East Antarctica: 1997-1998 season

This was my second field season working with the group at The Ohio State University and The Byrd Polar Research Center. Gordon Hamilton was in charge of the project and with myself and two new graduate students in tow, we had a very ambitious field season planned. The plan was to split up into two groups of two and each group would install ~4 new "coffee-can" sites (see "current research" on homepage). One group led by Gordon was primarily based in West Antarctica and the second group led by me was primarily based in East Antarctica.

Aside from the south pole, there were no coffee-can sites yet installed in East Antarctica and this was a big opportunity to get some measurements there. Unfortunately, the field season started out bad right from the start. Upon leaving from McMurdo via Twin Otter, we were supposed to be put in to our first East Antarctic site (Beardmore glacier basin), but through some mix-up ended up getting dropped off instead at another site, Titan Dome. This is a truely desolate place, located ~100 km north (towards the Ross Ice Shelf) and ~1500 feet above the south pole. We camped there for only one night while we attempted to install our site ... but most of our equipment broke due to the cold temperatures. In addition, my partner got mild frost-bite and had to be evacuated to McMurdo the next day. Not the best way to start the season. More on how things progressed subsequent to this with some of the pictures.

While the Titan Dome site was a semi-failure, we did get a few markers installed there. Presumably the site will produce some results when (if?) it gets re-measured. In addition, we did re-survey and firn core recovery work at the South Pole site and later on in the season, installed a site a Vostok Station. Pictures here are primarily from the south pole and Vostok work.