Meltwater induced peripheral thinning |
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We were lucky to get to ride to Greenland on a C-5 with a mid-air re-fuel which actually wasn't as exciting when you're sitting in a windowless airplane. On the right is Robin Abbott from VECO Polar Services who (among several others) was crucial to our field planning.
This is our little camp. The main cook tent is the yellow one; three mountain tents for sleeping. We still had semi-dark "nights" initially and a great full moon.
This is the inside of our cooktent...pretty cozy. Julie is cooking up a storm.
This steam drill was designed by Erich Hueke and was used for putting in our continuous GPS sites. Julie developed a special relationship with the drill after setting it on fire. The GPS sites went in really quickly with this drill. Below Tom is drilling a new hole while Julie supervises.
This was my view for several weeks (on the radar sled) when I wasn't peering into the box to look at waveforms. In the distance you can see the coastal mountains. Tom is driving the skidoo with a GPS mounted on it for kinematic GPS positioning. The tow rope holds the 1MHz antenna that is mounted to the receiver.
This is the radar sled. The first bag is for survival (sleeping bags/tents/food/stove etc), some antennas and a spare battery, the silver box holds spare equipment, the large grey box contains the receiver which is a National Instruments digitizer modelled after the Univ. of Wash. system. Two generators act as a power supply (and backup). The transmitter sled is next to the radar sled here (in black). This contains the transmitter and a battery to power it.
Nice sunsets early on.....
Eventually we got some company as six folks moved into Swiss Camp "North". To the left is Lora Koenig who I worked with during my PhD at UW. It was fun to see her in such a remote place. In the back is Koni Steffen who began coming to this area roughly 14 years ago. He is a pioneer in Arctic research. Louis and Kevin were his assistants (Kevin is a graduate student of Koni's) and Julie. You'll notice we're eating sushi and drinking Bud. Classy.
This is Jay Zwally or the "Sushi Chef Extraordinaire".
The ice sheet was very hilly around Swiss Camp and we often saw what looked like "stranded icebergs" on the ice sheet surface. These ones were particularly large (maybe several tens of metres tall).
On the flight out we got to see some great sites including tons of crevasses along the ice edge....
supraglacial lakes that were linked via supraglacial channels and drained by moulins....
amazing braided streams....
and the old ice sheet bed...
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