Today we sent the last of our cores to Fairbanks. Darek had already thankfully prepared the cores for shipment the day before, so it was an easy matter to simply shuttle them down the hill, especially since our camp was now more conveniently located to both locations. It was a beautiful morning, so once Dirk got here we decided to do a little flightseeing and test out my new aerial photography camera. This camera is a 4 inch by 5 inch roll film camera, a Linhof Aerotechnika. They are no longer made, but when new cost more than $40,000, but thankfully not so much on Ebay. The main reason to use such a camera is the resolution – it allows one to use a telephoto lens to cover the same area as a wide angle lens, due the enormous size of the film. That is, the film itself has roughly the same resolution as a digital sensor in terms of information per unit area, but the area is more than 30 times bigger. On the ground, I use panoramic stitching techniques to effectively make my digital sensor as large as I like, but this requires the camera to remain absolutely centered on a tripod. Because this isn’t possible in a moving airplane, I’ve decided to try large format film, as most aerial photography professionals do. So this trip was kind of a shake down for me to test out both how to use this camera (can I get the exposure right without a preview screen and operate the controls correctly?) in preparation for a lot of such photography work in fall but also a chance to see the impacts that spring is having in the general region.


The coastal plain (right) is still covered with snow, while the foothills are melting fast and making pretty patterns. Dirk touched skiis on the Okpilak Lake (lower left) but decided to land at the smaller lake near the center of the photo as it had less water on it.


The Okpilak River had lots of water in it already. Not surprising considering how little snow was on the lower slopes.


It seems most of the rivers in the foothills are already starting to open up from all of the melt.


Snowmelt is largely contolled by solar aspect. South is to the left here.


West Chamberlin Glacier. I have a photo of this glacier from 1958. You can see the moraines left over from the Little Ice Age down-valley from the extant ice.


A pretty glacier in between the Hula Hula and Okpilak Rivers. I want to hike to the point in the lower right this summer take a high resolution panorama from there.


Esetuk Glacier. We’ve surveyed this in 2003 and had planned to do it last year again, but had some issues. This year we’ll map it from the air.


The river winds it way through various fields of aufeis on its way to the still-frozen coastal plain.


Breakup is a good time to see subtle variations in topography as reveal through snow distribution.


Planning Jason’s next climbing trip...


McCall Glacier.


The foothills and coastal plain looking south-west from McCall Glacier.


McCall Creek flows from left to right at the base of Marie Mountain and then hits the Jago River, near the center of the photo.


The terminus of McCall Glacier (top) is separate by about 800 meters from the aufeis field (bottom). Our stream gaging will occur just above the aufeis field, where the frozen creek can be seen entering it as a single channel.


Coming in for a landing on McCall Glacier.

As we flew around, it became clear that snow in the foothills was melting earlier than in the mountains or coastal plain. It’s not really clear to me why, but I suspect it’s a combination of both the solar angle and darker rocks – basically snowmelt is driven by sunshine and its easier for the foothills to absorb the energy from sunshine than elsewhere. The impact that the sun has is clearly evident on the steeper hillslopes, with south-facing slopes being snow free but north-facing slopes being snow covered at the same elevations. The rivers here were already flowing to some degree, due to all of the snow melt converging on the valley bottoms, and many of the lakes had standing water above the thick lake ice. Dirk pointed out the lake he landed on in the Okpilak valley while waiting for our weather to clear the other day, and mentioned that it was a bit slushy on top but not as bad as some of the other lakes he checked out. We flew around Mt Chamberlin so that I could try a repeat photo of a glacier from 1958 then headed back across the front of the range and the glaciers that had become so familiar to me, before landing back on the glacier to get the remaining cores. Once Dirk had refueled a bit and loaded up, I watched the last of our cores head to civilization. After five years of planning, preparations, failures, and successes, we were now one very big step closer to analyzing an ice core from McCall Glacier.


Dirk straps down the final load of ice cores, and lifts several years of relief off my shoulders.