Ice Core Drilling Radar Survey

Today we flew up to the Annette Plateau in a Pilatus Porter ski plane. We had a big pile of gear - boxes of Radar parts, ice axes, crampons, snow shoes, food and emergency tents, sleeping gear and food. The weather was sunny and still - having expected bitter cold, we had come a bit overdressed and had to peel off a few layers to cool down.




We planned our radar survey to cross the glacier in three parallel lines 250 metres apart, with another line down the centre at 90 degrees.

We roped up on two ropes, just in case there were any snow covered crevasses ready to swallow one of us up, although as glaciers go the area looked very safe, with no visible cracks on
the surface at all.

 This photo shows Lawrence and Matt pulling the high frequesncy (500 MHz) Radar between them.

Here Lawrence and Brian are getting ready to use the lower frequency 25 MHz radar. It has a 13 metre long antenna which is pulled along the ground. Both systems worked very well and showed that the ice thickness was a maximum of 150 metres.

In the final picture you can see our tracks as we passed over on the return flight to the airport. It was a successful days work!


Although we still have four other sites to survey, the weather forecast is very bad for the next week or so. We have decided to curtail this visit to the mountains and return again when the weather clears up. I hope it will be soon!

Ice Core Drilling Radar Survey

The purpose of this fieldwork is to find out the best possible ice core drilling sites in New Zealand. We are preparing for the first of two drilling seasons, starting in June 2009. What we are doing is flying up to several high glaciers in the Aoraki/ Mount Cook National Park with a ground penetrating radar (GPR) to measure the ice depth and bedrock configuration. We are looking for cold, deep, stable, flat ice with no crevasses.

Brian Anderson, a glaciologist at Victoria University is in charge of this field work. Other participants are Matt Watson - an ice radar specialist, Lawrence Kees - a Masters student at VUW, and myself. I am here to be involved in the site selection and learn as much as possible about the places that we choose to drill. It is my job to organise all the equipment, tents and food that the drill team will need for working at some very remote and wild places in the mountains in the middle of winter. - and the drilling is happening less than a month from now.

We met up in Christchurch and drove immediately to Mount Cook village. The view of the mountains across Lake Pukaki was impressive, with the white winter snow covering reflected in the mirror like water.