Fall has arrived:
Fall is definitely here, bringing powdery snow and high winds. Yesterday I hiked up the glacier during a beautiful, calm, morning. There were no needs for spikes on the shoes as the fresh snow snowlayer provided a sure footing on the glacial ice.
The beauty of the landscape atop the glacier is breathtaking. Below is an image of the repeater (see day 69 for more info about the repeater) against a backdrop of mountains and ice. The fresh snow covered some of the glacial ice protrusions, which has air bubbles inside (see bottom photo), trapped from a long time ago! Measuring the air chemistry from these kinds of air bubbles tells us much about past climate, although usually obtained from a deep ice core so that you have a large range of years (thousands of years!) to look at.
The Palmer backyard, the area that the glacier no longer covers because of rapid glacal retreat, looks like landscape from Game of Thrones: North of the Wall.
Glad we took the experimental sites down. The summer has indeed ended. We leave Friday back to Punta Arenas. Hence, only two blogs left of my Antarctic adventure …..
