Glacier in the Dry Valleys

The surface of the Commonwealth Glacier, some places had so much snow, we wanted skis.

One of the smaller cliff faces (just double my height), along the Suess Glacier

Several glaciers have steep areas & icefalls.  Channels are more obvious lower.

Glaciers the Dry Valleys

Arms burly wind

Awakened, flapping, punching

Crushing basalt, granite, dolerite

Wildness

Legs giant monuments of ice 

Monstrous ledges, anchored rocks, and hardened streams

Brilliant entrails revealed by ablation

Bandaged by snow

If you too were a glacier

You would howl and be still

You would hold time and secrets

Frozen sinew, stronger than skin and warmth

Deciphered

A day trip to the Howard Glacier

Spent yesterday sampling the Howard Glacier with Renee, a camp manager at Lake Hoare. She has a generous spirit and has made science in the valleys easy.  It was a fantastic day for a helicopter ride and a sampling trip, but we had to hike completely off of the glacier to find water running from the terminus. We both not-so-secretly wished that our ride would not come back and that we would have to hike 10 miles back to camp. There is something about this place that merits walking long distances. It is hard to place. 

Antartica's explorers are
the carpenters and the cooks
the poets and the pilots
the mountaineers and the mechanics
the scientists and the shuttle drivers
Snowblindness, crampons, pitons
filtering, acidifying, analyzing
choreography, chromatography, chamelography
far, far away, in a magical place
a conjuring, a voyage
that is now, but that won't fade

Renee & I were dropped off on the Howard Glacier near a met station.

 No water was flowing in these channels after a few cloudy days

Pretty breezy up on the Howard, but removed most of my layers lower on the glacier.

Renee is looking past the Howard Glacier back toward the Suess.

A view of Canada Glacier (our camp) from the Howard Glacier

Solo Mission

We've had some clouds. This has slowed down my search for water on and flowing off of glaciers. Yesterday was partly cloudy and promising so I set out to sample the LaCroix Glacier.  A 15 mile round trip... I only walk like this for science. 

My plan was to approach the Suess Glacier and to keep walking past it up valley if there was any melt.  If one glacier is melting, why not the next? The daily rhythm of glacier melt depends on the circling of the sun, altitude, and the presence of warming soil and rock. I set out knowing my mission might be a failure.  But, I also wanted to visit Mummy Pond and retrace my 2001 steps around the north shore.  This was a lesson in climate change. The pond formerly known as mummy...  Many of the seals I saw more than 15 years ago were completely submerged by the rising lake. No longer photogenic.

While the mummies of my memories are gone, I did get a picture of another mummy near the Suess Glacier.  I feel bad because my kids always ask me about the animals I see. Here in the valleys, there is a lot of life if you look closely, or use a microscope.  But larger mammals like seals and penguins have traveled the wrong direction from the sea only to die near the false seas (lakes) in this dried up valley.

My LaCroix Glacier water hunt was narrowly a success. I grabbed water just as the glacier was shutting down as the sun moved behind the Asgaard Range. I'm eating homemade biscotti today & stretching.

A mummified seal on my way to & around the Suess Glacier.

Taking pictures for the kids.  Rose, the unicorn, tends to eat all of my Snickers.

Water flowing near and on the Suess Glacier means this hike is not over.

I always feel like a geologist in this environment.  Sediment transport.

The Suess Glacier has sediment piles over much of the terminus (end).

Walking around the Suess, the melt features change. 

I reached the LaCroix around 3 p.m. & sampled.  The water was shutting down as the sun went behind the Asgard Range.  I had to work fast.

Now I have to walk back.  Home by 9 p.m.