We left HQ early this morning for Point 660, which made me both excited and incredibly sad. For one, it meant that we'd be completing our ablation study (I wrote about the first part here: http://
Views from the drive:
Anyways, those in my car found out at Point 660 that we had sped right past an umimak (name the animal!) en route, which made me very angry and determined redeem myself (to my credit, though, the umimak was on the opposite side of the car). Everyone else was bragging about their amazing pictures when we met up at 660, especially Samantha. Somehow she has the best fauna pictures of us all, despite the fact that my camera could kill her camera in a cage fight. After the gloating was over, we all started on the hike up to the ice sheet. This time around I essentially ran up the mountain, having gotten over my fear of falling on the Fourth of July. Greenland changes you.
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| We did, however, spot an ukaleq. |
There was an air of excitement as we walked toward our test site and started to see the bamboo sticks poking out of the ground. Nanoq congregated around our bamboo stick and someone whipped out a measuring stick; the surrounding ice had melted a whopping 39 cm in seven days! Wow. Although it IS currently the melting season in Greenland, seeing such drastic change in so short a time was an incredibly powerful experience. 39 cm may not seem like much, but when multiplied over x number of miles the ablation starts to add up.
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| Nanoq! From left- right: Ronin, Makka, and Michael |
Before this trip I'd always hear about ice caps melting in Anarctica, the North Pole- anywhere far enough north or south. I'd listen, half-interested, to horror stories about dying polar bears, greenhouse gases, a rise in sea level, etcetera, stories meant to scare the general population into making a change. The reality of the situation is far more drastic than most people understand. All of my experiences here -standing in front of the Russell Glacier, digging for fossils, measuring biodiversity- have taught me one simple fact: ice is melting faster than it can be replaced. This is going to have enormous consequences on the lives of the Greenlandic people, on the lives of everyone in the world! Think of global warming as a freight train. It may seem harmless, rolling slowly over the tracks, but it's also huge and weighs thousands of tons. Once that train starts to gain speed, it's going to take colossal energy to stop.
After everyone finished collecting data (severely geeking out over our results), we had some time to take pictures. The entire JSEP crew took a few group shots, which I'm sure turned out phenominally with such a gorgeous backdrop. Then Samantha, Josephine, and I took a bunch of silly pics together, many of them involving us jumping off of "ice dunes" with our hands in the air. Considering I am almost a foot shorter than Sam and Josephine and consequently had a vastly greater fall than either, this was probably not a very intelligent move on my part. As it turns out, falling on your hands on sharp, melting ice is not very kind on the skin. Samantha fumbled a few times as well, and we both left 660 with blood on our hands (and hers on my shirt).
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| Greenlanders! From left-right: Sandra, Nuka, Fred, John-Peter, Lana, Naasu, Makka, and Michael |
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| Americanos giving Ronin's signature thumbs-up! From left-right: Lynn, Samantha, Gracie, Sheryl (back), Chloe, Ronin, Sam, and Britta |
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| Danes! From left-right: Kasper, Skipper, Marie-Louise, Thomas, Josephine, and Rikke |
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| Sam and I are ready for our close-up |
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| My awkward jumping. I'm sorry, I am what I am. |
Marie-Louise and I lagged a little on the hike back to our cars, enough that the rest of the students had already wandered off by the time we finally made it back. We decided to hunt for a GeoCache around the area that the JSEP 2012 students had placed last year. It took a few minutes, but we found the Cache without too much trouble and opened up the activity log. You wouldn't think there to be many active GeoCache-rs in Greenland, but that little logbook already had seven or eight pages of signatures! Marie-Louise and I added our own and closed the book, adding to the Cache two Danish toy pigs that I had stashed in my backpack. It was neat looking at all of the small items in the Cache; my favorite was the scorpion lollipop left by Sydney Barnes from last year's JSEP team. I can only imagine the faces of the JSEP 2014 students as they open it up next year.
On the drive back home we stopped at two small bridges, taking measurements on the depth of the river at certain points on each bridge. We'll use this data later to calculate how much water is moving through the two areas on average (just like our studies at the Watson). On a side note, Makka almost fell into the river a few times, and it scared the living daylights out of me. Is this how other people feel about Calamity Grace? I don't know. I feel as if everyone's desensitized to my misfortune by now.
We continued on to HQ and along the way managed to spot that umimak from earlier! I didn't have my camera with me, since it was in another car, but maybe it was better that way. Staring at the umimak through a lens would have detracted from the beauty of the moment.
Today at dinner I did not hesitate to buy a muskox burger. It was absolutely delicious, much better than your typical freedom burger in the U.S. Sam and I had strawberry mousse for dessert. If you have the option of dessert, always take it.
The evening was filled with project work and a short presentation on whales by Kasper. His presentation was hilarious because he and the other teachers had a snarky banter going on the entire time. It was also fascinating, don't get me wrong; Kasper is insane and goes whale-watching in his kayak, so he had a couple of really excellent videos of breaching whales. In one of the videos a young whale nearly leaps onto his kayak! It must be incredible to live in Greenland, so close to these magnificent animals. Kasper claims he can hear whales breaching from his house in the mornings ... All I can hear in the mornings are airplanes and train whistles!
We ended the night with brownies from Sheryl, a sad but delicious reminded that Greenland and I have only two days left together. :{
I don't know how I'll be able to say goodbye.
