Today it’s hovercraft sampling. Before the ice break we will try to get a sample using a hovercraft.

We went sampling on Monday morning, using the snowmobile for the last time. Sampling went well: we saw lots of fishermen on the ice for a big “burbot day”, and we collected a new very colored sample. At night, we went for a walk along the Ieniseï and observed water rising and almost reaching the first flooding plains. This new water level rise marked the end of “snowmobile” part of the mission We are now grounded and waiting for the ice break “party”. Today, Elena and Arnaud left Igarka; the only way to get to the airport was with a hovercraft.

Water color changes everyday with particulate fraction resembling American coffee and dissolved fraction looking like German beer.
In the last 48h, the water level rose up to 3 meters, but we were still able to sample with snowmobile.
Today’s ice thickness was 97cm.

Today was much colder and everything has refrozen again. Today there was 7 cm of water, but still around 1 m of ice. The Yenisei snowmobile barge was very busy today, with many of the fishermen returning to land from the ice. On our way back, we had 5-7 snowmobiles in line after us.

The melt lakes continued to grow and today we found our sledge
becoming a boat. 17 cm of water on the ice today, but the ice depth is still 1 m.

Rain and warm temperature (+5°C) lead to the formation of several ice melt lakes on the Ienisei.
The snowmobile ride was then a succession of slush and lake crossing.
We lost 15% of ice depth in one day but it still remains 1 meter.
We are in our very last day of “sampling on ice” show.

Today continued the frozen trend of yesterday, with the arrival of
more snow and also Elena from Krasnoyarsk.
We immediately took her on the ice and she drove us to our site in the snow mobile.
It was snowing heavily and at one point we couldn’t see either riverbank.
It cleared up enough for us to reach the site successfully and collect
our measurements and 100L of water.
On the way back we had a snowball fight, which Elaina won.

With the construction of a floating raft to help us across the slushy
melted bank of the Ieniseï, and the air temperatures refreezing the
slush on the ice, arriving at the sampling site was made a bit easier
for Anatolii.
Arnaud captured some great footage of the river crossing for the documentary today and today’s sample was the most colored yet!
It was also Allison’s birthday and after sampling, we had a very
nice party for her, which included American treats such as brownies.
She received very special gifts from everyone in the lab, including
her very own sampling bottle and signed t-shirt!

Today the ice on the Ieniseï started to change drastically, first huge
cracks, ice ridges, lakes along the bank, and slush.
Reaching the sampling site starts to be more “technical”  for Anatolii (water and slush lake crossing…).
But we sampled again.
On the afternoon, we went to the Permafrost museum in order to store our samples 10 m below ground…in the permafrost, a perfect freezer with constant T° for our samples.

Every day the samples are becoming more and more colored. Today was much colder on the ice than yesterday, and much of what melted yesterday has turned back into ice. We visited fishermen working on the ice on the way back to the lab from sampling, and in the afternoon we completed our lab work. We modified some of the hand filtration units to make them faster,  and also completed the first SPE of the trip.