was ... The bay behind Big Island

was quite clear [having been melted by the warmer water of the spring thaw

pouring from Dease River], but when we passed the straits beyond old Fort

Confidence we were dismaye xd to find the surface of the lake covered as far

as the eye could see; except for a small open space around the shore the

ice lay intact as in winter.”

        The floating ice island, this drifting frost pancake thousands of square

miles in area, now moved, according to the wind, away from the shore to let

them pass, as it did the first day, or against the land to block the canoes,

as for a week thereafter. Finally, on July 3, a breeze “opened up a channel

along the shore nearly half a mile wide.” The northwest arm of the lake,

which is considered to thaw earlier than the northeast arm and much earlier

than did the middle of the lake, was now “solid with ice and no traverse was —

possible for us till this broke up”; so they waited until July 8 when it did

break and they crossed the bay.

        These things have been quoted, not to enforce the cited testimoney about

the length of the season, but rather to show the conditions which prevail in

the spring, when offshore winds furnish canoe water in a ribbon along the

beach, though-ten-foot ice still covers the rest. To one looking down upon

the lake from the hills, the ice shows white, reflecting much of the sun’s light

so that little of it is turned into the heat needed to produce swift melting.

Winds from the lake blow chill upon the land; but warm winds from the surrounding

forest do sweep the lake, else the two marginal seasons of lake ice — spring

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and fall — would meet each, other in an icy midsummer.

        Forcing the Seasons . Normally, then, Great Bear has from six to seven

months during which heavy mechanized sledge freighting can use the ice but

has only three months or so during which steamers can use both the middle

of the lake and the harbors. But under stress, as in war, both sledging

and boating periods can be manipulated, within limits.

        The most important devices for lengthening the sledging and boating

seasons, whichever is desired, are snow concrete for preserving the ice and

lampblack, crankcase oil, or sand for melting it, each used as already des–

cribed. So, for a while, there can be in spring and autumn a combination

of sledge and boat travel. For instance, one might take a dog team or a

light tractor in the spring by boat eastward from the head of Bear River,

or southwest from the mouth of Dease River, to the edge of the main body of

lake ice, setting the team or tractor on the ice and proceeding across the

lake, to be similarly relieved at the opposite margin. Or, more practicable,

one might continue the dog team, horse, or tractor freighting hither and yon

along the main body of the lake ice, never taking the freighting train right

to the margin. Such things are, however, desperate measures, to be used only

when lives are at stake, through war or through some accident of peacetime.

        The Sledging in Season . When we consider the importance of potential —

traffic, across a lake like Great Bear, we think in terms of the area covered;

and Bear Lake has in it almost as many square miles as the New England states

of Massachusetts and Conntecticut Connecticut put together. The linear distances are —

considerable — 200 air miles, for instance, between Fort Franklin in the

southwest and the head of Hornby Bay in the northeast. And be it remembered

that for more than half of each year this is the sort of level ice road upon

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which a single commercial tracklaying tractor has been certified to haul

on its train of sledges a load of more than 1,000 tons.

        Great Slave Lake. The winter season on Great Slave Lake is perhaps a

month shorter than on Great Bear, and the square mileage is less; still it

is not a negligible transportation field, since this fifth largest body of

fresh water in North America, ninth in the world, is large [ ?] r than either —

Erie or Ontario. Its shape is irregular; the air distance from the vicinity

of Providence in the west to Reliance in the east comes to 300 miles, while

the north-south distance from Resolution to Rae is 150 miles.

        Winter Freighting on the Smaller Lakes. The heaviest freighting done so

far , on Canadian lakes has been in the lumber regions of Ontario and Quebec, —

where sledge trains loaded with a thousand ton g s of green timber are snaked —

along by tractors. Some of the most picturesque freighting of the past has

been on lakes such as Winnipeg, Winnipegosis, and Manitoba. These, although

smaller than Slave, are a good deal larger than may body of fresh water,

other than Lake Michigan, that is wholly within the United States; with the

one exception of Sweden’s Vänern, they are a good deal larger than any lakes

in non-Soviet Europe.

        Before the white men reached Manitoba the fish of such lakes were the support

of the Indian population; when Europeans came, the fisheries became first a

main source of direct food supply and later one of the chief commercial assets,

particularly on Lake Winnipeg but also on many of the large bodies of water in

southern Canada that freeze over during winter. Men who were farmers in summer

would be fisherman in winter. They loaded small wooden houses upon sleds,

pulled them with horse teams to various strategic points on the lakes, and

lived in them cosily while the fish were being brought up from below through

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holes in the ice. The transportation season for these purposes is between

four and five months. And if there is not a heavy lake traffic o for other

things than fish it is because, unlike the provinces of Ontario and Quebec,

the Prairie Provinces do not have much commercial timber; besides, railways

now parallel the lakes lengthwise, offering cheap freight.

        When once the freezing-over has been completed, the middle of a northern

lake becomes safer for travel than certain parts of the margin, for reasons

we have discussed in connection with river transport but must cover here also,

the factors being, in part, different.

