McCarthy summer school

Darn, just accidentally deleted this post. I'll try to recreate from the last saved draft...

The pictures are from the 2nd UAF International Summer School in Glaciology held in McCarthy in June. During that time I also had a chance to do some airborne radio echo sounding on the Harding Icefield.

Old surge moraines: Black Rapids Glacier

The beautiful Wrangell volcanoes

Hiking near Kennicott: Ed, Regine, Sonja

McCarthy: The Mekka of rock glaciers

Sonja on the Root Glacier

Ultima Thule Lodge. Lodge owner Paul Claus does a lot of our glacier flying

Prince William Sound: On the way to the Harding Icefield

Harding Icefield on the Kenai Peninsula

McCarthy

The old Hardware Store: our classroom

Summer school participants were camping

Some old mining buildings in McCarthy

Sonja: the youngest summer school participant

White out

Some pictures from our pilot, as we were working on the ice last Friday

Bell 212 in Greenland (Photo: Arne Fleischer)

Installing GPS (Photo: Arne Fleischer)

Spring trip to Nuuk

We are entering our last season of field work for our project in Nuuk where we are looking at glacier changes and try to relate those to conditions in the ocean. In a very quick trip, we visited all our over-winter stations (cameras, GPS, and seismic stations) and prepared them for summer.

The fjord just outside Nuuk

The glaciers at the end of the fjord

 The picture below shows Narssap Sermia, a glacier that was relatively stable until a few years ago. But then it woke up and in the past two years it retreated more than 2 km. The gray moraine shows land that was ice covered just a few years ago.

Narssap Sermia

Drained lake by Narssap Sermia

Unfortunately it had snowed a few days before we got here. The fresh white snow and the overcast weather made it very difficult to land on the glacier, and our GPS boxes provided the only reference for the ground.

GPS installation

One of the tools we use are cameras that are set up to take several pictures a day. Here is an example from Kangiata Nunata Sermia over this past winter.

Black Rapids Glacier

The northern hemisphere glacier field season has started. We have a new project on Black Rapids Glacier in the Alaska Range. This is probably my favorite glacier. It is where I did all the work for my PhD thesis, and I've spent several months up there since 1995. It's good to be back!
We flew in with Paul Claus, glacier pilot extraordinaire, in his Single Otter.

The field team (photo: R.Homberger)

Ultima Thule's Single Otter on skis

Two flights brought in the field team of four, a snow machine, all our instruments, and a tent camp with food.

Camp. Lokket tributary in the background

The goal of this project is to look at ice flow at the confluence of two big glacier. The picture below shows the main valley of Black Rapids (which follows the Denali Fault), and on the far side the Lokket tributary. We put up instruments to monitor the flow at this junction.

Mt. Meteor

Mt. McGinnis

The Trinity Basin (upper Black Rapids)

A particularly nice set of solar halos.

and .... nothing

On January 3, after more than a month of waiting at McMurdo, we finally boarded a LC-130 plane, and we found ourselves on the way to Pine Island Glacier (PIG). We landed at PIG main camp on a beautiful afternoon.

LC-130 arrival at PIG main camp

PIG main camp is impressive in its size. The photo below shows most of the bigger structures, which includes a large galley tent, and several tents for the helicopter operation, a medical tent, a comms tent, and a few others. Now all that was left was to wait for the helicopters to arrive. The plan was for two helicopters to be flown to PIG main in LC-130 aircraft. They would then be re-assembled and used to fly a hot water drill to the Pine Island ice shelf. We would then drill a hole through the shelf to make measurements underneath it. The main quantity of interest is the amount of melting under the ice shelf, because it determines its stability and fate.

PIG main camp

But all that was not to be. After all the planning, all the staging, and all this work, the transport of the helicopters was delayed by another day, a storm moved in, and the deadline passed, by which NSF thought that it was too risky and too late in the season to still fly helicopters so far out onto the ice sheet. Saturday morning we were told that the season was over.

Drifting snow

Most of our hot water drilling equipment had not been in use for the past two years, so we decided to fire it all up to make sure it still runs. The benefit was a nice hot tub in the middle of the Antarctic ice sheet.

