I added some field work to my thesis this summer, mostly in the form of monthly summer trips to the Harding Icefield, near Seward. I made a total of five trips, the first one at the end of May. The trail (loosely followed on the first trip as it was almost completely under snow) follows the edge of Exit Glacier to the Icefield.
It's a very popular trip in the summer and later trips we encountered many tourists on the trail. It's a steep climb up to the ice from nearly sea level at the visitor center. Many don't make it beyond a view of the Exit Glacier. Many come unprepared. This hut is near the highest point of the trail, it's really more of an emergency shelter than anything else. When we arrived on our first trip in May, it was half filled with snow.
So we camped just downslope from the hut, with a great view of the valley below. This was my first use of my new single wall tent. It proved itself to be very spacious, possibly better with three people than two on cold trips.
The May trip was mostly very sunny and I was grateful for my decision to include a full brim hat, lightweight gloves, and 100 SPF sunscreen. Not sure what I would have done if I had forgotten sunglasses!
This trip was mostly for a fellow grad student studying ice algae. We had a lot of extra gear to haul up on this trip and were glad to have sleds. We set up transects for her study, which I hoped to also use later. Our sherpas departed the group when we reached the hut. We were able to ski from there with the sleds and all the gear.
We camped near the transects - in the midst of them really. Later trips the camp was set up between the transects and the cache. After we could see the immensity of the icefield we were grateful for changing the study site to the nearer Japanese glacier from the original plan of Skilak glacier, visible here in the distance.
There is no way to express in photos how immense this place is. Because it was so clear, we could see the weather forming far away. It often dissipated before reaching us.
The lighting was amazing. This time of the year there is plenty of daylight so work can continue past 10pm.
Any questions why I live in Alaska?
Skiing towards one of the study plots. You can see for such a long distance it is amazing how far away people can be and you can still see them.
We carried a satellite phone on all our trips. We tried to use it once to alert our ride in Seward that we were going to be done a day early on one of our July trips. That's when we discovered what poor coverage the phone had. It's hard to not find hillarity in everything after days of non-stop sunshine surrounded by snow.
After the first trip in May, the trail was more melted out at each trip. It was interesting to watch the changes. This is Exit glacier in August.
Our trip in August was among the worst for weather. We had very heavy packs and non-stop rain on the hike. It took us longer than usual to get to the glacier, and we were freezing when we got there. The whiteout conditions were common after the early July trip. We called the slush the 'Glacier Swamp' and had no idea what to make of it. We camped on the last patch of snow on the edge of the swamp. We had to cross it to get to the cache, but opted to retreat the following morning.
The September trip was even less fruitful and neither of us got any samples. This is the view of the valley from part way up the trail. It was a beautiful autumn hike.
September view of Exit glacier from the trail. It wasn't quite a whiteout on the icefield - at least not all the time. We didn't bring our skis on this trip. There was fresh snow over the bare ice on the bulge up the icefield. It was slow traveling with probing every step and the crevasses, while small, were time consuming to walk around and disturbing to locate.
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