Snow Pits

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Our team excavated and dug snow pits near the big drill site to provide data about the upper layers and density to be used with our radar, by glaciologists interested in WAIS and by the ice core team coming to WAIS next year. Here are some photos of the tools and our team doing the measurements in the snow pit. There are no photos of them actually DIGGING the pits though.

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Photos

Snow Sample Tool
This tool allows a scientist to extract an exact amount of snow/ice from a layer.

Trowel
Used for smoothing the section of the wall to be sampled, so that layers can be seen.

Temperature Gauge
Used for taking the temperature of each layer. It has a digital readout.

Numbered Plastic Bag
Each sample will go in a separate numbered plastic bag. These are prepared beforehand.

Going Out To Dig Snow Pits
Joel, Richard and Jerome get on their snowmobiles to leave camp. They will dig the snow pits about 1-3 km from camp.

Putting Equipment On Sled
David packs the needed equipment and shovels on the plastic sled that will be pulled behind his snowmobile.

Digging Is Cold, Hard Work
Jerome and David come back to camp from a cold morning of snow pit digging. The snow was blowing back into the pit as fast as they dug. They finally got it excavated and covered and decided to do the measurements later.

Weighing the Snow Samples
Each snow sample is weighed. Because we know the volume of the snow sampler, once the weight is known, the density can be calculated.

Snow Removed from Pit
The pile of snow in the foreground is what they dug to make the pit. The air spaces in this pile of snow have the most beautiful blue color.

Layers and Measuring Tape
A measuring tape is fastened to the wall of the pit after the layers are exposed with the trowel.

Drawing the Layers
David is in the pit, cleaning and drawing the layers. While he does this, the rest of the team waits. Jerome is waiting on the edge of the pit to do his work.

Looking up from the Snow Pit
Jennifer takes a photo of David, Prasad and Jerome as they look down into the snow pit.

Taking A Sample
David carefully takes a sample of a layer while Joel in the background reaches for a plastic bag

Cutting Sample To Size
Once the sample is removed, David positions it in the sample, then puts the top on the sampler. This cuts off any excess, ensuring that each sample is the same volume.

Bag The Sample
Joel holds the plastic bag open while David transfers the sample from the sampler into the bag.

Sealing The Bag
Joel then seals the bag and hands it to Jerome who puts the bags in a box in numerical order.

Can Be A Struggle
David struggles to push the sampler into the very dense ice at the bottom of the pit. The position, the density and the importance of keeping the sampler level make it a struggle.

Sampled Wall
Here you can see the holes in the snow pit wall after most of the samples have been taken.

Taking Temperature Measurements
After all the samples are taken, Jerome measures the temperature of each layer. He uses the temperature probe to do this. David records the temperatures in the snow pit log book.

Camp From Snow Pit Site
You can barely see camp from the snow pit site.

Beautiful Ice Sheet
It is really beautiful out here. So vast and clean. Beautiful and changing skies.

Comments

[Ashley Martell]

Just a comment
My name is Ashley Martell I am in Mrs Hagermens 3rd hour Science class.The tools you used we're really cool what exactly do they do? During the Ice Core Drilling you actually had a machine big enough to break through all that ice? Scott's Discovery Hut I thought was cool. I liked the cooking stove how long has it been there? The dog bisciuts but have been very hard. The mummified seal seemed a little strange. That's all I have to say have fun in Antartica.