On Beyond Sessrumnir: Nibelungen Valley

12/9/08

We’ve started to develop a nice routine down here: Wake up at 7:00 am (or as close to that as we can), eat a hot breakfast of instant oatmeal, check in with Mac Ops over the radio, pack for the day, and then head out into the field. When it’s time for lunch we try to find a spot out of the wind and whip out our hot thermoses and such cold friendly foods as beef jerky, frozen Swiss cheese, Froodles (a noodley fruit snack we’d never heard of until we got here), cabin bread, peanut butter, and chocolate bars. At the end of the day (defined as 5:00 pm as we cannot go by the setting sun) we head back to camp, unload the samples from our packs, and start heating water for dinner. By 9:00 pm we’re mostly done washing up and unwinding and then it’s off to bed.
Oh, and the views in the meantime are INCREDIBLE…

12/10/08
Back to our old haunts today – the pools and canyon features of Sessrumir Valley. The fieldwork routine has set in and Jenny and I are getting faster at collecting samples and marking locations with our GPS equipment. In the meantime, Rob set up another anchor for Robert to rappel off of to get samples down another cliff face. So far, the weather has really been cooperating. We’ve had sun and blue skies for at least part of every day we’ve been in the field, and usually it’s sunny all day. Some days are high winds and some days it’s quiet, but the nice weather has helped the work along.

Another view of Sessrumir Valley.

We took a helicopter for our day trip to Nibelungen Valley.

Nibelungen Valley is a pretty cool place- after taking a

bunch of samples, we headed down valley and explored for a while.

Both Sessrumir and Nibelungen valleys (oriented N-S)

overlook Wright Valley (oriented E-W) - behind me (Jenny) you can see Lake Vanda.

Allen thinks that with a little imagination this rock in Nibelungen

looks like a hippo. You decide. Either way – the erosional features

here are pretty cool.

Blown snow highlights a feature called patterned ground –

where freezing and thawing of the ground causes cracks to

develop in otherwise undisturbed areas.

Sessrumnir Valley

The wonders of modern technology -- Robert, Allen, Jenny, and Rob are out in the Dry Valleys, but I will keep all of you updated about their field work and experiences while sitting in Cambridge. Amazing place, wishing I was out there.... - Sujoy

12/6/2008:
We are finally in the field, hooray!

A view of the TAM taken by the helotech (she gets to sit in the
front seat so I gave her my camera to work with)

To set the scene- this place looks like a combination of Canyonlands National Park and Mars due to the combination of impressive sandstone buttes and the black/brown/red oxidized dolerites littering the ground. I would try to describe it further, but perhaps the pictures will speak for themselves.
We got here yesterday via a scenic helicopter flight across the sea ice and through the mountains. With the help of our British pilot Paul and the helotech Ally, Robert, Rob, Allen and I all crammed into the backseat of the Bell 212 for an hour long flight to our campsite. Upon arrival, we unloaded the helicopter (with rotors still spinning) and waved goodbye as Ally and Paul left us alone with 800 lbs of gear amongst the rocks and snow patches while they returned to McMurdo for the rest of our stuff. We spent the rest of the day putting up tents, carrying rock boxes from the sling load drop off to our camp, and setting up solar panels for our GPS base station, HF radio, and general electricity supply.
There are many bonuses to working in the field in Antarctica - one is the lack of ANY pests to interfere with your food or general comfort, the second is the constant availability of solar power, and the third is the ability to freeze your food simply by keeping it outside (this last one allowed us to have salmon fillets for dinner last night and steak for dinner tonight). It also means keeping water around can be a challenge.
Today we went out to explore large channels cut into the sandstone bedrock just a few hundred meters from our campsite. We also finally took our first set of samples. Perhaps the major downside to Antarctic field work is the speed at which you lose feeling from your fingers and toes whenever you stop to take a sample. In addition, our mountaineer Rob scoped out the scene for good places to make anchors so that we can take samples from the side of a cliff face in the near future. How’s that for extreme geology?

Our camp in the intermediate stage of set up

Right- this is our mountaineer Rob

12/7/2008:

With the help of a few more layers of clothing and blue skies, we headed back into the channels today to collect more samples-that’s what we’re here for after all. The sample collecting process consists of finding a good rock (ideally with large grains and easily removed from its neighbor rocks), getting the GPS coordinates, taking pictures of the area, making note of any surrounding topography that might shield the rock from the sky, using a hammer and chisel to knock the sample free, and finally stuffing it into a labeled bag. The samples are then loaded into rock boxes and transported back to the States on a big cargo ship that departs from McMurdo in February (along with all of McMurdo’s trash). Eventually (several months from now), the samples will make it back to our lab where the chemical analysis will begin.
The highlight of our work today was watching/helping Robert take samples from the side of a cliff face. Rob thought it was hilarious that Robert brought his field notebook down on the rope with him (along with his sample kit, a large stuff sack for the samples, and the camera we lowered to him on a rope when his own camera ran out of film).

