The Iditarod trail between the Seward Peninsula
villages of Elim and Golovin. Kenji Yoshikawa is
traveling along part of the trail to visit schools
and install permafrost boreholes.
Photo by Ned Rozell.
This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer at the institute.
WHITE MOUNTAIN, Alaska — The University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Kenji Yoshikawa is making a snowmachine journey from Emmonak, at the mouth of the Yukon, to Kotzebue, about 800 trail miles away. Tohru Saito of the International Arctic Research Center and I are traveling with him. Here’s how Kenji’s day went today:
7 a.m. — He wakes on the floor of the Elim school library, under a sign that says “You will not get your way when you: holler, whine, yell, ignore, demand, or lay on the floor.”
9 a.m. — Kenji tells the three junior-high-age students in a science class about permafrost, then takes them outside to look at a “frost tube,” clear surgical tubing with blue water inside that fits inside a borehole and turns cloudy when it freezes. Students will use it to tell how deep the ground freezes.