DOG TREAT: A David Glacier Story

This blog is from Ross about his most recent trip down to Antarctica. Enjoy!  ~Annika

This is my second Antarctica blog and my third trip to the Ice. Before I get too far in I should explain the name of the post. It comes from my office-mate wanting to name his project something as a joke about research projects that take themselves way too seriously. DOG TREAT stands for David Outlet Glacier Thinning and retREAT.  

Honestly, just enjoy the pictures!

Helo pad at Scott Base

Camp Yellow 

In December 2017 we went to David Glacier to sample for, my office-mate, Jamey’s Ph.D. work. We were in the field for 15 days with a dedicated helo and an awesome pilot (Mark Hayes). Mark was one of our pilots from last year for my sample collection at Tucker Glacier and is a fantastic guy. We flew from Scott Base to Mario Zucchelli, the Italian Station in Terra Nova Bay, stayed the night and were put into our field camp, at Hughes Bluff, the following day. At put in, the folks at Mario Zucchelli made us a gift of ~15 loaves of fresh Italian Bread and two pans of pizza (Italian style not American). From that point forward, we had the right kind of bread problem. Everyday we had to figure out how to eat a loaf of Italian bread… such hardship!

We worked at five different nunataks (a mountain surrounded by ice) along David Glacier, the largest outlet glacier north of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, where Annika did her master’s research. David Glacier is more then an order of magnitude larger then Tucker Glacier, the focus of my work. Tucker Glacier is ~12,000 square kilometers, not small, while David Glacier is something like 225,000 square kilometers. Just for some perspective that is the same area as the state of Colorado or the country of New Zealand.  

Hughes Bluff was a really nice place to camp. Our mountaineer, Bia Booucinhas, picked a great camp spot that was as protected from the wind as we could be. All told we spent the whole season camped in this one location. It was perfect - low elevation, warm, reasonably sheltered from the wind and had amazing views. From Camp Yellow we had great views of the Drygalski Ice Tongue, D’Urville wall, and Mount Melbourne. 

Hughes Bluff looking at the D'Urville Wall across the Drygalsky Ice Tongue

Walking around the blue ice near Hughes Bluff

Crevasse near Hughes Bluff

Hughes Bluff

While exploring Hughes Bluff we discovered that it was covered with lakes of crystal-clear cold freshwater. There was one area that was absolutely covered in small lakes, which we creatively called the lakes district. Jamey and I spent some time around the water collecting biologic samples for a researcher named Craig Cary. He is a biologist who we got to know really well last year at Tucker Glacier. We grabbed some different soils and lichens for him, but the really fun thing we found was a black biological community growing in one of the lakes. It looked like a hand, a big black hand with pointy fingers so, we named it Satan's Hand. When we were finally able to try to sample Satan's Hand we found that the lake had frozen over in one of the storms we had. This lead to the inevitable jokes about hell freezing over. 'Cause why not?

Jamey and Bia in the Lakes District

Anyway, because David Glacier drains ice from the ice sheet interior we were able to go right to the western edge of the Transantarctic Mountains and look at the flat white expanse of the Antarctic interior and just be utterly awed by the scale of our planet. We worked at a nunatak called Mount Kring which was the last peak of rock sticking out of the ice. Mount Kring is ~130 km up the glacier from Hughes Bluff and is at about 2,000 m above sea level, which means it was really cold. The day we worked there started really windy, and I was having trouble with my feet getting too cold, something I have become very sensitive to since last season when I got frostnip on all of my toes. Eventually, the wind broke and we had an amazing day of working and walking around on the mountain.

          

Mount Kring

Andrew on Mount Kring (east ridge, near top)

We had a day working at the bottom of the D'Urville wall and half a day working at the very top of it. The wall is ~600-700 m at its tallest. For reference El Capitan in Yosemite is ~900 m tall. It was amazing to see and work on. Both standing at the base and the top of this massive edifice was just incredible. One last fun thing, the wall extends another 1000 m below the current ice surface. The scale of this place was completely over whelming and mildly mind blowing.

