Hailuogou Glacier, China

I was invited to join a field expedition to Tibet, where the group of Francesca Pellicciotti at WSL, Switzerland, studies a debris-covered glacier. I came along to do some ice thickness measurements with my ice penetrating radar. The trip to Tibet is long and further delayed by bureaucracy. Our first stop in China was Chengdu. I had never even heard of this city, but it is huge with over 10 Million inhabitants. Among others, it hosts the world's largest building (by floor space). In Chengdu we had to get our permits to be allowed to Tibet. Because we arrived a bit early (due to cheaper ticket prices), we had the opportunity to visit the Hailuogou Glacier. This glacier descends from Mt. Gongga, the highest mountain of Szechuan province. It is of particular interest to somebody from UAF, because it was first climbed by an expedition led by Terry Moore, who later became president of UAF and remained interested in mountaineering and aviation for his entire life. Mt. Gongga (aka Mt. Minya Konka) was believed by some to be higher than Mt. Everest. The fascinating story of its first ascent, which was done in very modern fashion, is given in this account, and in the book 'Men Against Clouds'.

We never saw the mountain, that stands at an impressive 7556 m asl on our trip, but got a view of it from the air later when returning from Tibet:

Mt. Gongga is the pyramid that stands out highest. Note the snow drift coming of its ridge.

Hailuogou Glacier is becoming a prime tourist destination, despite its difficult access with a long winding road that ascends from the city of Mo Xi at about 1600 m to the base of the glacier at about 3000 m. This is some of the most impressive relief I've ever seen. Here are some pictures from the trip:

A Catholic church in Chinese style in the city of Mo Xi, the gateway town to visit the Hailuogou Glacier

A sign by the church explains how it was 'liberated' during the Cultural Revolution!

... and in front of it is now a giant statue of Mao

The visitor center is at about 3000 m asl. The steep terrain is full of loose material, leading to frequent debris flows.

The glacier terminus, rapidly retreating

A cable car leads to 3500 m with a look-out for Mt. Gongga. Since it is so frequently cloudy, there is a helpful large poster of the view on a sunny day, so people can still take pictures...

This was our view. Note the ice fall that is only just barely connected anymore (compare to the picture above, which is just a few years old)

We did walk around on the glacier a bit. Of course we had to ask for permission first, as with just about anything we did.

A hot summer in Alaska

This has been a hot summer in Alaska, and the glaciers show it. Last week I had the opportunity to fly into the Alaska Range and to Black Rapids Glacier. The upper areas were a bit cloudy, but the picture below shows an area that should really be snow covered at the end of the summer.

 

The different bands show areas where not only last winter's snow melted, but successively older snow packs (firn) as well. We have a mass balance model site there, which was traditionally in the accumulation area. No more.

Here are a few more pictures from the flight (all by A. Mahoney):

Kennicott Glacier and debris covered ice

We were back on the Kennicott Glacier in late August to disassemble the weather station we had put up earlier (see previous post). The goal was to collect detailed meteorological data over debris-covered ice, so that we can estimate the amount of melt that happens under the layer of rocks. Despite the appearance, the rock layer on this glacier is mostly quite thin (a few 10s of centimeters or less), but that's enough to insulate the glacier significantly and reduce ice melt.

(Photos are all by A. Aschwanden)

Pascal is digging out thermistors that were used to measure the temperature profile.

We are dismantling the weather station with the spectacular background of the Stairway Icefall

Weather stations make for awkward loads and require a special kind of pack animal ...

The abandoned copper mining town of Kennecott with the huge processing mill building. A giant rock glacier provides a spectacular background.

Kennicott Glacier

I spent a fair amount of time in McCarthy in the past few years, but never did any work on the glacier that is right outside the town: the Kennicott Glacier. The lower part of the glacier is almost entirely covered in debris of various thickness. This debris does protect the glacier ice from melting, but how exactly melt works on dirty glaciers is still an open question. My post-doc Pascal Buri proposed to put a comprehensive weather station on the middle of the glacier, so Andy Aschwanden, Pascal, and I headed down to carry gear and install the equipment.

Navigating across the rough glacier surface

The abandoned copper mining town of Kennecott

Here it is: the weather station

A beautiful rock glacier above the town of Kennecott

North side of the Alaska Range on the way home

A debris slump

Black Rapids Glacier

Once a year we try to get to Black Rapids Glacier to measure mass balance. This series is now several decades old; it was started in the early 70s by the U.S. Geological Survey, but now it is just a weekend plane trip with Chris and myself (and whoever is lucky enough to join us!). Last year we never made it, because of long stretches of difficult weather with lots of wind. So this year we didn't want to take chances and went at our first opportunity, which turned out to be a glorious day.

Mt. Hess, on the way to Black Rapids (Photo: Joanna Young)

Landing on Black Rapids, Trinity Basin (Photo: Joanna Young)

Short final (Photo: Joanna Young)

A view back up the Black Rapids Glacier. In the foreground are the (snow covered) landslides that resulted from the 2002 Denali Fault earthquake (Photo: Joanna Young)

Chris and I are getting ready for putting in a mass balance stake (Photo: Pascal Buri)

A Decade of Glacier Exploration

Recently, NASA put together a nice video highlighting some of the airborne survey flights we do: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2855/a-decade-of-exploring-alaskas-mountain-glaciers/

Athabasca Glacier - revisited

Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park (Canada) is where Charlie Raymond, one of my glaciological heros, completed his PhD work in the 1960s. He looked at how the sliding motion of the glacier was distributed across the glacier, which is something that is still ignored in many models of ice flow. My collaborator Billy Armstrong from Appalachian State University had the idea to redo these measurements 50 years later to investigate how the motion of the glacier has changed after half a century of mass loss, when the glacier has lost about a quarter of its ice in the lower reaches. So next year we plan to drill some boreholes to the bottom of the ice and measure ice deformation and basal motion.

To prepare for this work we visited the glacier in early March to establish a weather station and do a lot of profiling with an ice penetrating radar to find the glacier bed location. It turns out that we picked a particularly cold period; our car thermometer showed less than -30C when we started out on our trip. At the same time it was near melting in Fairbanks! This made for some cold camping, but we were rewarded with sunny days in a gorgeous landscape.

I'm getting the ice penetrating radar configured (Photo: Greg Horne, Parks Canada)

Radar surveying (Photo: Greg Horne, Parks Canada)

Photo: Greg Horne, Parks Canada

Establishing a weather station (Photo: Greg Horne, Parks Canada)

One of many avalanches near the ice fall from the Columbia Icefield (Photo: Greg Horne, Parks Canada)

One of the many depth profiles we collected. The deepest spot on this part of the glacier is about 300 m.

The camp on a beautiful morning ...

... and on a cold evening.