Catching up

I am back to blogging, hope to be more consistent again although our measurements are beginning to wrap up. I feel pretty bad about not blogging more but to be honest many nights I have been just to tired to do so. But I have some free time now so thought that I would blog instead of doing work or just going to sleep.




Okay the last day I appear to have blogged was November 24th so let’s reconstruct the past week.



November 25th ended up being an unscheduled down day. We used the opportunity to catch up on looking at data and getting an understanding of what was working. We have had some major issues with our short EM31 instrument and have stopped using it as the data appear erroneous more often that not. We will trouble shoot this back in Edmonton, as we still have the University of Cantebury’s long EM31 which is working very, very well.



On November 26th we went out and performed more measurements. We completed 6 measurement sites and travelled over 100kms by skidoo/sled. Here is Wolfgang Rack hand towing his ground penetrating radar. He is looking at measuring the depth of snow and potentially ice thickness using this radar. Towards the end of the day my throat started to bother me and I didn’t feel 100%. This got worse over night and I developed a cough. I probably should have stayed in but wanted to go out the next day so I did.

Wolfgang Rack towing his ground penetrating radar.

 The next day, November 27th, we performed three measurement sites in a North-South direction. This took us near Cape Royds, where there is an Antarctic Specially Protected Area around a penguin colony. We saw three large emperor penguins walking south along the ice but they ignored us at first. Later we had moved a bit south and had stopped for lunch and one of these Emperor penguins decided to come closer and investigate. It stopped over 100m out but it was cool to see.


We finished off our sites, but unfortunately by this time I was feeling well and truly terrible. That night I had a bit of a fever but went to sleep early and though I felt better on the morning of November 28th, I was now quite stuffed up and with a cough. I must have picked up the cold here on base but it appears to have made its way through me quickly. On November 28th, we were scheduled for a helicopter flight, but it was scrubbed due to weather. The others in our team went out to take an ice core in the afternoon while I stayed back and took it easy so that we could do more measurements the next day.

You cannot tell but it is very very windy (they are leaning into the wind, not because the sled is heavy (it isn't).

Skidoo with Mount Erebus in the background.  Mount Erebus is an active volcano is is over 10,000ft high.

 On November 29^th we went out to do measurements, completing another 6 measurement sites across McMurdo Sound. It was a beautiful day and I felt pretty good despite covering another 100kms on the back of the sled combined with a few minor wipeouts with the sled as we navigated through some tricky conditions. We managed to find a bit of ice that wasn’t flat and it made pulling a sled behind a skidoo a bit tricky.  We put the sled about 5m back from the skidoo which means that the sled doesn’t necessarily follow the sled. Daniel Price, Wolfgang’s PhD student wanted to have some fun pictures on the way back and I shot this one for him on our way home.

Dan jumping off the back of the Nansen sled,

On November 30^th, we had our first two helicopter flights, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  Wolfgang and Christian performed the morning one and then Wolfgang and I operated the one in the afternoon.  We covered a few hundred nautical miles that day and it was good to get the EM bird out.  However we had some issues, our laser scanner did not function, we lost the GPS signal for part of the flight and we had issues with the connection to the EM bird.  Despite these issues we still gather a lot of useful and valuable data.  I had some great views of the Ross Ice Shelf.

Ross Ice Shelf

 Today we had another flight and Kelvin Barnsdale and I went out.  Kelvin works for the Geospatial Research Center at the University of Canterbury.  Kelvin has developed a camera system that we have deployed on the bird this trip.  The package has a camera looking down at the surface and one looking forward towards the nose of the helicopter.  The package also has a laser altimeter for measuring the height of the camera above the surface and an inertial navigation system which tells the system how the bird is moving (its yaw, pitch and roll).  There is also a GPS so each image can be given a position. Again the EM bird laser scanner did not work and we had some more issues with the system that even required us to return to Scott Base and land before taking off again.

A large iceberg.

After finishing the flight we completely took the bird apart and made a change so that the laser scanner would work. It took some work to understand why the laser scanner was not working properly but we fixed the issue in time for our last flight this afternoon. This afternoon, Christian left for NZ again. He is attending the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco in just a few days so he needed to leave early.




This evening we prepared a bit for measuring what will likely be our final two sites of the campaign. We will then use Saturday to retrieve some stakes that Wolfgang left on the ice shelf last year and on Sunday have another day off. On Monday and Tuesday we will pack everything. We are coming back much sooner than I had expected and was told when booking my flights. I will likely stay in Christchurch a bit to do some data processing and data management work and hopefully a little bit of sight-seeing in New Zealand before coming back home. I’m not sure if my airplane tickets are changeable but I can also look into that.



WHEW, well hopefully you feel caught up. Will try to post more pictures tomorrow.