Some of the sandstones here are hilariously weathered…


Allen attempts to get a precise GPS reading of his samples,
but the rocks are blocking the satellites

Robert rappels off a cliff over a perpetually frozen pond
to collect samples

12/8/2008

Today was another day of sample collecting, and something new: digging pits. The chemicals we are measuring are not only produced at the surface, but also when rocks are covered. So, in order to better understand the erosion processes going on here in Sessrumnir Valley, we dug some pits and collected the rocks we found underneath as well as collecting a whole bunch of samples in the surrounding area.
Today’s highlight was the view we got in to Wright Valley. Breathtaking. To the west is Upper Wright glacier (Manhattan could easily fit on its ice), beyond which the Polar Plateau feeds down in multiple icefalls. Directly north at the bottom of Upper Wright Valley is an area called The Labyrinth because of all the channels cut in to the rock. And to the east is a view into Lower Wright Valley and the small glaciers feeding in to it. We all decided that it was one of the most beautiful views we have ever seen.

Upper Wright Valley and the Wright Glacier as seen from the Sessrumnir Valley

What are we doing here?

Hi Everyone,

So, what are we actually doing in Antarctica? Why have we come to the bottom of the world? The short answer is that Antarctica plays a large role in controlling the Earth’s climate and global sea level. Geologists often say that the present is the key to the past. For example, by studying modern glaciers and ice sheets one can learn to recognize glacial deposits in the geologic record. Using these deposits, as well as many other types of sediments and a host of geochemical techniques, we can reconstruct past climates, and thereby learn something about what the future might hold. We are especially interested in what Antarctica was like during periods that were warmer than present. Did the ice sheet shrink or collapse raising sea level, or did it grow larger, drawing down sea level?

The mountains in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica, about 50 miles across McMurdo Sound from the US base on Ross Island, contain glacial deposits dating back to the initial growth of the Antarctic ice sheet over 15 million years ago. The deposits record the presence of wet-based alpine glaciers, that slid along their base during a warmer climate. They probably looked similar to those presently in the Himalayas. At some point, the climate cooled resulting in the cold-based polar glaciers of today that are frozen to their base, and flow only by internal deformation. Determining when this occurred, is one of the goals of our research.

There are also spectacular erosional features consisting of channels and potholes cut into sandstone bedrock that look like they were cut by torrents of water. However, these features occur along the highest ridges rather than the valley bottoms where you would expect to find them. This has lead to the idea that they were carved under a glacier. But to get a glacier to these heights would require the Antarctic ice sheet to thicken by thousands of feet to flow over the tops of the mountains. In contrast, during the last ice age, the ice sheet only thickened several hundred feet and did not even flow through the Dry Valleys.

Yet, these features are clearly slowly eroding today. Could they be the result of millions of years of grain by grain erosion of the sandstone? The winds are certainly strong enough to blow the loosened sand away. These are the hypotheses that we are going to test by measuring the cosmogenic nuclides in the rock. This technique will be explained in another blog, but suffice to say that we can determine the age and erosion rates of samples we collect and bring back to the lab at Harvard. If erosion rates are low, and similar everywhere it will favor the subglacial hypothesis. If erosion rates are much higher in the bottoms of potholes and channels than in the surrounding rock it will favor long erosion by wind and freeze thaw mechanisms.

Well, all our gear is packed (just over 2100 lbs) and on the way to the helo pad. Tomorrow, weather permitting, we will use two helicopters (or two trips) to ferry all this stuff and ourselves to our first camp, about 45 minutes (100 miles) away. We have to get the stuff down there the day before now. We used to just bring it down when they were ready to load the helo, but now they often use sling loads, and I guess they need time to build them up. Just another example of the increasing bureaucracy down here. It always seems to make things easier for the support staff rather the scientists, but I guess I can’t complain, and if I didn’t know how it used to be I would not think it so bad. All things considered the field support is really terrific.

For example, Rob and I went out for the day by helicopter to our first field area, the giant potholes of the western Asgard Range, on Wednesday while Allen and Jenny were at snow school. Marianne, a support person from the GPS group (UNAVCO) came with us to make a LIDAR map. This instrument uses a laser beam to make a 3-D map, of an ~ ¼ square mile area with a resolution of an inch or two! We can use the data to make an old fashioned contour map or generate views from different points. We can also analyze roughness and slope angles, and eventually will have an interactive map you can “walk” through like a video game and examine our sample sites! Very cool, and not something you could do only a few years ago.

