I flew to the ice camp and spent time onboard the USS Hampton during ICEX 2014. Below is the official navy news release about the camp:

From Commander, Submarine Forces Public Affairs

NORFOLK (NNS) — Commander, Submarine Forces (COMSUBFOR) announced an early end to Ice Camp Nautilus on March 23. The ice camp was a temporary structure built and operated especially for Ice Exercise 2014 (ICEX-2014).

Personnel at Ice Camp Nautilus, which is built into the ice floe north of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, began a careful breakdown of the camp Sunday.

ICEX-2014 began March 17 and was scheduled to continue through March 30. However, large shifts in wind direction created instabilities in the wind-driven ice floes of the Arctic Ocean, and these changes in the prevailing winds between March 18th and March 20th led to multiple fractures in the ice near the camp. These cracks prevented the use of several airfields used for transporting personnel and equipment to the ice camp. The rapidly changing conditions of the ice, along with extremely low temperatures and poor visibility hampered helicopter operations and made sustaining the runway potentially risky.

The Virginia-class attack submarine USS New Mexico (SSN 779) and the Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Hampton (SSN 767) will continue to gather data and conduct ice-related exercises until they transit out from under the ice.

Submarines have conducted under-ice operations in the Arctic regions in support of inter-fleet transit, training, cooperative allied engagements and operations for more than 50 years. USS Nautilus (SSN 571) made the first submerged transit to the North Pole in 1958. USS Skate (SSN 578) was the first U.S. submarine to surface through arctic ice at the North Pole in March 1959. Since those events, the U.S. Submarine Force has completed more than 120 Arctic exercises with the last being conducted in 2012. The last ice camp was established in 2011. Since 1987, most of these have been conducted in conjunction with Royal Navy submarines.

For more news from Commander, Submarine Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, visit www.navy.mil/local/sublant/

Last weekend I flew to Anchorage, Alaska and then to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. From Prudhoe Bay we got on a small plane and flew about 150 miles north and landed on the ice. I spent the night on the camp. From the ice camp, I boarded a helicopter to fly out to meet the submarine for what was supposed to be a 10 day underway.

However, late this week, the ice around the camp started to break up a little bit, and the exercise was finished early. When we returned to the camp we could see the huge section of open water where the runway had been before we got underway (the camp had made a second runway when the first was lost). Here are some pictures from the camp:

I started regularly blogging three years ago. Yes I know, I actually started this blog in November of 2010; but, I didn’t post anything between November 2010 and March 2011.  I have written 340+ posts in that time, and recently just passed 100,000 written words

It is fun to go back and look at what I have written over the past couple of years. It is nice to see that my posts have gotten no more interesting nor have they stopped jumping around on random topics. But that is ADHD for you.  Even though I can’t focus on writing on just one or two topics, I have been able to keep posting in the blog. Even if only one or two people actually read it.

Over the next three years, I will try to write another 100,000 words. I’ll try to post more pictures. I’ll continue to not try to focus on writing on one subject. That would be too boring anyway.