Helos & Pearse Valley

I’m in Pearse Valley, camped next to Lake Joyce!  It’s incredible.  We don’t have internet access, but Jessy and Lisa from the Berg Field Center came out to help us set up two large tents on the lake ice.  They got stuck here for days, so I had time to write a blog, and I’m sending it out on a CD with them.  They will e-mail the files to my dad, who will post them.

[Note from Bill, Dawn's Dad: Lake Joyce is about 75 miles from McMurdo. The exact location is noted in Dawn's Blog posting "Lake Joyce Information". In addition to instructions to me about her blog and the video link below, she wrote "This is an incredible trip!  I’ve been working hard and enjoying every minute of it. I’ve mostly been warm enough, although sometimes sitting around gets me cold. I feel well prepared."]

On Monday morning, Bekah, Alfonso and I climbed aboard a helicopter bound for Lake Bonney, where we dropped Emma off at her camp, and then Lake Joyce, our home for the next 6 or 7 weeks.

Alfonso ready to fly

Walking to the helo

We sat facing backward and facing a huge pile of luggage (ours).  Even so, the views out the windows were amazing.

Me

Bekah and Alfonso with Emma hiding on the far side

Sea ice

Sea ice, too

Edge of the clouds - off into good weather

The boundary between sea ice (left) and ice shelf (right)

Mountains

Ground with patterns created by ice in the soil expanding and contracting

Taylor Valley below (east) of the Taylor Glacier - the sublimation of ice and snow is faster than the precipitation of ice and snow, so the glacier ends in a dry valley.

More snow falls on the peaks, creating glaciers.  The smear in the upper left is the spinning helo blade caught by my camera.

A glacier formed from ice that fell from a valley higher on the mountain.

The edges of the glaciers are almost vertical walls.  Their morphology is controlled by ice falls.  The ice cracks near the edge of the glacier from the forces pushing toward the edge.  These cracks grow until the weight of the ice is too much, and huge chunks fall off, creating an apron of white along their bases.  To get such steep edges, the ice has to be very hard and brittle.  It behaves this way when it is so cold that it has a very high viscosity.  Glaciers in warmer areas have more gentle boundaries because they flow more easily, their viscosity is lower.

The main process for gaining ice is precipitation, e.g. snow or frost.  The main loss of ice is sublimation, which is the evaporation of ice directly into water vapor.  Some of the ice also melts, creating run-off streams, but more ice is lost to sublimation due to the very dry air and very cold temperatures.  The surfaces of the glaciers are very blue because there is so little snow on them.

The next few photos show our approach to camp and then our camp.  It is an incredibly beautiful area.

Looking west along the Taylor Glacier.  Pearse Valley is on the right just before the black and tan ridge (sandstone with a diorite sill running through it).

Our camp site in Pearse Valley with the helo that flew us in.

My tent with the black and tan ridge in the earlier photo in the background

Lake Joyce covered in ice and abutting the Taylor Glacier.  The darker area near the edge of the lake closest to me is our lake site which now has a science tent and a dive tent.

Soon after we arrived, Jessy and Lisa from the Berg Field Center at McMurdo joined us. They are two of the people who helped us get all our field gear together, and they came out to help set up our lake tents. These tents have wood floors specially made for us.

Jessy using boards to level the floor of the science tent before she and Lisa assemble it.

Jessy getting poles in position for the Endurance tent that went on top of the floor.  That’s where I’m typing this now.

Bekah warming herself at the heater in the science Endurance tent.

We used ice screws as stakes for the tent.  Here is one I put in.

The ice did not have any cracks when I put the screw in.  Slowly, the cracks formed and grew as I turned the screw.  The ice is very brittle because it is very cold.  It is very very beautiful.

The walk from the main camp to our lake camp is a fairly steep hill.  We needed various equipment, including 55 gallon barrels of fuel, moved from the main camp to the lake site.  A helicopter moved it for us with three sling loads.  Lisa hooked the loads onto the helo.  The helo pilot lowered the copter over her until she could reach the hook at the bottom of the body of the copter.  She clipped the hook holding the sling load onto the one on the copter.  This is a very impressive process!

Lisa under the helo after hooking the first load

The helo lifting the first load

The helo lowering the first load at the lake bed.  The helo pilot can release the hook that is holding the load from inside, so no one has to release it on the ground and the helo doesn’t actually have to land.

This is Lisa hooking the second load!

After the fuel and equipment was down on the lake, we started melting a dive hole.  We pump warm antifreeze through a coil that melts the ice.  This involved a generator plus a heater and pump with their own engine (a Hotsy).

Dale (red) and Bekah (blue) with the coil for melting a hole.

We watch the process continuously, pumping out the water as the ice melts.  We also adjust ropes, etc. to keep the hole forming straight down (more or less).  If left alone, the coil can slide sideways making a slot that is hard for a diver to get through rather than a nice hole.  We’ve been running it for about 36 hours.  I had the 3:30 am - 7:30 am shift, although I didn’t hear my alarm go off.  I got up at 3:45, so I was late.  I’ll put my watch in my hat next time, like my dad does.  I volunteered for that shift so I would see what dawn in Antarctica was like.  It was beautiful:

We’ve also had some fun.  Lisa and Jessy were supposed to leave after one night.  However, there was ice fog in McMurdo for the last 2 days, so the helicopters couldn’t fly.  Thus, they are still here, cleaning up our camp, hiking around, and fixing delicious dinners (Fajitas night 2 and Pad Tai night 3).  There was also time to contemplate nails and impromptu sharpie manicures.

Bekah, Jessy, and Lisa contemplating nails

Before and after

Unfortunately, Purell hand cleaner dissolves sharpie ink on nails, so three of us have black rings around our cuticles with the dirt still showing through the upper parts of our nails.

We really enjoy Lisa and Jessy’s company, but we also hope that they can get on with their real jobs tomorrow, e.g. fly to the Blood Falls camp (I’ll provide a link to the incredible spot when I have internet!) to do some work there and then back to McMurdo where their colleagues are having to do their work for them while they’re here with us.  They have great jobs!

Did I mention that the ice is beautiful?