Palmer Day Three - The Glacier

It was a nice day outside when I woke up - clear and just slightly windy.  So I decided to climb the glacier behind Palmer Station.  I wanted to do this for sure before I left, and didn't want to take a chance that I would run out of time.  So today it was.  I headed over to the station, grabbed a radio to keep in touch in case something happened, signed out on their chalkboard, and grabbed my cold weather gear. 

 
On the way I saw some Arctic Pestrels (I think that's what they're called).  Anyways, they're bright white birds.  They were just chilling out by the boat...it was neat.  No penguins or seals yet, but at least there's some life down here.

You see that little speck up at the top on the horizon?  That's Bob.  He left about 30 minutes before me.  And that's where I'm heading.  It was a rough-ish climb, mostly because there were patches of ice everywhere and it was really cold.  I just did a little ice dancing and only fell once (no worries, Mom) but it was still really neat.  I took tons of pictures, but I'll post a few here of the ascent and the views I got along the way of the glacier and Palmer station looking backwards.

When I made it to the top, it felt great.  The wind was blowing snow across my feet and whipping up a storm.  It was so cold I had to don my face gear to keep my ears and nose from falling off.  The wind literally takes your breath away.  Anyways, from the top you could see across the back of Anvers Island (where Palmer Station is) out to another island and the Antarctic Peninsula.  Unfortunately, it was overcast so I couldn't make out the mountains in the background very well...but maybe I'll go up again when it's more clear.

Also at the top is a big communications antenna for the station.  I used one of the posts to jerry-rig a "tripod" for my camera and took a picture of myself because I needed one.  And yes, I wore an LSU hat.  For whatever reason I don't own anything from UGA except t-shirts...so I'll have to get them into pictures somehow.

Oh and the last picture of my backpack...as I said the snow was being blown across the ground by the wind.  After taking my picture I went back to get my bag and it was covered!  On the way down the road was icy and rough again.  I slid / ice danced a few times more, but only fell once, and then I ran into a trio of pestrels again.  I'd like to think it was the same three that followed me from the boat.  It was fun to watch them walk along against the wind, and then all of a sudden they spread their wings and took off with it.  It was really neat to watch.

After I made it down and headed back to the ship, I had lunch and then did some things about the lab.  I spent most of the afternoon working on my manuscript and getting things ready for an experiment I'm going to run while here on station.  I'm going to try to sample off the pier to look at a day/night cycle of microbes in the surface.  The archaea I study live in this region in surface waters at this type of year, so I want to see what they do when the light is on and off (because they're not here during the summer).  Nerdy yes, but it's exciting.