        Glare Ice Is Safe. Well out in the main body of any big northern lake,

and indeed well out in the larger bays of such a lake, the wind sweeps the ice

free of snow or pounds it into low and hard ridges. Ice is a good conductor

of chill and densely compacted snow is nearly as good; so lake ice thickens

rapidly when the surface is bare , and fairly rapidly when the drifts are hard

and only a foot or two deep. It is, then, not long after the freeze-up that

all of the lake, except special parts of the margin, is safe for big airplanes

or sledge trains drawn by the heaviest tractors.

        Snow-covered Ice May Be Dangerous . In certain parts of a lake the winds

are handicapped and the snow may lie in heavy, undisturbed sheets, even in

soft drifts that are both fluffy and deep. Such snow is a poor conductor

of chill, almost as f g ood an insulator as a quilt of elder down. In most parts —

of a lake this does not natter, insofar as the safety of winter travel is

concerned. But it can be of material and has been of tragic importance in

certain special localities, usually off the tips of promontories and between

islands.

        If completely stagnant water has above it a few inches of ice, enough to

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make sledge travel temporarily safe, then it will remain permanently safe,

for the thickness of this ice will not decrease during cold weather, even

upon a heavy fall of the fluffiest snow. There are, however, currents in

the great northern lakes which may cause danger. Some of them are produced

by the entrance or the exit of a river; others are tidal in nature, for a

lake does not need to be a large as Great Bear for the tides to produce

appreciable movement. This tidal disturbance hag negligible effect upon

the ice near the center of a lake or large bay, for the same reasons that

make a tide of the ocean nonperceptible to an observer far at sea.

        River-produced water movement in lakes is, of course, to be expected near

the entrance or exit points, and here travelers will be on guard. But experience

shows that they are not nearly so much on guard at promontories and between

islands where they are likely to rely upon the common knowledge that in front

of most promontories, and in most passages between islands, the currents are

never strong enough to cut ice, thus never a source of danger. It has happened,

however, on some northern lakes, and in every month of winter, that a careless

traveler, sometimes a native Indian or a frontiersman of long experience,

will disappear with sledge and dogs through an opening produced by the collapse

of a snow cover which has inadequate support from beneath — the ice that was

there has been insulated on its upper side from the constructive action of the

cold atmosphere but not on its lower side from the destructive action of the

warm current.

        The time of greatest danger is when snow-blanketed ice has been thawed

from below to where it is eggshell thin; for if the current had had a little

more time it would have eaten the ice away completely, whereupon the blotter

effect of the snow would have come into play, the blackness of the upward-seeping

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice

water giving a color warning to the traveler and eventually producing a

slump of the soggy snow into the water. When the snow once slumps the danger

is over, for that locality, since two things have come about — now the

traveler will see the black water, and now the chill of the air can go to

work and produce new ice over the open water, ice which gradually develops

strength enough to support a load.

        Precaution s . The careful traveler on a northern lake will avoid passing —

a promontory close in, if there is fluffy or deep snow, and will be similarly

careful between islands. He can always give a wide berth to a visible

promontory, unless there happens to be an island beyond, in which case he

keeps to the middle of the channel between them and uses a long-shafted ice

spear constantly to test the going ahead of him, thrusting hard to make sure

that his spear will penetrate an inch or two of ice, if so w eakened a patch —

exists.

        There is the danger of an invisible promontory, a shoal sticking out

from the land, or a shoal producing an isolated danger area of which there

is no visible sign. So, if the traveler is at all near the land, he had

better be careful whenever the snow is deep and fluffy. This danger decreases

the farther he is from visible land and may be considered negligible anywhere

well out in a large lake or bay.

        Remedies . If a winter ice highway on a lake must pass through a danger

area, as between islands, the remedy is to destroy there the insulating power

of the fluffy snow. Obviously, if snow falls into unfrozen water there is

no trouble; but if it falls upon thin ice, even upon ice a foot or more in

thickness, the blanketing may enable the slightly warm lake current to eat

most of the support from beneath. The remedy is to roll or tramp down the

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snow along the right of way before it has lain sufficiently long to give the

ice a chance to melt. There now are two safety factors ; : one is the strength —

of the ice itself [ ?] ; the other is the strength of the snow concrete which has —

been superimposed upon the ice. We have gone into the details of this suffi–

ciently when discussing the winter use of rivers.

        Lengthening the Season for Freighting. As said elsewhere in this article,

the supporting power of fresh-water ice is destroyed in the spring not merely

through that melting process which we call ordinary, as when a cube dissolves

in a drinking glass, but also through a phenomenon little studied until

recently, the separating of ice into crystals that have a long axis at right

angles to the water surfac t e on which the ice rests, the length of the crystal —

being the same as the thickness of the ice. This process is candling, the

crystals are candle ice (see Glossary).

        As previously indicated, candling does not apparently take place in salty

ice, nor in fresh-water ice which has a snow cover. It is therefore important,

if a transportation iceway leads across a northern lake, to produce snow concrete

not merely on the road itself (where it is developed naturally throughout the

winter by vehicular and other traffic) but also upon a belt of considerable

width on either side of the road. Rolling wide strips on both sides of an

ice highway after each heavy snowfall will not only make a special belt that

can be used safely one, two or even three weeks earlier in the fall but will

also provide a road which can be used in the spring one or two weeks later than

the regular ice.

