Ian Frearson - ARG Founder excavating an ice pit in 1983 into the Burnmurdoch Glacier snow cover - Image by Stephen Staley
One of the projects the ARG is hoping to carry out in the summer of 2025 (subject to approval by the authorities) is to rerun ice pit projects from 1977 and 1983.
The project required digging person-sized holes down vertically into the snow and firn (half way between snow and ice) on top of a glacier until the top of “proper” ice was reached. The thicknesses, temperatures and crystal sizes in the layers of ice crystals in the snow and firn can reveal a lot about how these layers have accumulated and melted through the years and hence about rates of glacier growth and short-term climate variations.
Ian, our Founder, was a member of the 1977 expedition and he, Mike Haynes and I were all on the 1983 expedition. We plan to find the locations of the old ice pits and dig new ones nearby to compare directly with the results from the previous expeditions.
I remember the hard walk in to ice camp, near where we dug the pit in a cwm near the top of the Burnmurdoch glacier. It took a team of five of us a full day to get all the way down to glacier ice at more than 7 metres depth, and at the end we were completely exhausted as we tramped back to camp. But it was one of the most beautiful, desolate places I have ever seen. Dr. Steve Staley
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