April 7 – Wrap up of Level Ice Study

The morning was spent getting the last of the soot samples for Tom Grenfell. Then after lunch I was assigned to man the radios. It was a nice break as we were just wrapping up the last of the level ice study surveys, so I set about making a draft report of the simple stuff like a table of what we collected, how many data points of each time, and some sample pictures of each instrument and the array. I also started to get Tom Grenfell’s data sheet. We collected a total of 19 samples for Tom thanks to some wonderful help from the snow chemistry guys (Bill and Dan). It was a slow wrap up sort of day with the main part of the activity centered around the first dive beneath Jen’s ridge. The Discovery Channel guys were joined by their presenter and they scurried off immediately to the dive site leaving me to just enjoy the day and catch up on reporting.

It was tough day weather wise because the light was flat such that you couldn’t tell horizon from snow or the texture of the snow you were walking on. During our morning walk collecting snow samples, Robert fell a couple of dozen times and once up to his hips. I told him to take little half boot shuffles and look ahead with his eyes and feel ahead with his feet. On a day like this you have to walk like you do with slippers in the dark and focus more of your senses on the bottom of your feet. We saw a lot of deformation activity going on along line #2 with a bowed raised refrozen lead where it was perfectly flat earlier. At the end of the line there was a ridge with a crack that was now joined by a lead along the ridge and the crack ended at the ridge. The crack had run right through an old hummock multiyear section and stopped at the lead (see photos). We noticed a lot of 10 cm wide cracks in that region that cracked open the snow. When we first walked this line, there wasn’t as much snow and the ice and block sizes were easy to see and scramble over. But we have been experiencing snow showers each time the weather warms up. You can really see where a new ridge forms because the newly formed blue blocks don’t have any snow between their cracks. The blue color really stood out against the blank white landscape each time they formed.

It is Saturday and I have been here a whole week. It is also the day before Easter so I thought it was fitting to have a go at the shower. I had been melting ice all day in my hooch in a pan over the stove and storing it in a 20 gallon cooler jug. The shower consists of a warm heated plywood room with some holes in the floor and what looks like a bug sprayer. It is a new bug sprayer and it has only seen water in it with a hose and kitchen sprayer attached at the end. It does an amazingly effective job and the warm wood with the heater gives it a sauna effect. I could also take a good long shower this way with time to spare scrubbing a week’s worth of hard work off my body.

I came back into my hut and Jackie appeared with three bags full of empty colorful plastic eggs and bags of small chocolates and asked me if I’d like to help. We filled them and she set her alarm clock for 3am. We will wake up tonight and put them around the mess tent in the snow for folks to find tomorrow morning. Jackie is just way too cool about things like this.

So in wrap up, it was a good day. We are at the end of week 1 out of 2 and the first half of the intended science is done and we are starting to write things up. The next week will focus on ridges and dynamic features. Also my students will arrive on Monday and we will attempt to retrieve the GPS coolers with them. They are also bringing some video cameras to do some stereo work so we are hoping to take shots of the ridge for stereo rendering. We will try to visit some of the more interesting sites if the weather is good. Hopefully there will be enough light contrast while they are here so they can get some good shots. But at the very least, I am hoping to get them in a helicopter ride and give them the chance to pick up the buoys that we deployed. I am hoping that we can find all 7 of them. That is always the hardest part.