        On rivers the use of the snow concrete principle for roads and for airplane

runways, as already brought out, can lengthen the season by a week or so in

both spring and fall. The same technique has considerably more importance on

113      |      Vol_VII-0745                                                                                                                  
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lakes, because of less trouble with swift currents at all times of year

and less trouble with land-derived thaw water in spring.

        Leads in Lake Ice. Leads in sea ice are considered to originate from

pressures due to currents and winds, although it is recognized that tides

may have an effect. The leads on a frozen lake, such as Great Bear, may be

looked upon as having for practical purposes none of the above causes and

as being produced only by the contraction of ice following a drop in temperature.

        The Cracking of Lake Ice. An observer on a shore of Great Bear Lake, when

a warmish midwinter day is followed by a colder night, will hear what may be

the eeriest sound in nature. It is a shriek of immense volume which slowly

dies away in the remote distance, as if a fire siren of incomparably greater

volume than anybody ever heard were speeding away with incredible velocity.

        The explanation usually assigned for this ghoulish shrieking of lakes in

the arctic night is that the ice has cracked nearly or quite simultaneously

between promontories — as, for instance, between Cape MacDonnel l and Etacho —

Point. If the observer were a mile or so from one end of this breach, and

at right angles ot to it, he would hear the noise made by the cracking of the —

nearest few yards as if it were the report of a rifle. The noise from another

part of the crack, a little to one side and thus farther away, woul[d?] d arrive —

a little later, and the two sounds would overlap, the second only slightly

less loud than the first. The bang from the third segment of the crack would

overlap the second, being still farther away and thus slightly less Intense.

These three overlapping sounds are the beginning of the shriek.

        Sounds are transmitted far and clear if the night is cold. There is

testimony that at sixty below zero a noise like the barking of a dog or

the chopping of wood with an ax can be heard ten or twelve miles; so the

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

cracking of Bear Lake lee if likely audible from twenty miles away. The

unearthly wail heard dying in the distance le thus produced by noises which,

though really almost simultaneous, arrive at the observation point as over–

lapping detonations, each a tiny bit successive to the one before, the farthest

arriving late and faintly [ ?] from twenty miles away.

        A trav e ler who now comes upon the crack which has just formed may find

open water which (according to Bear Lake Indian testimony given Stefansson

in 1910) can be from a few inches to six or more feet, the widest cracks

form in the coldest weather, for then the contraction of the ice is greatest.

This means that the open water of the lead would he exposed to temperatures

of −50° to −60°, even −70 ° F., and it would not be more than a few hours before

the ice became strong enough to support a man stepping upon it, particularly

if he wore snowshoes or skis to spread the weight. The freezing of such a

lead into a safe crossing can be hurried by using a miner’s pick, or some

such instrument, and filling a section of the lead with cracked ice.

        Pressure Ridges. If the maximum width of a frost crack on Great Bear Lake

is southing like six feet, it will follow that, when the weather gets warmer

and the ice spreads, the relatively young and weak formation on the lead will

be crushed and pressed up into a ridge of proportionate size. A powerful

tracklaying tractor will go straight through such a flimsy ridge; a traveler

with a miner’s pickax can make a road through in a few minutes.

        The Old World Lakes . Our discussion of New World, in lakes has covered

generalities, applicable to all lakes. In Eurasia, peacetime uses have been

similar, with the exception that reindeer have not yet been used to any ext a e nt —

on North American lakes or rivers. It is in war that the uses have differed

most notably, as between New and Old Worlds, particularly in modern war.

115      |      Vol_VII-0747                                                                                                                  
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        Lake ice in European War . In North America there have as yet been

only three opportunities for the military use of lake ice: those of the

French and Indian War, the Revolution, and the War of 1812. Each of these

involved a region, the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada,

where lake and rivers are frozen from two to four months; but in those days

North American wars involved the principle of going into winter quarters,

where it was normal procedure for each side to await the convenience of the

other, so that boats and wagons could be used instead of sleighs; the ex–

ceptions were small operations, where surprise was intended. Even in those

days and in earlier centuries, Europeans were more in the habit of using lake

and river ice, particularly in the Russian sector, and this we consider else–

where in the Encyclopedia. Here we illustrate briefly the military use of

lake ice through selected, case histories from the Lakes Baikal and Ladoga.

        Lake Baikal . Baikal, 13,197 square miles, is probably the world’s

fourth largest fresh-water lake, excelled only by Superior, Victoria, Huron,

and Michigan. Baikal is frozen (according to the Siberian Soviet Encyclope [ ?] d ia ), —

only about half as long each year as Great Bear; for it has a navigation season

reckoned at seven ? months, with the usual freeze-up the first week of January,

the break-up early in May. But, when once it forms, Baikal ice quickly gets

far too thick for icebreakers, as the Russians found to their cost in the first

struggle with Japan.

        Lake Railways Follow River Experience . The use of Baikal ice for railway

freighting, so important in the Russo-Japanese War, was seemingly an extension

of Russian practice in crossing; frozen rivers. The Trans-Siberian Railway,

eastward bound, crossed the Volga at Sviazksk without brid g ing it. Car ferries —

were used in summer; each winter, during the period 1893-1913, an ice railway

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

was used, the ice artificially thickened by flooding it, to bear heavy

freighting early. For distributing weights, exceptionally long ties were

used. The care, of 15 tons, were drawn by horses and hauled across the river

one at a time, or widely spaced. The Volga is here ice-covered, enough to

prevent boating, from about November to April; the season for the described

railroading was several weeks shorter.

