Recently, I've been able to join this program to add a radar component with the goal of measuring the thickness of the glacier ice. For most glaciers in Alaska, we don't actually know how much ice they contain.
The beauty of airborne science is that it can only happen with good weather. Mountain flying poses so many challenges that we have to wait for conditions to be great. Last week we had five days of beautiful conditions and managed to cover a large part of Alaska's glaciers. Some impressions follow below.
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| Beautiful blue glacier lake |
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| Late fall conditions with only little snow left on many glaciers |
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| A drained glacier lake |
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| Ultima Thule Lodge: our base of operations |
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| The ever-amazing Mt. St.Elias from Icy Bay; 5400 m from bottom to top! |
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| St. Elias with Malaspina Glacier in the foreground |
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| Funky avalanche |
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| Icy Bay |
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| A really nice fold in Icy Bay; St. Elias in the background |
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| Icy Bay |
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| Tyndall Glacier in Icy Bay |
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| Some Moose enjoying the lush vegetation of coastal Alaska |
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| We saw much of the snow surface covered in red algae. This is sufficiently darker than the snow to cause additional melting and snow cups. |
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| Close-up of red snow algea |
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| The Bagley Icefield with Mt. Logan, arguably the largest mountain in the world. The area over 5000 m asl spans more than 15 km. |
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| Pothole central on the upper Logan Glacier. These are believed to be left-over and water-filled crevasses and are associated with surges |
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| A landslide onto a glacier |
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| The advancing Taku Glacier |
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| Band-ogives or Forbes bands, an alternating sequence of dark and bright ice forming under ice falls. This one is from the Juneau Ice Field. |
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| Close up of Forbes' bands. |
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| A large ice berg with runnels in the Columbia Glacier Bay |
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| And finally a nice look at beginning fall in interior Alaska. |
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