The weather was really fine, light winds and temperatures of 10-15° F, hopefully the weather will hold. A highlight for me was I got to ride in the co-pilot seat on the way out, something I had never done in a “Huey” helicopter in all my previous trips. Generally, a helo tech, or crewman sits there. Back when the US Navy flew the Helo’s there would be a co-pilot and a crewman in the back. But we were flying with the New Zealand helicopter that has only one pilot, and I needed a headset to guide him into our site. We flew with one of the USAP helicopter on way back was more more typical, jammed in the back with a lot of gear.

Off We Go!

First, Allen would like to point out that he won the Favorite Antarctic Animal Poll.

Now, you should know that in approximately 30 minutes, the four of us will schlep our bags down to the heliport for one final briefing before we load up our gear and fly away to the Dry Valleys (we're headed to Sessrumnir Valley first) where we'll collect oodles of rock samples over the next month.

Despite the lack of internet in the Dry Valleys, we have devised a rather convoluted method for continuing to post to our blog so that y'all can keep up with what we're doing and see more pretty pictures of Antarctica. How will this work? How could we possibly transport data without the internet? Well- first we'll write up a post and take some photos, then we'll put this stuff on a flash drive and give that to the helicopter pilot when he comes out to ferry us around the Dry Valleys and bring our resupplies every few days. The pilot will then fly back to McMurdo and give the memory drive to a USAP staffer at Crary (the McMurdo science lab). The staffer will then e-mail the posts and photos to Sujoy back in Boston, who will upload it all to the blog for everyone to see. So the next time you see an update on our blog (after Robert's), keep in mind all the effort that went in to making it.

Goodbye internet land, we'll see you in a month (but you'll see us sooner)!

Happy Campers

After a very long time out in the field (two days!...that was sarcasm for those that don't know me very well), Jenny and I are back at McMurdo, showered, and getting ready for our real field time - we're leaving for the Dry Valleys on Friday! But before that can happen, we had to be trained in some survival techniques - at McMurdo they call it Happy Camper School.

The experience starts with a couple classroom hours learning about dressing appropriately, spotting and treating cold-related medical issues, and utilizing the resources we will have available to us in an emergency situation. Then we get loaded up (with all our warm layers) in the back of a huge snow-truck/tractor and carted out to our field site out on the Ross Ice Shelf a couple miles from McMurdo.

Throughout the first afternoon we learned about using Whisperlite stoves, setting up Scott tents (yellow pyramids with a century old design, originally used by R.F.Scott in his early Antarctic explorations) and mountain tents (more commonly called four-season tents, dome shaped, and modern), building snow walls, and building snow shelters as well like a snow trench or a Qunicy (looks like an igloo, but made by piling lots of snow then digging it out - see photos). Our teachers were great guys - part of the McMurdo search and rescue team - and they constantly encouraged us to keep moving, keep eating, and keep hydrated in order to stay warm.

Two Scott tents: a century-old design still going strong.

Starting the Quincy: burying a whole pile of duffel bags to give the mound shape. We covered everything with about 18 inches of packed snow and let it harden for a while - then dug out the inside.

In the end it was warm and snug enough to sleep four people...and to stand on.

There were 18 of us at Happy Camper, all but one was field bound (the one was a fire-fighter in McMurdo). Almost everybody will be staying in a semi-permanent camp; some, like us will be sleeping in tents the whole time, but most will have heated buildings to retreat to. We will not. We will also not have any snow around us to construct things out of, but it was a lot of fun to play with!

At night we needed to stay active and amused, so we started on a master project - a snow bridge/arch. We spent about 6 hours on this thing - planning, quarrying the snow blocks, sculpting them to fit an arch shape, and eventually piecing it together. Finished, it stood 6+ feet tall, about 8 feet long, and about 4 feet across; we are very proud. Admittedly, putting it together was a bit scary. Towards the end we have five people bravely bracing the interior so it did not collapse on itself. But eventually, we succeeded with a masterpiece...around 1 am. We definitely saw midnight sun. And with the extra blocks we built a bench and ottoman/table to admire our work.

Apparently, scientists on ice will do anything to fulfill the desire to engineer. Including putting themselves at risk during safety school.

The finished product. Very satisfying - and impressive, don't you think?

