The Southern Patagonian Icefield from cruise altitude

One thing about doing field work in Antarctica is that, when you think you're all done, you have upwards of a week just to get home. Two days ago we got off the ship in Punta Arenas, Chile, and now we are on the way back to Alaska. One small perk of this long flight is that we happened to fly on one of those rare good weather days and I had a window seat. So here are some pictures of the Southern Patagonian Icefield:

Some impressions of Andvord Bay and Gerlache Strait

Recently we've had some amazing weather, so the true beauty of this area was revealed. We worked all night yesterday, fixing a weather station and retrieving an autonomous glider that's been going up and down the water for the last several days. Below are a few pictures from that glorious night.

Anvers Island

The obligatory Gentoo Penguin

And for the fluid dynamics geek: Probably the most beautiful example of a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability that I've come across

One more glacier camera

Yesterday we installed the second glacier camera for this project. The day could not have been more different. Instead of sunshine we had almost continuous downpour. We did find a nice site though, under slightly overhanging bedrock, which affords us with a nice view of the other fjord arm.

View of the Laurence M Gould from our camera site.

View into the fjord

Glacier timelapse

We put up a glacier timelapse camera today. That was a pretty spectacular undertaking, because the fjord walls here are so steep with many hanging glaciers and big cornices. We found one ridge that is safe and successfully installed a camera today. We got lucky with weather, this was the first blue sky day since we've left Punta Arenas.

Hanging glaciers on steep fjord walls

The LM Gould from our camera site

The glacier camera

... and two happy oceanographers, on land for once

Oceanographic moorings

As part of this project we put in several oceanographic moorings to measure various physical parameters over the next one and a half years. The moorings consist of a railroad wheel that acts as an anchor, an acoustic release, various instruments to measure things like salinity, temperature and water flow, and a big submerged buoy to avoid the ice bergs on top. Deploying such moorings in waters full of ice is quite exciting, and we're happy that it all went well. Now we hope all instruments are recording, so that at the end of the next Antarctic summer we can recover and download the instruments.

The mooring team (plus me who gave moral support)

Some nice wind clouds

Penguins on an ice berg

Putting the mooring together, as it is lowered into the ocean, piece by piece

A nice sun-lit ice berg

Detail of a highly crevassed ice berg