The Velvet Ice team made it back to McMurdo Saturday evening. After weather and plane availability prevented us from leaving WAIS for a week, the pilots with POLENET (the other science group at WAIS focused on collecting GPS and seismic data from the polar regions) offered to take us back themselves! We hustled to pack all our personal gear and load cargo while camp staff and POLENET pals helped dig out our tents. Within an hour we were ready to fly out with Troy and Tyler (pilots from Ken Borek Air) at the helm.
Crevasses on the ice sheet seen from the Twin Otter windows
We flew in a Twin Otter plane, and for most of the flight, had unclouded views out the window. Stretches of crevasses came up sporadically, and as we approached McMurdo and the Ross Ice shelf, mountains came into sight. Just short of halfway, we made a pit stop at Siple Dome to refuel before continuing on to McMurdo.
Siple Dome, Population: 2.
Refueling at Siple Dome
Anny, Sridhar, Rachel and Emilie redeployed to Christchurch this morning. Erin and I will hang back in McMurdo until Thursday while we wait for the rest of our cargo to arrive from WAIS Divide. It was sad to say goodbye this morning. The six of us had a great time working together this season!
Cheers to a great field season and an even greater team!
The Sonic Logger is about 16 feet long, so getting it into the borehole required some cleverness. WAIS divide camp manager Kaija uses the harness and a pulley system to lift the tool, while Emilie and Sridhar guided it and Rachel operates the cable from above.
Not only were we lucky to have such a great team, but solid data collection as well! After a few days of trouble shooting to get Sridhar's tool up and running, we were able to do a successful logging run down the borehole. Meanwhile, Anny and Erin finished up the radar survey, hitting all of the sites they had hoped to. I'll follow up with some of our findings once we've all had a chance to look over the data!