Summer truly arrived today with an enormous slush flow which opened the main stream on the glacier. Slush flows are like low angle avalanches. Water slowly saturates the snow and makes it heavier and more fluid. At a certain point, the weight of the water can no longer be held back by the snow matrix and gravity takes over. Over the past few days we had been watching meltwater pool up within the stream channel from last year. This morning there was standing water visible within a large section of it. I set up a time-lapse camera hoping to capture it, and about 10PM it happened. I was in my work tent preparing for a few days of work at the terminus when I heard a loud roar. I ran out and saw a wall of slush and water working its way downglacier. We all stood and watched as the peak rushed past our previous snowmachine crossing and washed away our trail marker. It was a neat event to see. After an hour or so the main event was over, as the store of pooled up water became so distributed that it no longer had enough force to move the snow out of its way. Soon after dark clouds moved in and bringing lightening, thunder, and graupel with it. I suspect tomorrow will see the rest of the channel open up, either through more snow melt or rain. Hopefully our continuous GPS is still operating on the glacier surface, and we will be able to see if this major hydrologic event has an influence on the glacier’s motion.


Summer arrived with a slush flow on this day. It’s tough to actually see the flow because it only takes a few frames near the end. The movie appears to slow down near the end because I began manually snapping pictures every second or so rather than automatic once per minute. The cloud motion appears jerky because I’m using the Microsoft movie maker, which apparently has no ability to make movies at the normal frame rate of 24 per second.


I changed the camera angle and zoomed in on the active front of the slush flow. Note how the scene gets darker near the end, as thunderstorms approached.

Today we spent mostly getting ready to spend a few days at the terminus, studying the outlet stream there. Our primary goal here is to track the amount of water leaving the glacier, but we also hope to study how water moves beneath the glacier by release of dye on the glacier surface. To facilitate this, we staged camp supplies there about two weeks ago so that we can avoid commuting 7 hours there and back to our main camp. In addition to this, we have a lot equipment to prep and lug down there too. For example, Jason has stream gaging and dye-tracing tools, and I have a bunch of time-lapse cameras. We had become settled here on our moraine camp, so some preparations were also needed to get a selection of personal gear and food ready to go. For Kristin, Turner and I, we hoped to use this trip as a shake-down for longer-distance hiking later in summer, so we had some organizational work to do for that too.

It was a nice day overall. In the morning, Jason and Joey left early to drill another hole in the upper cirque while I made some final tests with my panoramic equipment and then continued to photographically survey our local area with its odd mix of glacial moraine, fluvial channels, and permafrost features. By about noon we were all back at camp and decided to have a Fathers’s Day brunch of bacon and pancakes. The rest of afternoon was spent packing and preparing, and capped off by the slush flow and storm. We joked that this weather was expected, for it seems that every time we’re at the terminus it’s rainy and nasty.


Jason and Joey avoiding the rush hour traffic.


Jason and Joey back from drilling. Or was it Panama.

Since it’s Fathers’ Day, I thought I’d go heavy on what that means to me…


Time for sunscreen.


Time to tickle your belly.


Turner’s got his belly-protector on.


See?


Turner and his moose, now cleaned of orange stuff.


Turner and mama discuss anatomy.


Mine!


Turner busts a move.


Fathers’ Day brunch.


Turner: “You want the last piece of bacon?”


Jason: “You put what in the pancakes?”


Turner: “For Fathers’ Day I got you these magic shelf brackets.”


Not something you typically see.