Two new valleys- Garwood and Miers

10:25pm Wednesday, 1/18/2012
23°F

Since my adviser, Berry, has been in town I have been going out in the field almost nonstop! It's been amazing the last couple weeks flying all over the Dry Valleys. During the last week, despite weather delays, I had three amazing trips to three new Dry Valleys: Garwood, Miers, and Wright. I just got back from my trip to Wright Valley this morning, but I left my camera at Lake Hoare field camp so I will have to post about that trip later. For now, I’ll share my trips to Garwood and Miers Valleys.

I am not sure whether I have said this yet, but all of the Dry Valleys start up valley with a glacier (or two), may have glaciers on the valley walls that “flow” perpendicular to the valley from the summits of the surrounding ranges into the valley, and terminate at the “ocean,” which is the Ross Sound/Sea that is covered in ice. Each of the Dry Valleys has some kind of water body. Taylor Valley, the only valley I’d visited up until Garwood, has several lakes, numerous streams that flow into the lakes, and ponds. Garwood Valley has a stream and numerous small ponds. Miers Valley has two streams and one lake. Finally, Wright Valley has one river (the longest river in Antarctica at 18 miles!). Again, I’ll discuss Wright Valley in my next post.

Garwood Valley

Berry and I flew to Garwood Valley on January 13^th for a day trip with another professor that works in our group (http://www.mcmlter.org/) named Andrew Fountain whose focus is glaciers and works at Portland State. We met up with Joseph Levey out in Garwood Valley. He’s a post doctoral researcher at Oregon State and used to be a student of Andrew’s. Garwood Valley doesn’t have any snow on the valley floor, but Garwood Stream flows through the valley from the glacier to the ocean.

Looking up valley at Garwood glacier.
The white on the ground in the bottom left corner is salt.

The four of us hiked around the undulating and gravelly valley floor for a few hours and collected half a dozen sets of water samples. Much of Garwood Valley is underlain by ice, which is thought to be from the last ice age. The buried ice melts and forms the hilly topography. Melt water collects at low points and form ponds of varying sizes. These ponds are often riddled with life!

One of the smaller, ice-free ponds with lots of orange algae!

Some of the ponds are mostly covered in ice, like the one below. Many also have steep slopes along one side where we were able to dig into the ground and uncover the buried ice. Berry and Joe chipped away at some ice next to a large pond so that we could collect some for sampling. With these samples, we hope to determine how the buried ice chemically evolves into the pond water and how the pond water affects the Garwood Stream water.

Berry and Joe sampling the buried ice next to one of the first ponds we
sampled, which was ice-covered 

Exposed buried ice next to the last pond we sampled. No one sampled this
buried ice for fear of it  breaking off and falling into the pond!
(Note the gap between the pond surface and the buried ice and
the icicles!)

Miers Valley

Berry, Kathy, and I flew to Miers Valley on January 16^th for another day trip. Miers Valley has two glaciers, Miers and Adams, that each have streams that flow down valley into Miers Lake. Miers Lake is unique among the lakes of the Dry Valleys because it has an outlet stream. The outlet stream, which I think is also called Miers Stream, flows from the lake to the ocean. This is the only valley in this area that has this kind of “flow-through” hydrologic lake system.

Looking up valley at Adams Glacier (left) and  Miers Glacier (right). The stream
in this shot is from Adams Glacier

I saw my first “mummified” animal in Miers Valley. As Berry, Kathy, and I walked toward Miers Glacier to collect a sample of Miers Stream, we came across a dried seal carcass. Seals and penguins trek into the Dry Valleys, probably because they are mentally impaired from illness or a preexisting mental issue, and eventually die. Their bodies do not rot, but they do dry out and disintegrate with time. These carcasses are quite shocking to come across in this barren landscape and impress upon me the harsh conditions we have the visiting. I should also note here that when we get dropped off by helicopter into a valley like this that has no field camps in it and left alone for several hours we have survival bags dropped off with us that contain gear for food and shelter. With three people on this excursion, we were left with two survival bags (one bag has the gear to keep two people fed and sheltered for two days).   

Seal remains and Miers Glacier as we walked to Miers Stream

The most action-packed part of this trip was at the end after collecting several stream samples in the valley upstream from the lake. After the helicopter picked us up, we popped across to where the stream flows out of the lake, landed, and I got out of the helicopter (with the engines still running!) to collect water samples from the stream. We did this again mid way between the lake and the ocean and a third time near the mouth of the stream where it flows into the Ross Sea. This was the most exciting water sampling (or even field work) that I’d ever done! Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of this because I was collecting samples by myself and didn’t have time to snap a self portrait, but Berry may’ve taken a snapshot or two of me from the helicopter.

Looking toward Ross Sea across Miers Stream and Miers Lake. My
speed sampling was off in that direction past the lake but before the sea!