More crap up the glacier. Looks like we are still not done installing our equipment everywhere on the glacier. We spent the entire day yesterday to get a seismometer up on the ice. And of course, the equipment wasn’t really designed for deployment in summertime. A helicopter would have easily managed to drop the big boxes and solar cells. But hiking everything up there during summer?
Oh well, another sledge became victim of my science (anybody interested in a sledge with some nice holes in the ground, could still be used as a colander). That was only number five. I have a feeling that there will be a few more coming. Anyways, one seismometer deployed close to the glacier front, ready to listen to the noise the ice produces as it moves, thereby allowing to identify factors influencing this movement. And there is surely quite some movement.
Several new crevasses are opening up in the lower part of Kongsvegen, cracking all the way into the moraine and across the tracks people drive in wintertime on snowmobiles. Curious to see how much these crevasses will open during summer. The melt is going quite strong by now as well. In May a team was out on the glacier to maintain stakes in the ice, that help to measure how much the ice melts. These stakes are drilled into the ice and by slowly melting out allow to measure the rate of ice melt when returining to them in autumn. Turns out, that the first stake is already lying flat on the ground and summer has only just started.