Last field day out at the Cotton Glaicer

A lot has happened in the last month or so.  We had 2 more field days at the Cotton Glacier and then we had a hours and hours (did I mention hours!?) of lab work to finish processing the samples and get ready to leave the ice.  I safely made it out of Antarctica and to New Zealand about a week ago.  This week I have been working at the University of Otago, where my adviser is doing his sabbatical.

I have a ton of pics from our last couple of days out that I want to post, so I will attempt a narration about them so it doesn't just look like a random assortment!

The first set of pictures are from our second to last field day out at the Cotton Glacier.  We were collecting enough water to fill 2, 55 gallon drums and 6 20L carboys!  It was a lot of water.  Due to all of the issues with helicopter schedules and getting our gear and all of the empty carboys out to the field, we had the chance to ride out in the Kiwi helicopter (owned by New Zealand).  It's a pretty slick machine!

The Kiwi helicopter -- isn't it beautiful?  They have a contained back rudder and the whole front is a big bubble of glass.  It is so much fun to ride in!!

Once we arrived at the glacier, we went around checking out all of the monitoring equipment that we leave in the field from trip to trip.  The Cotton Glacier meltwater stream is an extremely dynamic system that changes constantly throughout the season.  We hoped to capture these changes using meteorologic data from a weather station, pressure transducers, stream gauging, and plant cameras that collect hourly time elapsed photos.  However, the system was rough on our equipment and we almost lost a lot of the gear.  The picture below is of the met station that was originally installed with about 1.5 feet of clearance before the edge of the ice.  By the end of the season, the ice had melted so much that the station looked like it was about to topple over the edge.

Our meteorological station before we took it down on our second to last field day at the Cotton.  The mountain in the background is called Sperm Bluff because the early explorers thought it looked like a giant sperm whale.

 

 After we collected our enormous amount of water (the helicopter pilots are starting to wonder what we are doing with so much water -- they were joking that we started an underground business selling glacial melt water), we had some time to explore and take pictures.  A few weeks before (I didn't go out on this trip), the melt water channel almost completely filled with water.  Based on our plant cam pics, within a few hours of the team's short visit to the glacier, it began to drain and was completely drained by about 6 hours.  It was interesting to see all of the new channels and features that developed as the aftermath of this filling.

 A pretty large river channel through the surface of the cotton.  Just a few weeks before, this whole area was covered in water

 Awesome little sand structures Mike and I found on our walk around some of the sand dunes.  They look like tiny little sand cliffs.

An ice cave Mike discovered in some of his wanderings!

The helo finally picked us up to whisk us back to base.  It was quite a pretty ride home.  This was one of the waterfalls I spotted off the end of a glacier.

Now, the next group of pictures is from our last field day out at the cotton glacier.  Our goals for our last day out were to mostly recover all of our sensors (some were completely buried in sediment from the previous flood on the glacial surface).  When the helo came to pick us up, we were given a little bit of extra time to just fly around the system and get a better idea of what it looks like from the top to the bottom.  The next series of pics are from this recon time.

Columnar basalts on the top of Killer Ridge, which borders the upper part of the Cotton Glacier

Gorgeous blue ice peaking through the sand of the melt water stream in the upper Cotton Glacier channel

Penitene ice in an area of water ponding

Blue ice again in the melt water channel.  It is amazing to think, as we stand on the sand dunes that solid ice lies just below us.  These images of the stream always remind me of that fact and it continues to amaze me.

The lower section of the Cotton Glacier melt water channel

Interesting melting patterns of the ocean ice, taken as we flew back to McMurdo

I am not sure which mountain range this is, but again it was taken on the way back to base

The sun was striking the meltwater channels at a very nice angle

A beautiful sunset to end our last field day.  I took this pic from McMurdo as we headed to the dining hall to catch a late dinner.

Stay tuned for pictures from New Zealand!  I am finally finishing up my work at the University of Otago this week and am ready for a long awaited vacation!