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STUDENT BLOG

HOW I SPENT through knee-high, seemingly

hostile bushes, it’s a two-hour
hike.
Not to mention that on our
MY SUMMER return trip, our bags were filled
with the rocks we sampled. All
that extra weight meant that
we shuffled along much more
By Sarah Mount, MSc slowly, struggling to keep our
balance with an unfamiliar
Earth Sciences, Carleton University centre of gravity. Thank
goodness for well-constructed
backpacks.
On one occasion, while
I walking back to camp, we
spent part of my summer
vacation doing fieldwork
figured out that the demonic
with fellow Carleton Earth
we just stuck to the rocks.
Sciences students in northern bushes could be avoided if
Quebec, just outside the Arctic But our proud moment of
Circle in the Nunavik region. Our ingenuity was short lived.
goal was to sample a very specific We did such a great job of
rock outcrop, which was located sticking to the rocks that we had strayed
an hour boat ride south of the completely off course, and none of us had noticed until we
town of Inukjuak — and what a ride that was! were in the middle of nowhere! We had to fight our way
Sandwiched between the coast and the Hopewell Islands through tall brush, cursing ourselves for not paying closer
that tower out of Hudson’s Bay, we were propelled over the attention to our handheld GPS. It took us almost an extra
choppy water in motorized canoes. Even though it was July, hour to return to camp that day.
we wove through small chunks of blue ice left over from the
previous winter. Lichen in the Rain:
We travelled down a river and arrived at a bay, where the
shore would become our base camp. Our boat captains A Not-So-Glorious Feeling
helped us unload our gear and then sped off, leaving our
crew completely alone for 10 days, isolated from the rest of Then came a day when, after we had filled our bags with
the world, save for a satellite phone in case of emergency. rocks and started the slow trek back, the skies opened up
We started to set up camp but the wind was gusting so and it began to pour rain. Sure, rain doesn’t sound all that
strongly that pegging down the tents felt like trying to tie intimidating. But when walking over huge lichen-covered
down a wild animal. As we wrestled with the tents we real- rock hills, it feels like a very extreme experience: lichen be-
ized that we were being watched. A herd of muskox were comes extraordinarily slippery when wet, so you can either
nearby, staring at us. It was as if they found us amusing — walk over the rocks and risk falling or struggle through the
like we were a new sitcom and they were a nuclear family bushes where the black flies and mosquitoes await.
tuning into prime time after dinner. It was probably very cinematic — the line of us in our rain
Eventually all the muskox ambled away except for one, pants and coats, shuffling along in the torrential downpour.
who seemed a little too interested in eating a bush. We Very Lord of the Rings. I’ve never appreciated dry socks
suspect the lone muskox was really the herd’s lookout, quite as much as I did when we finally got back to camp.
assessing our threat level. The rain continued on for two more days, so to ensure we
could collect enough rock samples, we extended our stay
in the wilderness. Our food supplies began to run low. All
The Rocky Road Back to of the “good” granola bars were gone, and we had to really
Base Camp rough it by eating the second-rate ones. We inventoried and
strictly rationed what had become our most prized food
item: children’s apple sauce packets.
The aim of our excursion was to collect rock samples for
my master’s project. We study the geochemistry of the Manoeuvring Around the Mighty
samples to see if they have variations in short-lived isotope
systems, which could shed light on what happened during Muskox
the Earth’s formation.
The rocks we wanted were five kilometres away from Towards the end of the trip we had really nailed down the
our camp. That may not sound like much, but if you factor most efficient route to take — so efficient that we even nick-
in climbing up exposed rock faces and then wading down named the first part of the hike “the highway.”

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