We were back at Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park to download data loggers and to get things ready for the summer. Since this happened in late April we were prepared to dig out data loggers, but instead we found a melt season already well underway. A combination of a snow poor winter and a really warm spring meant that a lot of the glacier was already snow free and whatever snow was on the glacier turned into slush quickly. The warm spring also helped fuel a lot of the early forest fires in Alberta.
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Snow slush, looking wet ...
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The skis sometimes kept us from sinking into the wet snow, but by the end of every day we had very wet feet.
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Slush avalanches
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The slush avalanches are slowly moving masses of supersaturated snow. It's fascinating to watch: water saturated snow moves downglacier and piles up. If it piles up too much, the water drains and the snow then builds a dam that eventually breaks.
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Because the north-facing glacier is steeper lower down we end up with a bit of a curious reverse mass balance gradient: the upper glacier is snow free before the lower glacier is.
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