        Ten years later, during World War I, the railway northward from St.

Petersburg to Murmansk was under construction, and the Kola River was crossed

during winter in the same way. In World War II the method was used again,

as for instance, in crossing the Severnaia Dvina at Arkhangelsk.

        Baikal Ice Railway . The first considerable Russian railway on lake ice

was apparently the on ce e across Lake Baikal the winter of 1903-04, and was —

about 40 miles long. Its purpose was to maintain communication with the

Manchurian front. When the Russo-Japanese War broke out, the Trans-Siberian

Railway had not yet been built around the southern end of the lake, and communi–

cations between eastern and western sectors of the line were maintained as far

into the winter as possible with Ice-breaking train ferries. When the ice

became too thick, a railway was laid across it. Long ties were used, after

the practice established on the Volga crossing; the freight cars were horse-drawn,

space d 50 yards apart. For much of the time this wide spacing caution was really —

not required, for the ice thickened to nine feet and more; the special precautions

were needed at the beginning and end of the season, to lengthen it.

        During extreme col [ ?] d snaps (Baikal climate is similar to that of Minneapolis —

or Winnipeg), the shrinking ice would crack to open leads as much as six feet

wide, causing some delay and involving impromptu bridging. When the weather

grew war m , the expanding main body of lake ice would crush the young ice of the —

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EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

of the loads into ridges that had to be leveled with pickaxes or such.

        Lake Ladoga . Thirteenth or fourteenth among the fresh-water lakes of

the world, Ladoga has had the most extensive military history in relation

to ice. Of old it plays its part in the wars between Scandinavians and

Russians, more recently in the Soviet-German struggle. Here we consider

only the relation of Ladoga ice to railway transport in the siege of

Leningrad.

        According to the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary . Volume 33,

Ladoga has an average navigation season of 191 days, with a maxima of 214 and

a minimum of 164. The freeze-up usually comes the middle of December, nearly

a month earlier than at Baikal but a full month later than at Great Bear.

In 1941 the frosts began early and the chill increased fast. On the shore of the

lake the city of Leningrad was under siege by the Germans, who had cut the

overland freighting arteries that supply it from the east; the prolongation

of the navigation season was desperately needed by the defenders who were

already suffering the beginnings of that famine which eventually claimed

650,000 of Leningrad’s 3,600,000 people. So the transport makers and military

engineers struggled to keep the boating open but, early in November, they had

to give in to the rapidly forming ice. Now the chief hope of safety, from the

transportation side, lay in the swift thickening of Ladoga ice.

        The Military Trucking Highway . Windswept as on any big lake, the ice of

Ladoga keeps itself mainly free from any continuous blanket of frost-retarding

snow and thickens rapidly, when once it stops moving with the wind. Eventually

there would be ten feet of it, several times strong enough to bear any required

freighting load. But the city could not await the ice thickness of normal

peacetime safeties, for it was the third month of siege and rations had already

118      |      Vol_VII-0750                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

been out to where few retained their normal strength . More food had to be —

secured while the workers were strong enough to fetch it.

        During the time which had to intervene between the close of navigation

on Ladoga and the first trucking, the chief source of outside supply was an

air lift of DC-3’s (C-47’s) and TB-3’s. But this was under constant German

air harassment and could bring in only a tiny fraction of what the city had

been receiving before the siege from 12 railways and 3 trunk highways.

        A new supply road of 191 miles was planned to flank the German wedge that

had cut the city’s eastern transportation system; this would start with a link

of 18.6 miles across the ice eastward from the Leningrad side of Ladoga to the

opposite shore, the rest of the distance being mainly through forest but

utilizing to a considerable extent the ice on canals and on some small lakes.

The Ladoga sector would be the last on which the ice would become strong

enough, so the rest of the winter road was prepared in advance.

        The Ladoga Link . About 173 miles of forest, canal, and small lake roa[?] d —

had been completed by the time the big lake froze hard enough for use. There

were conflicting; opinions as to when the use of Ladoga ice could begin for

trucks; fishermen, using horse sleighs, had not been accustomed to begin the

traffic season on the lake before the middle of January, which date had to

be advanced as much as possible.

        Because of the exceptionally cold autumn weather, air photographs were able to show

the lake frozen along most of the desired right of way by November 17 and,

on November 18, 1941, men on foot set out to reconnoiter, walking eastward

from tile village of Kokkarevo, near Leningrad. They dragged light hand sledges

and kept ten yards apart. Most of the ice proved to be 4 inches thick, and

two days later traffic began with light horse-drawn sledges.

119      |      Vol_VII-0751                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice.

        Preparations were now made for a multilane trucking highway by sweeping

all snow away so as to give the frost the best possible chance to c t hicken the —

ice. Antiaircraft batteries were stationed “every few dozen yards along the

whole 18-mile route,” The German-occupied land was visible on the southern

horizon, and a defense line of Soviet troops was established on the lake ice

between the trucking road and the Nazis.