Base of D'Urville Wall

D'Urville Wall with Jamey for scale (see if you can find him)

My only selfie (D'Urville Wall in the background)

We also spent time working at a place named Evans Heights. There was an amazing ice fall (where glacier ice moves over a cliff, similar to a waterfall but frozen) and a really cool wind scoop (where the wind has shaped the snow and ice into a valley of sorts) there. In windy conditions we could see sideways dust devils of snow that would ride along the edge of the wind scoop - they were incredible. We spent two days working here and each morning would be spent by getting our asses kicked by the wind and then around 11 am the wind would settle, and the rest of the day would be pleasant and downright hot (by Antarctic standards).  

Evans Heights (Bia and Jamey)

Evans Heights Wind Scoop (Bia)

View from Evans Heights to the east

Our second to last field day we went to Trio Nunataks and sampled the western most of the three mountains. This day was really special because we got to climb from the ice edge to the top of the mountain. It was an amazing experience. The top of the peak had a USGS benchmark from 1964 when the peak was surveyed, and the elevation was established. That little benchmark was a real treat to find because I haven’t seen an American benchmark in a few years at this point and I was really happy to see it.

View from west Trio (can barely see the D'Urville Wall)

West Trio Nunatak

Summit Benchmark

While at Hughes Bluff we had a few small wind storms and one single strong storm with intense wind (~40 knots) and snow. It is amazing how this place can be so glorious if the weather is good and absolutely punishing when the weather is bad.

The day that we pulled out of the field was fast, windy, and cold. The day started at 5 am at Hughes Bluff and ended 300 kilometers away at 11 pm in Scott Base with lunch and a shower in Mario Zucchelli around 2 pm. We had a mild katiabatic (aka strong wind) with blowing snow. My glasses fogged up and froze, my gloves got wet and froze, and my face mask got damp and... surprise… it froze. Jamey had a frozen beard which has not happened in his five seasons on the ice. We were all working hard to break camp in really challenging conditions and we all wanted to get out of the field, so needless to say we had an interesting morning. All of the tents were at some stage of frozen into the snow and ice. Because of the challenging conditions we ended up damaging some of the tents. We spend a few days repairing them when we got back to Scott Base.  

Camp Yellow after a small storm

Camp Yellow during a big storm

We had a really successful season and I was able to fly back to New Zealand a few days early to spend some time with Annika while she was there. I think there will be more on that trip in the next week or so. Also, random comment: I didn't tell Annika that I was trying to catch an early flight back because getting to and from Antarctica is totally dependent on weather. If you start making plans for when you get back you can make yourself crazy. I was able to fly from Christchurch up to Auckland to meet up with Annika and from there we went camping and hiking for a little while, but as I said more on that next week.    

As far as I can tell this will be my last trip to Antarctica and I am glad that it ended on a really good note. In my time on the Ice I have been fortunate to see the entirety of the Victoria Land Coast with the exception of a small sliver around Cape Adare (the northern most point). I would still love to see the Dry Valleys, but I suppose I have to live that vicariously through Annika and her stories. At some point I would also like to see the Whitmore Mountains, for obvious reasons. All in all this was a fantastic journey where we did a lot of really good science.       

On a personal note I also celebrated my 33rd time around the big spinning ball of fire in the sky, also known as a birthday, at Camp Yellow. We had a small celebration one morning which included some out of key singing, a lot of me grinning like an idiot, and a bit of scrumptious cake. It was a wonderful treat to have a birthday on the ice and one that I shall not forget. I was also treated to a wonderful surprise by my office-mate (see photo below), which I didn't see until I walked right over it. Thanks Jamey! (I know that you will read this).

Happy Birthday wish from Jamey

I hope that you enjoyed the pictures!

~Ross