January 15, 2006: Hiking the glacier
The previous evening Ray, Marianne and I hiked up the glacier that is behind the lab. Marianne is a sixth grade teacher from Ohio who is here with another research group that is studying Anarctic insects. She is using this experience in Antarctica to generate lessons, write a book and develop other instructional materials. Together with her science group they have a nice educational web site which you can look at http://www.units.muohio.edu/cryolab/education/antarctic.htm. There are some nice journals being kept by their group, which you can get to from their main site.
To get to the glacier we hiked out the “backyard” of the station. This is rugged rock territory so you have to watch your footing. About a half mile behind the station we reached the edge of the glacier. The lower part of the glacier here is mostly ice with a very crunchy texture. In fact it seems this whole part of the glacier is porous with lots of interesting, perfectly formed holes in the surface (see the photo). It kind of looks like a sponge made of ice. Fortunately, it gives good footing to walk on – so long as you avoid the major cracks. As we got higher, there was a layer of slushy snow on top of the ice. We stopped about two thirds of the way up the glacier to admire the view of the station below and the islands offshore. I took a panoramic photo which you can see on the front page of my journal web site. We then hiked down a different part of the glacier to the where Bonaparte point starts. When we reached the head of the little cove that runs behind the lab, we started to get dive bombed by terns. I am not sure which variety they were, but they looked very much like Arctic Terns. We were getting near their nesting area and they were warning us to stay away. We left them alone. As we went to the other side we came upon a beautiful cove filled with icebergs that is right next to a major cliff face of the glacier. It was really spectacular. The picture of Ray and I posted on January 14 was taken there.
On the glacier we saw lots of pink ice algae. This is microscopic algae (kind of like phytoplankton) that live on the surface of the snow and ice. It gives the snow a distinctive pink color. About halfway up the glacier we could still smell the elephant seals that are resident down on Bonaparte Point. Those are powerful beasts! On our way back through the “backyard” we got dive-bombed by some skua’s. Skua’s are large, gull-like birds that have nests in the area. They were warning us to stay away. I wouldn’t want to get hit with one of them!
Unfortunately, most of the soft snow has melted off the glacier so its not good for snowboarding any more. Earlier in the season snowboarding, and even skiing are popular activities for people at the station.