        The night of November 22 the first column of 60 ton-and-a-half trucks,

empty, left the Leningrad side of the lake, the trucks at first spaced 50 yards

apart. After several miles, one truck broke through, the ice and was lost. By

scattering in all directions the rest of the trucks avoided sinking, and, now

more widely spaced and not following each other’s tracks, they made the rest

of the crossing safely. The ice being so thin, only small loads were placed

on the trucks for the return journey, the rest dragged by them on one two, or

three sledges.

        The ice now thickened rapidly, traffic became heavy, and was safe except

from German attacks. However, under strafing the ice was found safer than a

land highway. For on land the trucks have to stay on the road and take it, the

only chance for the drivers being to abandon their trucks temporarily; but on

lefel ice the signal of approaching strafers is also a signal for the trucks

to scatter every which way over the lake. Then the planes can find no straight

lines of trucks to rake systematically with their guns.

        The Germans attempted to interfere with the trucking by dropping heavy

explosives, which made big open-water holes. Except in the very beginning of

the season, when the ice was thin and dangerous, this form of attack was of

less effect than if bomb craters had been produced in an overland highway; for

the truck drivers took to the level ice on either side and avoided the holes

120      |      Vol_VII-0752                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice

until the winter cold had frozen them over.

        The 18-mile Ladoga road proved to have a danger point about 5 miles

from the Leningrad side, where a lead would form whenever the weather turned

colder, the ice cracking under contraction due to the drop in temperature.

Flat bridges were made which lay on the ice and slid back and forth with the

expansion and contraction movement on either side. But there were, nevertheless,

traffic delays, causing traces to bunch up, with three sorts of adverse results —

the ice would begin to bend under their weight, since the edge along the lead

was unsupported; the German planes saw the truck groupings and were able to

concentrate their fire on them; and this bottleneck proved near enough to land

held by the Germans so they could reach it with their long-range artillery.

There was, besides, the trouble that the Soviet forces could not set up enough

antiaircraft batteries in the immediate neighborhood for fear of bending down

the ice along the lead with the added weight.

        During the first few weeks of the road’s operation the loss of trucks and

of lives was heavy. Drivers, in some cases, went down with tricks that broke

through, whether because they were too heavily loaded for the weak ice or else

because the ice had been weakened by enemy bombing.

        From, the outset the road suffered from all the organizational shortcomings

of an impromptu service — labor supply, truck repair, maintenance, and dispatch–

ing. According to a semiofficial statement, “it was a full month before its

operation resulted in raising the starvation ration in Leningrad by 3½ ounces

per day.” This was on the basis of trucks making only one daily round trip of

something over 225 miles. After January 5, 1942, most drivers made two round

trips, a total distance figured around 450 miles. The daily number of truck

loads then rea d c hing Leningrad over the ice of Ladoga is given at 754 (tonnage —

unspecified); by January 15, the city was receiving 2,000 tons per day by the

121      |      Vol_VII-0753                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice

route. During the worst of the siege this figure does not appear to have

been exceeded; the reason given is that no more trucks than enough to replace

losses could be obtained for the Leningrad service.

        At the time of the greatest efficiency of the Ladoga, supply route, trucks

crossed the lake at varying speeds. They avoided moving in lines following

one another, both to make strafing action by the Germans more difficult and

to permit the best drivers, with the best trucks, to make more trips than

the others. Some trucks are said to have made as many as four round trips

in 24 hours, thus about 900 miles; the regular, after the middle of January,

remained at two round trips. Apart from trucks which were a total loss, from

enemy action or otherwise, 4,000 vehicles were so seriously crippled in one way

or another that their drivers could not repair them, These were taken care of

in garages set up along the route, one of which was at either end of the Ladoga

crossing.

        After the lake ice became thick enough, there was a good deal of troop

movement across Ladoga, this partly in motor passenger busses taken from the

streets of Leningrad. Five-ton trucks were now also in use. The troop movement

brought increased activity of German fighter and bomber planes. For several

weeks there are said to have been an average of ten fights per day above the

Ladoga route between Nazi and Soviet flyers. There are reported to have been

27 German night raids and 142 by daylight. Heavy bombs dropped, for attack or

intended to break up the ice, are given as around 7,000; German planes downed

by Soviet planes and by antiaircraft fire are reckoned at 160. When the counter–

attack started, KV (Klimenti-Vo n r oshilov) tanks of 52 tons, the heaviest in the —

Red Army, moved across the lake toward, the Germans, The first of these crossed

in January 1942, thus before the ice got its maximum strength, which would have

been in March.

122      |      Vol_VII-0754                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice

        The siege of Leningrad was still in progress when spring came, with

thaw water pouring from the land to melt the lake ice near shore. For a

while the trucks would approach the land to where the water was shoal enough

for men to carry bags of flour on their shoulders, wading. But this was soon

given up and there was a transportation gap between winter trucking and summer

trucking boating . —

        It is reckoned that the siege of Leningrad lasted 194 days after the ice

transport ceased, and that water-borne traffic brought in during that time

about 1,000,000 tons of supplies. But this was after the grip of the Germans

began to loosen. The ice played its role through the height of the German

power, under the maximum of strafing, air bombing, and cannonade; even so it

brought in 336,000 tons, in addition to helping Leningrad troops and equipment

to move in the direction required for the counterattack.