After spending what remained of the sunshiney evening in tents/shelters (Jenny and I chose Scott tents), we got up, cleaned up camp, and got ready for more lessons on risk management and radio protocol before having some practical training in radio operation (HF and VHF), an emergency scenario, and a search drill called "Bucket Head" where we wore buckets to simulate a whiteout and tried to find a person lost outside. After a few informational videos on leave-no-trace ethics in the Dry Valleys and helicopter safety we were free to go.

Camp! See the current blog header for another view.

It was a great two days - informational and fun. The weather changed so rapidly during the course, going from fairly warm and snowy with low visibility to chilly, completely clear, and beautifully sunny in no time at all. But the best part of Happy Camper was all the awesome people - a couple from a crew going up Mount Erebus to image its interior plumbing and atmospheric impact, a few using GPS to measure movents of the Antarctic continent, some using radar to image mountains beneath the surface of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, and a crew of core handlers off to work at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Drilling Project. It was awesome hanging out with the WAIS core crew because they are about our age and are interested in so many of the same polar topics as we are - and they're keeping a blog, too.

Now, we are ready and looking forward to what the Dry Valleys have to offer.

"GPS" or "How to put the rocks back where you found them"

Two major things happened today:

1) This morning we had our environmental training. Basically, this meant listening to PowerPoint presentations and watching NSF-produced videos for an hour and a half. The Dry Valleys have a very sensitive ecosystem and are therefore considered an Antarctic Sprecially Managed Area or ASMA. A lot of measures are in place to protect them, for example extra-sensitive spill precaution measures and reporting procedures and delineations around camps where impact is localized. Because we are going to very remote areas of the Dry Valleys - including sites very near the Linneaus Terrace Anarctic Specially Protected Area (or ASPA) - we need to take even more special precautions such as replacing any rocks we moving to anchor tents; this is the ultimate experience in Leave No Trace camping. See the map below for a view of the area - we'll be in the Asgard Range, the Olympus Range, and up north of the extent of this map.

Dry Valleys ASMA Map - Taylor and Wright Valleys

2) GPS (Global Positioning System) training was the second order of the day. We will need to know the location of the samples we take not only so we can write an environmental impact report, but also to properly calculate the ages of the samples we take. (Cosmic rays attenuate as they pass through the atmosphere, so the higher a sample is the higher a production rate it will have - a value essential for calculating a sample's exposure age.) We learned a bit about GPS theory, got a tutorial on the hardware and software we'll be working with, and then took the equipment outside to play around with it a bit to make sure we understood everything. 

Jenny spent some time walking around to test our roving GPS unit. On the plywood box in the foreground you can see our base station and it's accomanying solar panels.

The high-resolution GPS equipment down here is managed by an NSF sposored group (UNAVCO), who also does all the training for the units. We will be using differential GPS - by comparing signals from a roving unit and a base station errors can be reduced and we'll be getting signals with accuracy on the centimeter scale. By a great coincidence, the same person who taught us today was up in Alaska when I participated in the Juneau Icefield Research Program, training us to use a similar system. Training scientists and conducting surveys in Greenland, Alaska, and Antarctica - sounds like a job I could handle!

Tomorrow Jenny and I will be off to Snowcraft 1, also known as Happy Camper School, which will include our first night outside a building in Antarctica. Wish us luck!

Science Young'uns at Play

Last night we celebrated Thanksgiving at McMurdo by stuffing ourselves with turkey, dressing, and shrimp cocktail (an unusual, yet well appreciated addition to the traditional fare), and getting to meet a few more of the other researchers down here. One of whom - Paul, a post doc glaciologist originially from NC - dubbed us "science young'uns" due to our relative lack of experience, schooling and age.

Today, Allen and I went for a hike around Castle Rock to take advantage of the blue skies and warm weather (28 degrees F). Here's a map of where we went:

The +'s on the map are emergency shelters stocked with food, sleeping bags, and a phone line to McMurdo. The base would be just off the map to the bottom left.

Vast expanse of ice - I would say it's about yea big.

Castle Rock, in the upper right. The thing in the cloud on the upper left is Mount Erebus (a volcano).

Jenny loves EPS.

Allen loves Mount Erebus.

Ice ridge and snow-covered ridge in the distance - Allen Pope for scale (he would be standing closer but we're not supposed to leave the flagged routes for fear of crevasses and other dangers).

Scott base is the Kiwi (New Zealand) Antarctic base just down the road from McMurdo. It's much smaller than McMurdo (~100 people in high season) and all of the buildings are green. Don't be deceived though; the insides are quite nice, or at least the store and the bathrooms where we were allowed to go.

P.S. Allen and I are starting to coauthor our posts...