My first few days at Fryxell

I was so excited to finally arrive at Fryxell!  I have been here for 5 days now, but we have been so busy, I haven't had much time to update!

The morning of my flight, I got at call from the helo asking if I was ready to head out a couple of hours early.  "I could be" I said jumping up.  In a rush I grabbed all my bags and shut down the lab.  I got all my stuff plus 4, 20L carboys full of deionized water for the Fryxell labs down to the helicopter pad --- and I was off to Fryxell!

It was a beautiful day, though there was a thick, low cloud cover between McMurdo and Fryxell.  We easily flew up above the clouds and the mountains looked like they were just floating in a sea of clouds.

Heading up through the clouds.

A sea of clouds

The approach of Lake Fryxell from the helo

Lake Fryxell is a small field camp sandwiched between the Commonwealth glacier and the Canada Glacier in the Taylor Valley.  The camp is composed of a commons area (called the James Way), four labs (all about the size of tool sheds), and a generator room.  The camp is powered through a combination of solar power, wind power, and generators run on diesel gas.  There is no running water, but we are located right next to Hughie River, where we collect all of our water. 

Upon my arrival, I moved into my newly vacated tent and changed into my hiking boots -- I was ready for anything.  My first few days here were spent in a similar manner to the last few at McMurdo -- in the lab filtering water!  The group had gone out that morning and collected ~40 L of water that needed to be filtered and processed for analysis either in our labs here or preserved for later analysis.

On my third day here, I finally had the opportunity to go visit the glacier!  I was so excited.  Most of the glaciers I have visited in the past have been fairly small and although awesome, could not hold a candle to the Canada or Commonwealth glaciers!  The glacier edges are amazing, with their tall precipitous slopes.

The front of the ice edge of the Canada Glacier

A close-up of the ice

I had to get one posing in front of the ice ;-)

Yesterday one of my group-mates, Heidi, and I headed out to hike part of the way up Canada Glacier to collect water and sediments from the cryoconite holes on the glacier surface.  It was a beautiful day, with little to no wind -- absolutely perfect for a hike.  In case you missed the earlier entry, cryoconite holes form due to the collection of wind-transported dust and aerosols that land on the surface of the glacier.  The particles absorb solar radiation which speeds the melting of the surrounding ice and forms a hole.  Heidi and I collected sediments and water from several of the cryoconite holes so that she can later look at factors such as bacteria productivity.

The glacier surface was fun to walk on!  The warm temperatures of the past couple weeks has sped the melting of the glacier surface and the formation of meltwater streams.  Walking across the surface had to be approached with caution since many of the streams, though on the surface of the glacial ice, are covered by a thin layer of ice and snow and thus are difficult to see.  Heidi and I both had several exciting instances of accidentally breaking through the ice when we stepped on something too thin to hold our weight.

The ice on the surface of the glacier was beautiful.  Stalactites form under many of the thin ice layers overlying the streams.  However, they all have interesting bulbus shapes probably due to the continual changes in the water height of the streams.

Funny little stalactites over the glacial meltwater streams.

At the top of the glacier are the icefalls.  This area of heavily crevassed ice forms due to changes in slope and width of the head of the glacier.  Steeper slope cause the ice in this area to move much faster than the rest of the glacier and the ice cannot accommodate these "high speeds" through elastic deformation, which results in the formation of cracks and thus the amazing crevassed icefalls!

Heidi hiking up to the beautiful icefalls 

We've been going non-stop since I arrived at Fryxell, I can't believe my time here is already half-way over.  We are heading to the Canada Glacier tomorrow morning to collect biofilms and then we are back to the labs for more sample processing!  So I will hopefully have some more pics to share soon!