        In any case, the use of Ladoga ice for military purposes during the

winter of 1941-42 is beyond comparison the most extensive, instructive, and

[ ?]decisive in military history to that time. In telling the Ladoga story we —

have intended neither narrative history nor military explanation but have

attempted merely to discuss sketchily the transportation usefulness of lake

ice in modern warfare.

       

MISCELLANEOUS USES OF ICE

        Minor Wartime Uses . The principle of thickening ice by flooding

(mentioned above as used in permitting earlier laying of rail tracks upon the

frozen Volga) is referred to now and then by Soviet writers in a variety of

military connections. In Moscow and Leningrad, for instance, there was danger

during World War II that German bombs would penetrate into the ground to

123      |      Vol_VII-0755                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice

interfere with water and other important services. Protection was secured by

building up mounds of ice through spraying and pouring water during particu–

larly cold weather. Sometimes these mounds and ridges were nothing but ice;

at other times they were reinforced with brush or logs, after the manner of

using iron rods to produce reinforced concrete. This toughening was used

particularly for construction like that of breastworks of ice, and gun

emplacements.

        Many of the World War II ice structures were permitted to melt as soon

as the weather became warm, but others were protected by being covered with

muck, tree branches, leaves, and hay, after the manner of storing ice in

sawdust. It is said that in and near both Moscow and Leningrad the mounds

shielding the waterworks remained still thick and protective far into the

summer.

        Minor Peacetime Uses . This article has dealt in the main with ice from

the transportation point of view, but since we have mentioned several military

uses other than transportation we refer to a few analogous peacetime uses,

starting with one that has a transportation slant.

        Ice Shoeing for Sledges . Apart from the use of ice as a roadbed, the

main transportation use of it has been for sledge shoeing where, within the

necessary limitation, it is the best material so far discovered.

        The experience is that shoeing materials vary in how easily they slide

over snow according to the relation of their nature to the weather, for

instance, when the temperature is only a little below freezing a smooth and

shiny steel shoeing glides over snow about as readily as any other material;

but as the temperature drops the steel runner slides less and less easily,

until at −50° or −60° F. it grinds as if the snow were sand. Other materials

124      |      Vol_VII-0756                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice

vary similarly with temperature, but each according to its own nature, some

of them gliding remarkably well at low temperatures, among these copper. A

shoeing which has been found excellent at low temperatures is ivory, and

doubtless plastics could be made that would work as well. But apparently

no material has yet been found which slides with as little friction as ice

over snow in all its temperature ranges, from bare freezing to the lowest.

        There are several ways of applying ice to sledging, but in all of them

rigidity of the runner is essential — the runners must not bend as it goes

over uneven surfaces. The Eskimo solution, adopted by Europeans, is that of

a plank on edge. Europeans have sometimes put a metal shoeing along the edge

of the plank and have then swabbed this with water, giving the steel an ice

glazing a tiny fraction of an inch in thickness. The necessary thinness of

this glazing, due to the inability of smooth steel to hold ice firmly, has

the disadvantage that it must be renewed frequently, at a minimum each morning.

Eskimos have used planks with a fuzzy lower edge, swabbing with water to

produce an icing perhaps 1/8 or 1/4 of an inch thick, which will last for days

(though it needs repairing if the sleigh has to be en dragged over rocky ground —

or bare sand).

        More elaborate methods for ice shoeing are common. One of these is to

prepare a clayey mud so that it kneads like dough; Europeans have tried

unleavened bread dough, with good results. The sledge is laid on its back and

with the mud or dough the running edges are built up so that each runner looks

as if it were shod with half a loaf of bread, giving a slightly rounded gliding

surface three, four, or even five inches across, the dough coming up on the side of the —

runner as far as is considered necessary for the mixture to get a tight hol e d —

when it freezes, which happens promptly on a cold day. It is a good thing

to have the wood of the plank runner fuzzy on the sides as well as on the

125      |      Vol_VII-0757                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice

bottom, to give the mud or dough better attachment.

        When freshly applied, this shoeing is uneven and must be shaved down

with a knife or other suitable tool until it is nearly uniform, The last

stage is to swab on water, which turns into a glazing.

        Ice Planks . When no wooden plank is available, the entire sledge

runner can be made of ice, though with something for it to congeal upon.

The usual Eskimo way is to soak some hairy skin — polar bear, grizzly bear,

musk ox, or caribou. The skin is then cut into patterns to resemble the

plank which the builder wishes he had. Several thicknesses of the pattern

are placed one on top of another until the thickness is 3 or 4 inches, the

equivalent of the desired plank. Then the wet and pliable skins are taken

out of doors and laid on the snow where it is level, to freeze into a sort

of plank. When this has hardened, the Eskimo takes an adze and shapes the

hide plank as if it were of wood. Thereafter the runner is treated just as

if it were of wood. Holes are drilled in it for thongs and it is lashed to the

frame in the ordinary way. The sledge is then turned upside down, the dough

or mud applied, and then the final icing.

        There are, of course, innumerable other uses of ice and of frozen

materials which readily occur to anyone who has the boy-scout approach and

who once understands the applicability of the process.

