I was lucky enough to tag along on a day trip with two colleagues to three beautiful sites in the dry valleys, which I don’t usually have an opportunity to visit in a neighboring valley (Wright Valley) from Taylor Valley, where our study lakes are located.
We began our day flying to the beautiful Lake Brownworth, a rarely visited lake with a very thick ice cover, which receives constant input from a neighboring glacier in the form of large ice blocks. There we began our day of soil sampling – my colleagues are trying to standardize a simple way to monitor bacteria in soils from different sites.
Next, we stopped at a site above Lake Vanda, a large deep lake that has a warm bottom because the transparency of the ice allows light to penetrate and warm the waters. We found an interesting “ventifact”, which are rock formations shaped by the winds over thousands of years. We thought this one resembled the Star Wars character, Jaba the Hut.
Saving the best for last, we flew to one of my bucket list places, the Labyrinth, a large part of the dry valleys that contains deeply scoured channels and canyons. It is a mythical place with amazing rock formations, which you can’t find anywhere else in the dry valleys. We flew home on the “highway” which is a helicopter route through the mountains.
We began our day flying to the beautiful Lake Brownworth, a rarely visited lake with a very thick ice cover, which receives constant input from a neighboring glacier in the form of large ice blocks. There we began our day of soil sampling – my colleagues are trying to standardize a simple way to monitor bacteria in soils from different sites.
Next, we stopped at a site above Lake Vanda, a large deep lake that has a warm bottom because the transparency of the ice allows light to penetrate and warm the waters. We found an interesting “ventifact”, which are rock formations shaped by the winds over thousands of years. We thought this one resembled the Star Wars character, Jaba the Hut.
Saving the best for last, we flew to one of my bucket list places, the Labyrinth, a large part of the dry valleys that contains deeply scoured channels and canyons. It is a mythical place with amazing rock formations, which you can’t find anywhere else in the dry valleys. We flew home on the “highway” which is a helicopter route through the mountains.