Julian connects with earth scientists and educators in New Zealand and overseas
Last week I visited the GNS Science office at Wairakei, just outside Taupo. This is where a lot of research is done into New Zealand volcanoes and geothermal fields. First up this morning was a trip to White Island, One of the most frequently active volcanoes in New Zealand, where I assisted a small team […]
Out of our original top 3 favourite glaciers to check for ice cores there was still one left to go. This was the Baker Glacier, visible clearly from our previous site on Mount Hutton, almost directly across on the other side of the Murchison Glacier Valley. Baker Glacier is relatively low altitude at 2360 metres.
Just for the hell of it, I bivouacked out for the night, with the intention of watching shooting stars. Despite the cold (about -12 deg C) I was reasonably comfortable in my warm sleeping bag. I quickly fell asleep and overslept – waking at 9am. We spent the morning packing up the drill gear and
After yet another day of sorting out and preparing our gear, the weather forecast looked quite promising for a few days. We decided to fly back up to Mount Hutton and drill non stop until we either came to bedrock of had to stop for other reasons, such as water in the ice. The four
Today we flew up to our highest planned drill site on Mount Hutton. Yulan stayed behind, and with us instead were Tom McRae and Ron Madden from TV1. Because of the prospect of poor weather forecasted for tomorrow, we had decided to do a rapid reconnaissance drill only. If the results proved to be good
Dan and I got up early and each went of for a walk around the glacier. I climbed up Mount Annette and then returned through the wind scoop. The plane arrived and by the time it was fully packed there was no room to fit both of us in! I decided I would be happy
Yesterday we dragged the drill and equipment across the glacier, set it up in a newly dug pit and made a protective wall of snow blocks. After 10 metres we came to wet ice and decided there was no point to continue. Back to the drawing board.After having further close looks at the radar images,
After yesterdays progress, today’s was disappointing. During the night, water had seeped into the drill hole and other technical issues slowed down the drilling. Then from about 45 metres below the surface we pulled up an ice core that was dripping with water. We must have drilled into a water conduit in the glacier. We
By 9am all was set for drilling to start Having dug a pit about 2 metres deep into the snow to find a hard layer for the drill to stand on securely, we were still another 2 metres from the previous summer surface of the glacier that was now under a total of 4 metres
By 8am we were all at the airport loading a huge pile of supplies into a sling net for the helicopter to take up to the Annette Plateau. I went up with the first flight with the job of pointing out our chosen drilling location to our pilot Brendan. Unfortunately the GPS co-ordinates were wrong