        Precautions . An obvious difficulty about things made of ice, or of

soft material hardened by freezing, is that they have to be protected from

thaws. These occur during the northern winter more often that some might

think. Stefansson reports, for instance, that in every one of his ten

arctic seasons a rain or thaw occurred even during the coldest period : [ ,?] which —

is between the months of December and March. These thaws, however, are brief ,

126      |      Vol_VII-0758                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice

and the frozen sledge runners may be protected by being buried in snow,

particularly as there is a good deal of “latent” chill in the ground to

radiate upward. When ice-shod sledges are traveling on a sunny day the

drivers will take care, when they stop briefly, to hang up a sunshade to

prevent direct rays from striking the ice part of the runners.

        With care of this and other kinds, the use of ice runners and other

things depending on frost may be started fairly early in the fall and

continued well into the spring. A special advantage, in the fall, is that

trouble with direct sunlight is not great, since the days are short; in the

spring, when the days are long, the remedy is to camp during the warmest

period, with the sled runners safely buried in snow, traveling in the chill of

the short night and in the early morning before the heat of the long day.

        Ice Depots. For the construction of Eskimo-type houses, and for banking

those of European type, snow is the preferred material, being a good insulator;

but snow is porous and animals dig through it easily, so ice is the preferred

material for stores and depots. When there is in the vicinity a lake covered

by ice of a moderate thickness, or an arm of the sea that has frozen level,

the easiest method is to saw this ice Into suitable blocks, in the manner

usual with commercial ice companies. The blocks are then set in place like

masonry and cemented together with a spray of water or by dashing buckets

of water against the wall. This sort of storehouse is excellent for keeping

out small predatory animals, such as dogs or wolverines,

        A depot that is safe even from a polar bear can be made of ice in the

manner described; but there would have to be precautions for strength, since

these creatures may run in weight to well beyond a thousand, pounds and are

powerful, with efficient claws. Therefore, the best way for protecting against

127      |      Vol_VII-0759                                                                                                                  
EA-I. Stefansson: Uses of Ice

polar bears, and especially for impromptu caches, is to dig a pit with

ice chisels or miners’ pickaxes into ice which is already thick; enough.

Along the shore of a frozen ocean, or out in the northern pack, the pit

should be dug in the top of a hummock that is well above the general level

of the ice. The things to be stored are then placed in the cavity and

covered over with blocks of ice which are cemented together by filling

crevices with snow and then by pouring water over the conglomerate.

        This article, naturally, has described only a few sample uses of ice.

The numerous possible applications of the principles illustrated, and of

the others, become significant when the below-freezing period approaches

half the year, and increase in practical consequence thereafter more rapidly

than indicated by an arithmetical ratio determined by counting the days of

frost.

001      |      Vol_VII-0760                                                                                                                  

        Comments submitted by Major Andrew Taylor, 11 April 1951.

(See his letter to Stefansson of that date)

       

E.A. -. “ The Uses of Ice ”

        Page 5 - 4th line from bottom, “snow concrete”. Actually, there is

no reference to “snow concrete” in your glossary, only to

“snowcrete”, to which latter term I have taken objection

in my previous letter of 20th March. Among the other re–

ferences to this term “snow concrete”, to which the same

remarks apply are the following:

Page 7,	Para 3,	Line 1
Page 10,	Para 1,	Line 1
Page 20,	Para 2,	Line 6
Page 75-78,	passim
Page 94,	Para 4,	Line 4
Page 112,	Para 3,	Line 3
Page 112,	Para 4,	Line 1

        Obviously, the correction of this ambiguity involves chang–

ing the term in the glossary from “snowcrete” to “snow

concrete”, giving to the former the “admixture” meaning

given in p. 8 in my appendix of 20 March.

        Page 15 - Para 3. There is here the important omission of the

negative, ‘NOT’. In order to preserve the length of time,

in spring when a bay or lagoon landing field can be used,

obviously, “the location should not ordinarily be reachable

by drifting sand, .....”

        — The word “levelling” has consistently been misspelled

(according to the Oxford dictionary) “leveling”. Among

the places where this occurs, I note the following:

Page 19,	Para 4,	Lines 1, 3, 3, 4
Page 19,	Para 5,	Line 1
Page 29,	Para 3,	Lines 1, 6
Page 30,	Para 1,	Line 1
Page 92,	Para 3,	Lines 1, 2

        In this, I may be skating on “thin ice”, for “leveling” may

be correct according to American usage.

        Page 97 - The Use of Corduroy. It might be well to emphasize here the

fact that corduroyed ice crossings are easily and readily

made in the sub-arctic (i.e. within the tree line), but

that though willows may be available in certain places in

the true arctic, there are many localities where the ab–

sence of such vegetation (the rule, rather than the ex–

ception in such instances) preclude the use of corduroyed

crossings.

        Page 99 - Para 3, Line 3, “tivers” for “rivers”.

        Page 119- Para 3, Line 5, “lefel” for “level”.

        Page 120- Para 3, Line 2, “tricks” for “trucks”.

       

GENERAL

        1. May I respectfully suggest that you reconsider

the selected title for this section of your encyclopedia,

The material included in it covers a much broader field

than the title, “Uses of Ice”, indicated. It deals in some

measure with snow and its compaction, with the geography of

sea ice, with oceanography, climatology, etc. To use a

term which seems to enjoy increasing use, I would suggest

a title like “Practical Cryology”, or alternatively “Arctic

Ice and Snow”.