Communal hot tub

An LC-130 (here on a take-off attempt) came and got most of the people out. But we managed to secure some Twin Otter support, to put out a network of seismic and GPS stations.
The flight to the ice shelf was spectacular. PIG is one of the fastest flowing glaciers in Antarctica (about 4 km/year). The fast flowing part is separated from the slower moving ice by a shear zone, where the ice is jumbled up into huge towers of ice that looks like it's been put through a grinder.

The shear zone

The shear zone is a distinct, several kilometers wide, zone, that extends all the way to the ocen (in the far distance in the picture below)

Pine Island Glacier shear zone

We enjoyed two days of phenomenal weather during which we installed five on-ice stations that will now collect GPS and seismic data for the next year. This involved a lot of skillful flying, expertly done by our Kenn Borek crew.

Sun bathing on a Twin Otter

GPS and seismic station on PIG ice shelf

Twin Otter with seismic and GPS station

Now we're back in McMurdo, waiting to go home. We are already full of ideas on what to do better next year to avoid another month of sitting and waiting. Stay tuned...

Still in McMurdo

On December 1 we arrived at McMurdo station, the primary hub for US Antarctic Program activities. And now it's nearly Christmas, and we're still here. Our whole program is about a month late.
We came here to drill through the ice shelf at Pine Island Glacier. This is one of most rapidly changing glaciers on the planet and it is a big one. Much of the changes can be blamed on warm ocean water that is getting under a floating ice shelf and is melting it from below. We are planning to drill through it and then measure that process directly.
Getting out to PIG is not easy. The distance from McMurdo to the base camp exceeds 1500 miles (~2500 km). It is comparable to the distance from Seattle to Chicago (or Madrid to Oslo for the more European declined). Imagine moving a field party, a hot water drill and a lot of instrumentation across the coldest and windiest continent. Delays are inevitable, and bad weather, mechanical failures, and simply bad luck have all played a role.

Instead we are enjoying McMurdo. As much as I'd like to get out of here; it is an interesting town to explore. Its summer population is about 1,000 people. It could be like any small town in the Arctic, but one pretty quickly realizes that it's not the same. There are no kids, no elders, and no dogs. The town is entirely dedicated to supporting science and to a large degree to supporting the South Pole station.
The view above is from Observation Hill, a small volcanic cone above town. The small peninsula in the background is where Captain Scott set up winter quarters, just over 100 years ago. The hut can be seen in the picture below.

His bid for the South Pole ended tragically, and Scott and his men died on the way back from the pole, after having been beaten to the goal by the Norwegian explorer Amundson, who had already successfully completed the first navigation of the Northwest Passage in the Arctic (at least the first European navigation...). The 100 year anniversary of his arrival at the South Pole was commemorated last week. The Norwegian prime minister flew in for the occasion.
Scott's misfortunes are commemorated with a cross on Observation Hill. It was put up by surviving members who waited for his return in 1913.

McMurdo can be a nice place in beautiful weather. The mountain range across the sound (the Royal Society Range) is beautiful and beckons, but, alas, no heliskiing for us...
On the other side we are greeted by Mt. Erebus, one of Earth's most active volcanoes, and its southernmost. It always has a little puff cloud. Another set of nice looking slopes, but, again, off limits.
McMurdo is, of course, entirely dependent on outside support. This happens via ship (once a year) and via several airplanes during the Antarctic summer. Everything that was used gets shipped off the continent again and goes back to the US for proper disposal. In the process, there is a relatively elaborate waste separation program. Occasionally, somebody with a sense of humor enhances that program (see the one in the middle):
Under the cover of each recycling bin, one can find detailed instructions about what can and cannot be disposed of here:
One of the big challenges of McMurdo is energy. It is cold here and windy. Not so bad in the summer, right now temperatures are always around, but mostly above freezing. Almost the entire station runs on diesel that is shipped here. For the past two years, three wind turbines are operational. These mostly supply the neighboring Scott Station, which is operated by New Zealand, but some excess power comes to McMurdo.
Scott Station:
And to finish of: A picture of our team member Dale Pomraning (hot water driller) doing some indoor crevasse rescue training.