Arrived at Bonney Camp!
This morning I flew with my team from McMurdo, across the frozen sea ice of McMurdo Sound, to the Dry Valleys. We were transported in a Bell 412 helicopter along with ~ 600 lbs of scientific and personal gear, all of which is weighed and tagged to help with weight distribution and fuel allocation for the journey. The Bel 412 is the bigger of the two types of helicopters operated by the US Antarctic Program and flies with both a pilot and a helicopter tech, who helps with the loading and off-loading of cargo. Bonney camp is the most inland and farthest from McMurdo of the four Dry Valleys field camps. We were treated to spectacular views of the mountains, hanging glaciers and all three of frozen lakes we will be sampling as we made our way up the valley. I loved being able to see the system from above- because of the lack of vegetation it was so easy to see the watershed at work from that scale- streams running off of the glaciers running into the slushy moats of the frozen lakes.
When we arrived at camp, we went to work setting up the lab space to prepare for the upcoming sampling of the Western Lobe of Lake Bonney. The "limno" team of the McMurdo LTER (aka the lakes group) samples three big lakes in Taylor Valley, but because Lake Bonney is separated into two distinct lobes with only a narrow channel connecting them, they are treated as two separate water bodies: West Lobe Bonney (WLB) and East Lobe Bonney (ELB.) The camp is situated on the shore of the east lobe, so traveling to the West Lobe takes some work. Luckily, we are able to drive ATV's on the lake ice (which is 3+ m thick!) to get to the West Lobe sampling hole. The hole itself was already drilled earlier in the season, which significantly decreases the workload for the subsequent rounds of sampling, considering both how thick the ice is and the wide diameter of the hole (3' across.) They do refreeze between sampling trips- part of today's work involved traveling out to the West Bonney sampling hole to both stage gear and start chipping out the partially refrozen hole. Once the ice was chipped and scooped out, I took a moment to lay on the lake ice and look down through the hole... and the icy walls just kept going down into the water! I was impressed with 17" of ice on Mirror Lake last winter- but this is a whole (hole?) new level! Ice twice as thick as I am tall!
