That is in fact a polar bear. All my polar bear pictures are some variation on this theme, I’m not sure how the people at National Geographic do it…

There was a quick discussion about whether we wanted to proceed across the crack and onto the potentially mobile flow, but my bear guard* and I were both curious about what was happening at the ice edge itself.  We dropped a radio with the hunting party and asked them to call us if the crack moved, rigged a measuring bar for the crack, and proceeded cautiously.  Within 200 meters we entered an entire network of cracks and realized there was no way to proceed.  We turned back to do what sampling we could at the new crack, which at least afforded an opportunity to collect seawater.

The third crack we encountered. Clearly the ice is on the move, and we are not going to reach the ice edge today!

I spent most of the day in the lab today, processing all the samples collected over the last two days.  A few hours ago the Icy Worlds team from JPL rolled in, and I’ll be helping them for the rest of the trip.  Their project is focused on the methane rich lakes that dot the tundra here (a good analogue for Europa), an environment that I have not explored yet.  I’m looking forward to it!

*In Antarctica the safety personnel request not to be named in photos, blog entries, Facebook posts, etc.  They are stuck between the rock of rigid restrictions and the hard place of scientists wanting to meet an objective, and at times are willing to bend in favor of science.  Since this can involve a creative interpretation of the rules, it’s better not to call them out.  Although this is much less of an issue in the Arctic I’m keeping this as a general policy.

Last week it looked like there was an unused trail at the north end of the polynya that we might be able to use.  This is far from the normal whaling area, and therefore our presence would have a minimal impact on whaling activity.  At the last minute however, one of the whaling crews decided to abandon their old site and occupy this trail.  At first it wasn’t clear which whaling crew had made this move, and it looked for a while like this field effort might be dead on arrival.  As fate would have it however, it turned out to be the crew to which the bear guard tasked to our project belonged, moreover his dad was the crew’s captain.  The trail wasn’t quite finished yet, but the word was that they would reach the ice edge within a few hours.  If we helped them break trail they would probably look favorably on a little science work at the ice edge.  Time to break some ice.

Cutting a “pass” through one of many pressure ridges.

The basic idea with trail building is to create little passes through the pressure ridges (often 10-15 feet high) big enough for a snowmachine pulling a whaling boat (a hide boat perhaps 15 feet long and 5 feet wide).  Ice is a really satisfying medium for this kind of construction: the boulders give enough resistance to make you want to work at them, but progress is quick and visible.  After three hours on the chain gang we could see the lead edge from the top of the pressure ridge.  The whaling crew stopped for lunch and suggested we go on ahead and sample.  With a little trial and error we reached the lead edge and got to work.  There were plenty of frost flowers, though they were melting a bit under warm temps, so we made plans to visit the site again later that night when it was cooler.

The lead edge. We sampled on the small fracture in the foreground, the larger lead in the background is also covered in frost flowers.

I should know by now that nothing stays the same at the lead edge over a period of even a few hours.  When we returned to the edge around 9pm we found that the wind had shifted, “rafting” the young sea ice that we had previously sampled and covering any open water.  With the sun low on the horizon it was a beautiful site, but bad for forming new frost flowers and for whaling.  We stayed at the lead edge for a few hours, taking pictures and sampling some of the remaining frost flowers.

Know your subject. Getting up close and personal with some frost flowers.

The lead edge after the wind shifted. Plenty of frost flowers, but now they’re high and dry on top of rafted ice floes.

Today I’m in the lab, prepping yesterday’s samples and getting ready to head back out tonight (after a heavy dose of ibuprofen).  Conditions don’t look good.  The wind hasn’t changed direction and, even worse, a light snow is falling.  We will head out anyway and see what we find.  You never can tell!