Our day began a bit late, but we had an amazing science day. The chopper was not able to actually pick us up until 2 p.m. so we made the most of the time we had.
Chopper arriving to relocate us
Inside the helicopter
The scenery was out of this world. Words that come to mind are majestic, spectacular, breathtaking, vast, powerful, and so fragile.
Look at the banding on the sides of the fjord
A bit of perspective -- try to find Nat on top of the LITTLE hill
We are basically trying to collect two types of samples -- dead moss vegetation closest to the ice margin and quartz samples near the vegetation. These two different sample methods will help constrain the last time the ice was at this point. Often times, we need to take a fairly large sample of rock to get enough quartz to run in the lab. Today, finding enough quartz was not an issue.
Samples of quartz
The pilot needed to leave us at our last sample site to go back to port and refuel. What this meant was that the team would stay on top of the ice cap with survivor packs until the chopper returned. We took the survivor packs in the event that the weather changed or there was a technical issue with the chopper and they could not get back to us tonight. We spent the two hours exploring to find more samples and to help keep us warm.
There is nothing like a helicopter ride over the fjords
We finally made it to our new camp around 9 o'clock at night. We set up camp, had a bit of food and went to bed around midnight. We've named the camp, Lil' Nugg for Avy.
Full moon at midnight
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