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Back to the lake after 8 days

Finally made it back to the lake again. After eight days. Too strong winds and high swell caused us to lose three field days during the past week. We tried to get out, but ended up turning around in the fjord, being soaked after just a few kilometers. Having a boat full of water, completely soaked gear and a wet team doesn’t work if you have to drive out 18 km one way before you start working on the glacier for 12 or more hours. But yesterday, the conditions were finally favourable again. And the changes up at the lake are tremendous. Water, everywhere just water. All the moraines are under water, there are now lakes in front of the neighbouring glaciers and all are connecting to one big, massive lake. The ice is pilling up in domes. Half a square kilometer of lake area by now. Probably 20 million cubic meters of water with up to 60 m water depth in places. And the water level keeps going up. We had to swap the batteries of our GPSes and check the status of our timelapse cameras. 160 batteries up the glacier and a lot of our crap down the glacier on the way back. As always a large amount of new crevasses and a long dance around, between and over the crevasses to reach our GPSes at the ice front. The first data we checked from one of the GPSes indicated around 10 m uplift of the ice within just one week. By now it is also quite hard to swap the batteries of the GPSes. They are mounted on poles, which are drilled into the ice. But the ice melted more than one meter in 2.5 weeks, leading to the GPSes being high up in the air. Building rock pyramides to climb on in order to reach them. The stuff you do on floating ice, where you need to jump over several crevasses to get to in the first place. Keeps being interesting. I just hope that the lake will drain soon, as we have reached the final week of our field work. There is still so much to do. A set of drifters is sitting ready at the lake. They will be dropped in as soon as the lake starts draining in the hope that they will be flushed all the way into the fjord. One big gamble. Gonna try that on some moulins today as well. Work never stops.