Pensacola Mountains, West Antarctica: Glacial Geologic Research in the Schmidt Hills!

Hello again friends!

Once we had our snowmobile routes in the Schmidt Hills flagged, we were ready to begin our work. We typically worked in two teams of three. One team used snowmobiles to drag an ice-penetrating radar unit across the ice surface. Seth is working on a blog entry to describe this aspect of our work! The second team (usually Greg, Michael, and myself) spent our two weeks in the Schmidt Hills climbing the mountains in search of glacial deposits.

Previous studies in Antarctica have shown that the ice sheet used to be thicker and more extensive. This thicker ice sheet would have flowed over the top of most of the mountains in our research area. When glacier ice flows across the earth's surface, it erodes the rock beneath the ice, breaking off portions of this rock and transporting it within the ice. When the ice thins and retreats, these glacially-transported pieces of rock are left behind on rock surfaces. We use these rocks to track past ice thinning and retreat (more on this later!).

Thus, most days, Greg, Michael and myself would climb above the current ice surface looking for rocks that are glacially-transported. These rocks will have rounded edges, and flat smooth faces that formed as the rock was transported in flowing ice. We are also looking for rocks that are "erratic," or a different composition than the rock surface beneath it or nearby.

Here are some shots from our work days to give you an idea of what a typical day entails:

We would typically set out from our camp via snowmobile a little after 9:00 AM.

We would always carry a sled with our survival bags on it, in the event that weather stranded us away from camp. See this December post to learn what is in a survival bag!

We often walked across rock and snow to access our sampling locations.

We're always looking for evidence that ice used to flow over our sampling locations. In this picture, Greg is pointing out glacial striations, or scratches formed when ice flows over rock surfaces.

When we find these scratches on mountainsides and mountain tops, it tells us that ice used to be much thicker than it is today!

This photograph and the photograph below are great examples of "glacial erratics." They are distinct from the rock surface beneath them and they have rounded edges that are typical of rocks that have been transported by ice.

Michael kept track of striations and sample locations on maps he made from satellite imagery. See our maps page for an example map.

Sometimes the rock is too big to carry home, so we have to hammer a piece off of it!

One of the most exciting parts of our days for me is LUNCH! Unfortunately, I can't find very many pictures of lunch. Apparently, we were too hungry to take pictures. So here's all I have:

Looks like bagel (in Michael's hand) and soup (in Kat's hand) are on the menu. We carry a liter of hot water in a thermos to make soup and hot drinks for lunch.