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Chubb Crater - Part 6 of 12

The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. C1, No.1, January, 1952
Solving the Riddle of Chubb Crater
By V. Ben Meen - Director, Royal Ontario Museum of Geology and
Mineralogy


Cut off from Outside World

With minor variations, the tragedy of Meen at the microphone was
reenacted ni-ht after night. No matter how often I checked over my notes
and four guide manuals, the result was always the same. My calls failed
to bring any reply.
At first the radio was set up under an awning outside the cook tent.
When the temperature began dropping lower in the second half of our
stay, I moved it into the kitchen. The change of location made no
difference.
The radio's failure (or was it mine?) filled me with an abiding
uneasiness. What if an emergency should occur, serious illness, a bad
accident? We had no way of reaching the outside world to summon speedy
aid.
As our third week in the field lengthened and my radio calls still
brought no results, my concern increased.
Quite apart from our radio problem, camp life had other ups and downs.
Our first site, at the west end of Museum Lake, had been selected
because of its convenience to the areas of our initial operations. It
enjoyed no protection from the never-ending wind, but at first I thought
it would be satisfactory.
Sometime later, however, two days of extremely powerful wind changed my
miud for me. The gale lashed the camp hard and steadily, diminishing
only slightly the first night.
On the second night its fury increased, and with it came snow. At 2
o'clock in the morning I heard Nick and Fred out checking the guy ropes
of their tent and its neighbor.
An hour later the wind velocity was so great that the Meen-Stewart tent
began to take off. I hurried out and got it moored more securelv. I also
lowered the antenna to ease the strain on the aluminum masts, which
flailed about like buggy whips. It was a shivering, worried expedition
leader who crawled back into his sleeping robe.
The next morning, in casual understatement, Dick Stewart remarked he
hadn't slept much. I inquired what he had been thinking about.
"I just lay here and prayed," he replied solemnly.
"What do you think I was doing?" I said. He didn't have to ask.

Canoe Blown Like Chip

When I went outside I found that the 105pound canoe, which the night
before had been parked snugly against our tent wall, had been blown some
50 feet away, turning over several times in the trip.
In a couple of days the winds subsided to something like erratic normal,
and we shifted camp across to the east end of our lake. Everyone felt
better after tents were pitched behind the shelter of a seven-foot sand
dune.
judged by Far North standards, our camp was reasonably comfortable
throughout our time in the field, despite the exposed location of the
first site.
Having some experience in the wilderness, I am inclined to scorn chairs
as excess baggage. However, the Arctic is different. The ground is cold
and damp, and the rocks bestrewing our camp areas were far from
comfortably upholstered.
The four-pound aluminum folding chairs we took along probably would look
more at home on the sands at Miami or Atlantic City than they did in the
bleak wastelands. But they proved more worth while per ounce than
anything else we brought with us.
We slept on collapsible cots with springsteel frames. Some of us rested
well on them, but others complained that, with the cots a bare three
inches off the ground, dampness would seep up even through the warm
thickness of heavy sleeping robes. Our few spare evening hours were
spent in reading, playing cribbage for no stakes, or working over
specimens collected during the day.

Crater More than Two Miles Wide

One satisfying development was that we finally logged the dimensions of
our uncooperative subject. Chubb Crater, so surveys established, has a
rim-to-rim diameter of 11,500 feet and a circumference of 6.8 miles.
The lake in the crater bowl averages 9,100 feet in diameter. The shore
line measures 5.4 miles around, and soundings showed the greatest depth
of water to be 825 feet.
Before we obtained final sounding data we already knew that the highest
point on the lopsided rim was 500 feet above the lake surface. Now we
double-checked figures and were jubilant that our crater had a maximum
depth of 1,325 feet, unprecedented if we could establish that it was
meteoritic in origin.
To get accurate measurements of the lake's depth, Fred and Nick outdid
the most eager of beavers in the way they toiled on the only two calm
days to come their way. Their task was laborious and exacting. The
weighted sounding cable had to be lowered repeatedly until it hit
bottom, and the various locations had to he precisely plotted.
The lake's waters are remarkably clear. Tests proved it was possible to
see an object suspended 115 feet below the surface, even in less than
ideal weather.
This crater lake also presented us with a fish puzzle, still unsolved.
We took from its waters a number of misshapen Arctic char, a fish of the
trout family. They had grotesque heads, far more developed than their
soft, spongy bodies.
Melting snow and ice can explain why Chubb boasts a deep lake. But how
did the char get into its waters?
Still more baffling is how the fish have survived, for study of lake
water proved it deficient in the minute plankton organisms on which fish
feed.

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