Man-Hauling

January is usually a beautiful, warm and pleasant month down here, but this year’s weather has been a bit wonky from the start. So, I wasn’t entirely surprised when some shifty weather started building up early this past week. First, my flight out to the Dry Valleys was pushed back by a full day, and once out there the conditions remained sketchy. Instead of the usual summer clear blue skies to be found in the *DRY* Valleys, overhead clouds slowly built up, dropped down, and pretty soon engulfed us.

Waiting for the ride home as the weather gets worse...

It was on the second day of my 3-day scanning trip that we had to pull the plug on our data collection. We got a call from our helicopter, piloted by the valiant Sir Paul and teched by Lady Alicat, helicopter tech extraordinaire (the woman kicks some major ass), and the word was that it was time to scramble. The goal was to get us back to Lake Hoare and to try to get the helicopter to Marble Point, a refueling stop 60 miles from McMurdo, where it and its crew could spend the night. We hoped the helicopter would come in, otherwise we would be stuck for the night (or possibly longer).

When groups fly out to field locations with no camps within walking distance, they get a large survival bag that gets dropped off with them in case the weather turns and the helicopter can't pick them up. The survival bag isn't a luxury hotel bag of schwag - it's a bare bones, bare necessities bag. Inside are a tent, 2 sleeping bag, a sleeping pad, a stove, fuel, enough dehydrated food for 2 poeple for 3 days, a snow saw, a shovel, and an emergency field guide. For entertainment's sake, a trashy novel (usually in the Romance category) is included as well.

The helicopter showed up and after a speed demon helicopter packing frenzy, we had taken off and were heading up into the clouds. I would say that the weather was definitely getting to be marginal, but…. But Paul is a truly excellent pilot and I have total confidence in the man. With not a whole lot of extra visibility over the mountains, we safely flew into Lake Hoare, just as snowflakes started falling. The helicopters would have to stay the night and wait it out.

Helos parked at Lake Hoare

The next day, it was clear early on that the weather wasn’t improving very quickly. After a fantastic breakfast cooked by Paul and Mike, the lead hydrologist I was working with, the group started planning. One of the sites we wanted to work at was just across the lake, a mere mile as the crow flies. However, Lake Hoare has a maze of treacherous, delicate ice formations that make walking across quite an endeavor (and a wet one at times, when you fall through some thin ice into a puddle), one not to be taken when carrying a quarter million dollars of expensive science instruments. The other thing Lake Hoare has is a moat – a beautiful, smooth, flat frozen moat all around its perimeter. So, rather than risk the death march across the lake, we decided to strap our equipment to sleds and man-haul it all the way around the lake to reach the other side.

Packed and ready to go

5 miles around the lake, 1 mile as the crow flies

Mush!

Under a gentle sprinkling of summer snow, my part-husky companion Will and I set out for our trek around the lake. It was pretty uneventful, but I’ll just say that given the chance to carry 60 lbs or to haul 120 lbs, I’d do the hauling any day. It’s the way to travel. After helicopters, of course.

We finally made it to the other side of the lake, and from there we carried the gear to the surveying spot. The hydrology team was setting up a tarp over a plot of land which the winter weather would cover in snow.

In the spring and summer, the tarp would collect any meltwater and funnel it into a bucket they had buried at its lowest point. Using this method, the group would know how much water would have soaked into the ground, and could see how the bacteria colonies in the earth reacted to having less water. There is a big debate amongst different groups here about whether the annual snowfall affects or contributes to the biology in the Dry Valleys – some groups argue that the snow ablates, or evaporates, and that water comes from different sources, while others argue that the snow melts into the ground and is a crucial source of water to the life here. There’s only one way to find out...

Mike tells his war stories...

My job was to scan the tarp so that when we return later in October, we can scan the snow that has accumulated on it and get a volume. And scan away I did. When I get back to Boulder in 6 weeks' time, I'll have a mountain of processing to do, including putting all of these scans together. The little white balls in the image below (on top of the tripods next to the tarp, it's hard to see) are georeferencing points that I'll use to pull the entire scan into a georeferenced data set - that means all of the scanner data points will become GPS coordinates.

As always, Mike's group was a real treat to work with - they are good at what they do, they're organized, they generously helped me carry my 300 lbs of gear all around the valleys, and.... they have an awesome sense of humor. I've been really lucky this season to work with some stellar groups this season, and this is but one example.

All in all, it was a great way to make use of an otherwise slow weather-day.