Five months of field work in IPY4

As part of the 4th International Polar year, we conducted a major field campaign to explore and document changes in glaciers in the US Arctic. The bulk of this work was conducted on McCall Glacier, where research began 50 years ago during the 3rd International Polar Year (more commonly known as the International Geophysical Year).

This blog documents our efforts. Most of it was originally posted at www.ipy.org while we were in the field. The near-daily blogs contain text, photos, movies, and interactive panoramas which I hope will give a good sense of our activities, the whys and hows of our research, and an impression of the location. Many of the early panoramas were stitched in the field. These posts were made by sending out the information on disk via ski plane. The posts after July never made it onto the IPY site, as once we returned to civilization I decided to post them here for convenience, as well as include the original posts. Viewing the spherical and gigapixel panoramas requires a software download -- just follow the instructions and hope for the best. The spherical panoramas can be spun in any direction, as well as zoomed in or out, both within the thumbnail or full-screen. Embedded on them you will see hyperlinked arrows which will take you to other nearby panoramas. You can also find the spherical panoramas here at www.360cities.net, or in Google Earth's Gallery folder under 360cities. Note that the gigapixel images can only be viewed on Windows PCs at this point. The photos are mostly mine, but there are also some from Jason Geck and Keith Mountain at times or locations when I wasnt around.

The major accomplishments of our work include:
- Extracting nearly 500 m of ice core from three holes in the glacier,
- Bringing 170 m of this back to civilization to study paleoclimate in this region,
- Installing thermistor strings to measure ice temperature throughout each of the three core holes,
- Conducted shallow coring to investigate the processes of internal accumulation on the glacier,
- Measured stage and discharge of the outlet stream throughout the summer,
- Created a new lidar topographic map of most of the eastern Brooks Range,
- Conducted a lot of repeat photography, documenting glacier and environment change over the past 50 years,
- Created hundreds of spherical panoramas and over a dozen gigapixel panoramas, documenting the state of this region of the arctic with unprecedented detail,
- Maintained a network of over a dozen weather stations, and installed a new one that collects airborne pollen,
- Explored the impacts of changing glaciers on aquatic ecosystems with a partnership with US Fish and Wildlife Service, and
- Began creation of a photographic inventory of glaciers of the US Arctic.

The blog is broken into several individual pages below, to facilitate downloading. Please note that there are still a few broken links, mostly gigapixel images that I have not uploaded yet.

20 April 08 (Day 0): The start of five months of research on McCall Glacier
22 April 08 (Day 1): First stop – Kaktovik, the little village that can
23-24 April 08 (Day 2-3): The put-in – we made it!
25-26 April 08 (Day 4-5): Our first core – finally!
27 April 08 (Day 6): Our first storm (or, oh yea, that’s why there’s a glacier here…)
28-29 April 08 (Day 7-8): We hit water! Is this good or bad?
30 April 08 (Day 9): My first gigapixel panoramas of the trip – a 50 year repeat with a twist
01 May 08 (Day 10): Repairs on the thermal drill – success!
03-04 May 08 (Day 12-13): More water beneath the glacier (and more drill repairs)
05 May 08 (Day 14): Almost to the bottom of our first hole, despite weather delays
06 May 08 (Day 15): We hit bottom!
07-08 May 08 (Day 16-17): We move to our new home down glacier
09 May 08 (Day 18): The night crew drills core and takes names
10 May 08 (Day 19): Fixing a weather station at 8000 feet
11 May 08 (Day 20): This time we hit a rock instead of water.
12 May 08 (Day 21): Wolf prints in the natural wier
13 May 08 (Day 22): Fifty meters of core in one night
14-16 May 08 (Day 23-25): Ice cores make it to Fairbanks
17 May 08 (Day 26): Almost to the bottom of our 2nd (3rd?) hole
18-19 May 08 (Day 27-28): Second hole finished, more cores make it to Fairbanks, and final drill site selected
20-21 May 08 (Day 29-30): Camp splits and moves, in a blizzard
22 May 08 (Day 31): Last cores make it to Fairbanks
23 May 08 (Day 32): First showers in a month
24 May 08 (Day 33): Winter mass balance and surveys finished
25 May 08 (Day 34): Trying to save tents in the middle of the night
26-29 May 08 (Day 35-38): Heavy snows and deep holes
30-31 May 08 (Day 39-40): Final hole complete!
01-02 June 08 (Day 41-42): Final camp move, a little more coring, and the last of the ice leaves
03-04 June 08 (Day 43-44): Meet the grad students (from Poland, Japan, and Alaska)
05-07 June 08 (Day 45-47): Spring arrives on the glacier
08 June 08 (Day 48): Installing survey stakes to measure index velocities
09-10 June 08 (Day 49-50): Jason sinks his teeth into the firn
11 June 08 (Day 51): Sun + Snow = Clouds, at least in summer
12-14 June 08 (Day 52-54): Studying lenses of ice and glass
15 June 08 (Day 55): Slush flow announces the true start of summer!
16-17 June 08 (Day 56-57): Typical weather for the terminus
18 June 08 (Day 58): More wet field work
19 June 2008 (Day 59): Successful shakedown at the stream
20-23 June 08 (Day 60-63): Preparing for 6 trips at once
24 June 08 (Day 64): Impacts of 50 years of climate change on the terminus
25 June 08 (Day 65): A desperate camp move to the terminus
26 June 08 (Day 66): Final stream equipment installed
27 June 08 (Day 67): First ten days of stream data record our flood
28 June 2008 (Day 68): Caribou stampede!
29 June 2008 (Day 69): A long day ends in success
30 June 08 (Day 70): Phase Two of the project ends
01-02 July 08 (Day 71-72): The chaos begins
03 July 08 (Day 73): Our first injury of the trip
04 July 08 (Day 74): Celebrating Independence Day and a bit of lidar success
05-07 July 08 (Day 75-77): Lidar success!
08 July 08 (Day 78): High-resolution aerial photography
09-11 July 2008 (Day 79-81): Return to civilization
12-13 July 2008 (Day 82-83): Settling into civilization
14-16 July 2008 (Day 84-86): Press releases gives McCall Glacier another 15 minutes of fame
17-18 July 2008 (Day 87-88): Same song, different station
July 19-26 (Day 89-96): And now for something completely different
July 27-Aug 3 (Day 97-104): Phase Four of the trip begins without me
Aug 4-6 (Day 105-107): “Bad news”
Aug 7-9 (Day 108-110): Back on the ice
Aug 10-14 (Day 111-115): Weather station maintenance
Aug 15 (Day 116): Last repeat photography
Aug 16-18 (Day 117-119): Packing up camp, for the last time this year
Aug 19-21 (Day 120-122): Last hike to Hanoi
Aug 22 (Day 123): A day off, sort of…
Aug 23-26 (Day 124-127): Floating the Hula Hula
Aug 27-29 (Day 128-130): Fairbanks, finally, sort of.
Aug 30-Sept 02 (Day 131-134): A day trip to McCall Glacier
Sept 3-7 (Day 135-139): Preparing for Phase 5
Sept 8-16 (Day 140-148): Fifth and final phase
Sept 17 (Day 149): It’s over, sort of…

February 13-27: Two adults + one three year old + one UHaul truck + one homemade freezer + 3000 pounds of ice cores + 3600 miles = one long trip Though not technically part of our summer field work, in my mind, this is what brought it truly to a close.