002      |      Vol_VII-0761                                                                                                                  

        2. The material contained in pp. 75 to 78 concerning

the artificial consolidation of snow could “be considerably

expanded. Much as I would like to provide this for you,

I have neither the time nor the opportunity to do so at

this late date. The best that I can do is give you re–

ferences to material which you either have or can readily

procure, as follows:

        (Extracted from the Polar Record, Vol. 5, Nos. 33, 34

pp. 137-140):

        KONDRAT’YEVA, A.S. Teploprovodnost’ snegovogo pokrova i

fizicheskie protsessy, proiskhodyashchie v nëm pod vliyaniem

temperaturnogo gradienta (Heat conductivity of snow cover

and physical processes occurring in it under the influence

of a temperature gradient). Vilenski, D.G. (Ed.). Fiziko–

mekhanicheskie svoystva snega i ikh ispol’zovanie v

aerodromnom i dorozhnom stroitel’stve (Physical and mechani–

cal properties of snow and their use in aerodrome and road

construction), (Moscow, Leningrad), 1945, pp. 14-28.

(Equations found expressing heat conductivity as function

of density. Copy in Science Section, Society for Cultural

Relations with the U.S.S.R., London).

        KONDRAT’YEVA, A.S., KRAGEL’SKI, I.V. and SHAKHOV, A.A.

Uvelichenie plotnosti snega pod vliyaniem szhimayuschey

nagruzki (Increase in the density of snow under the in–

fluence of pressure). Vilenski, D.G. (Ed.). Fiziko–

mekhanicheskie svoystva snega i ikh ispol’zovanie v

aerodromnom i dorozhnom stroitel’stve (Physical and mechani–

cal properties of snow and their use in aerodrome and road

construction), (Moscow, Leningrad), 1945, pp. 5-9. (Re–

sults of field and laboratory experiments on relationship

of density of snow to pressure and temperature. Copy in

Science Section, Society for Cultural Relations with the

U.S.S.R., London.)

        KRAGEL’SKI, I.V. O metodike opredeleniya tverdosti i plotnosti

snegovykh pokrytiy (On the method of determining the hard–

ness and density of snow coverings). Vilenski, D.G. (Ed.).

Fiziko-mekhanicheskie svoystva snega i ikh ispol’zovanie v

aerodromnom i dorozhnom stroitel’stve (Physical and mechani–

cal properties of snow and their use in aerodrome and road

construction), (Moscow, Leningrad), 1945, pp. 61-66.

(Apparatus and system used in determining hardness and

density. Copy in Science Section, Society for Cultural

Relations with the U.S.S.R., London.)

        KRAGEL’SKI, I.V. Obrabotka snegovogo pokrova metodom

peremeshivaniya i posledovatel’nogo razrusheniya (Treatment

of snow cover by harrowing and subsequent flattening).

Vilenski, D. G. (Ed.). Fiziko-mekhanicheskie svoystva snega

i ikh ispol’zovanie v aerodromnom i dorozhnom stroitel’stve

(Physical and mechanical properties of snow and their use

in aerodrome and road construction), (Moscow, Leningrad),

1945, pp. 43-48. (Harrowing and rolling method of obtaining

hard surface, as used by Red Army. Copy in Science Section,

Society for Cultural relations with the U. S.S.R., London.)

        KRAGEL’SKI, I.V. Tekhnologicheski analiz orudiy dlya uplotneniya

snega (Technological analysis of instruments for the packing

down of snow). Vilenski D.G. (Ed.); Fiziko-mekhanicheskie

svoystva snega i ikh ispol’zovanie v aerodromnom i dorozhnom

stroitel’stve (Physical and mechanical properties of snow

and their use in aerodrome and road construction), (Moscow,

Leningrad), 1945, pp. 29-42. (Effect on snow of various

types of roller and harrow examined mathematically. Copy in

Science Section, Society for Cultural Relations with the

U.S.S.R., London.)

003      |      Vol_VII-0762                                                                                                                  

        KRAGSL’SKI, I.V. and SHAKHOV, A.A. Izmenenie mekhanicheskikh

svoystv snegovogo pokrova vo vremeni (zatverdenie) (Change

in the mechanical properties of snow cover after the passage

of time (hardening)). Vilenski, D.G. (Ed.), Fiziko–

mekhanicheskie svoystva snegaiikh ispol’zovanie v aerodromnom

i dorozhnom stroitel’stve (Physical and mechanical properties

of snow and their use in aerodrome and road construction),

(Moscow, Leningrad), 1945, pp. 10-13, (Study of effect of

time on hardening of snow. Copy in Science Section, Society

for Cultural Relations with the U.S.S.R., London.)

        RIKHTER, G.D. Snezhny pokrov, yego formirovanie i svoystva (Snow

cover, its formation and properties), Moscow, Leningrad:

Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR (Publishing House of the

Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.), 1945, 120 pp.,

8½- × 5½ in. (Formation of snow cover, its physical proper–

ties, influence on visibility, drifting action and thawing;

features of snow cover in U.S.S.R. by regions.)

        3. I am certain that you have most of these in your

library, in translated form. It would not take one of your

staff long to extract the pertinent material.