6 minute read
Feature Joseph Zyble
but still looked forward to working at the field station after a few weeks of training at the main office in Evanston.
Now a college a graduate with a real job, he went out and bought the shiny, used corvette he’d always dreamed of owning. “I loaded it up with my belongings and started driving, driving north,” he said. “Then all the roads became this red gravel.”
The year was 1960. He kept driving and realized that a corvette was not the ideal vehicle for living in the U.P.
Fortunately, Bolsenga really enjoyed his new job.
““They made me into a glaciologist. I didn’t know anything at all about ice and snow research. They eased me into it and I was very interested in it,” he said.
He worked at many locations throughout his career, typically as a civilian scientist contracted and supported by the U.S. government.
“My prime area of expertise was looking at the interaction of solar radiation with ice and snow surfaces. I did a lot work on the reflection of solar radiation on ice and snow surfaces and a lot of work on penetration of solar radiation through various types of ice,” he said.
In simple terms, Bolsenga created a reference for what would happen when snow and ice were struck by various levels and types of radiation. He connected the light radiation data collected by satellites to the physical
changes happening on the ground. His career took him to Greenland where he lived for a time at Camp Century, a former military installation carved into the polar ice cap and powered by a nuclear reactor. “The base was under the ice. There were about 150 people living and working there,” he said. One of Bolsenga’s assignments at Camp Century was to help prevent snow and ice from ingesting into the reactor’s air intake system, which had been a perpetual problem. “We experimented with different snow fence designs and we had success,” he said. They made me While working in Yellowknife, into a glaciologist. located in the I didn’t know anyCanadian Northwest Territories, he recalls thing at all about trying out a new extreme weather ice and snow suit a company had research. They recently developed. “My biologist eased me into it colleague and I tested them out and I was very in- one day when we terested in it.” were working on a study to determine the amount of solar radiation penetrating through very thick ice and how this impacted the biota under the ice. We used a custom-fabricated support system to collect data beneath the ice,” he said. “They worked. The suits kept us perfectly warm though it was 70 below zero.” (In another study on thinner ice, Bolsenga assembled the same support system, but with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to study Lake Erie under-ice biota.) While working in Alaska, he
Stan Bolsenga is shown somewhere in the arctic setting up sensitive equipment that measures the melting rates of snow and ice under specific conditions. He and his partner traveled to the site on snowshoes and hauled the equipment on a pull-behind covered sled.
Glaciologist Stan Bolsenga’s career once took him to Greenland to work at Camp Century, a military installation that was built into the ice cap and powered by a nuclear reactor. One of his assignments was to try to keep the snow and ice from building up inside the air intake vents for the facility. He is shown standing near part of the special fencing he designed to help prevent the build up. “We experimented with different snow fence designs and we had success,” he said.
snapped a photo of a bank temperature sign that read -53, but the temperature continued dropping to -70 and -80.
During his career, Bolsenga also earned masters and doctorate degrees from the University of Michigan that complemented his research.
His work took him as far away as Mongolia to study some of its lakes. This was later in his career when he started to move into the hydrology field.
“I’ve been to Venezuela. Their Lake Maracaibo was just a disaster. The bottom of the lake had all these lines for pumping petroleum from the different oil companies and many were leaking,” he said.
Bolsenga was there to help develop a plan to restore the polluted lake.
“At that time that country was so wealthy they said anything you can do for us that would be fine, we’ll pay for it 100 percent. That was great, but by the time we got everything in place to get it going, their economy began to tank and that was the end of that,” he said.
In retirement, Bolsenga and his wife Judy lived near Ann Arbor. He enjoyed robust, outdoor activities like snowboarding and mountain biking. However, 19 years ago a neardeath accident involving a tractor forced him to slow down.
“One day a little advertisement in a newspaper about a local wood carving class caught his eye. Though he had no art background, he signed up for it, but the class was cancelled due to lack of interest. Bolsenga contacted the course instructor to see if he would be willing to teach him one on one; the instructor agreed.
“I warned him that because of the accident I could only sit or stand still for about an hour. He told me that he’d been in a serious construction accident and said, ‘If I can do it, you can too.’” Bolsenga recalled.
“It was a good be-ginning; he gave me a lot. I also learned from books and magazines,” he said.
A course offered by the world-class wood carvers of Krausmans Wood Carving Studio in Gwinn brought Bolsenga back to the U.P., at least for the weeklong course. “It was a great class. Afterward, I told my wife, let’s stay another week and I’ll show you the U.P.,” he said. It didn’t take long for their sightseeing to turn into house hunting for a summer cabin. The summer cabin they bought near Munising turned into their full-time home a year later when Stan kept spending all of his time there.
“My wife got so frustrated she said, ‘This is silly. Why don’t we just move up.’ I felt like a pig in slop. We moved in full time,” he said.
In his photo/scrapbook documenting his career, Stan Bolsenga has this photo he shot while working near Fairbanks, Alaska, during the 1960s. It was -53 at that moment, but later in the evening the temperature would drop to more than 70 degrees below zero.
I’ve been to Venezuela. Their Lake Maracaibo was just a disaster. The bottom of the lake had all these lines for pumping petroleum ... many were leaking.”
