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Black Rapids Glacier Alaska

Here are some pictures of Black Rapids Glacier in the Alaska Range. This one was taken by Rod March. The glacier valley is mostly defined by the Denali Fault, a major tectonic boundary in the area. The looped moraines are typical of surge-type glaciers. A surge will come along, cut off one of these loops and carry it downstream. After the surge the tributary pushes out a new loop. The picture on the left is a close-up of a looped moraine pushed out by the main tributary of the glacier. The peak on the right in the back is Aurora Peak. Dana and I climbed it in spring 1997.

A bit further up the glacier. You can just barely recognize the camp that we put up in spring 1997 for a big drilling field season. The glacier valley continues over an ice divide into the Susitna Glacier. Most of the ice of Black Rapids is accumulated around the corner on the left of the picture. On the left is a view of our camp in the foreground and a beautiful steep tributary on the glacier's south side. The peak on the left is Meteor Peak. Keith Echelmeyer and I climbed the ridge on its right in 1997. The potholes on the right are left over crevasses from the last surge, which happened in 1936/37. They occur on many surge-type glacier. In summer they fill with water, and when the water drains, the glacier typically moves faster. Sometimes there is water in the potholes in mid winter.

Tasmania, Australia

I was in Tassie from July 2000 until May 2001. One can easily fall in love with this place. Unfortunately I don't have too many pictures of it scanned in at the moment. The one here is of Wineglass Bay on the Freycinet peninsula. The picture was taken from the top of Mt. Amos, when I went up there with Dana. I spent a lot of time rock climbing in Freycinet and around Hobart.

In January Keith visisted and we did the Arthurs traverse in Southwest Tasmania. This is some really neat country, and a fantastic bush walk with lots of vertical and some stunning views. The picture on the left shows me on the side of Federation Peak in the Eastern Arthurs. This can be climbed without a rope, but the gully is rather steep and long, and it can easily make you nervous.

This is Keith on a "very gymnastic" part of the trail. A lot of Tassie is covered with dense brush where the going can be slow, even on a "trail".

Heard Island, South Indian Ocean

In October 2000 I went aboard the Polarbird on a voyage to Heard Island. The island is at about 53 S and 73.5 E in the southern Indian Ocean. It is claimed by Australia and is part of the Kerguelen Plateau. The French have a station on the Iles de Kerguelen to the north.
Heard Island doesn't have a permanent station. Australian scientists lived there for a few years in the 50s, but since then it has only been visited sporadically. The island is about 40 km long and consists mainly of a big active volcano (Big Ben), and a long drawn out spit at the eastern end. Glaciers flow down on all sides of the mountains, and some of them have changed dramatically in this century. Doug Thost, Andrew Ruddell and I with occasional from our FTOs Don and Scottie spent a lot of time surveying and measuring the current glacier geometry and flow rates. Dug (who features in these pictures) and I spent about six weeks on the island, living in a rebuilt water tank.

The wildlife on the island is absolutely spectacular. We had many seabirds, including Light-Mantled Sooty Albatrosses nesting right where we were. The penguins of course are always fun to see. The pictures on the right shows Dug and some King penguins being very curious about each other.

On the left you see a colony of Gentoo penguins and some Kings with Big Ben in the background.
My favorite penguins are the Rockhoppers who look like real punks.

There were also thousands of seals. Mostly they were just sleeping on the beach and molting. Not a very active bunch. But the male furseals could be pretty aggressive at times, especially when the females were close to pupping. They mate shortly after that.

Antarctica

After Heard Island I got onboard the Australian ice breaker Aurora Australis. Here she is close to Davis Station, Antarctica, parked among ice bergs. Seeing ice bergs is one of the first signs that one is getting nearer to Antarctica. We dropped off the crew who went on to drill a hole through the Amery Ice Shelf and then sailed home.

Of course there were plenty of penguins again. I never got tired of watching them jump out of the water onto the ice, where they would often slide around on their bellies. These are Adelie penguins. There were also the much bigger Emperors, but I don't have a picture of them.

Finally a picture of the midnight sun, for my first time on that side of the globe.