Dalton Corner, Thursday, 10th January 2002
The weather was again a spanker today, and not much wind ! We got the thumbs up to do the Dalton run, and we quickly organised our stuff while the choppers refuelled to the max. We left in tandem and were off, flying over Flagstone Bench onto the vast expanse of the lower Lambert Glacier. There was some threatening stratocumulus around especially to the west, but Leigh said we give it a stab anyway. The overwhelming immensity of this glacier is hard to take in. To the south, the Cumpston Massif near the head of the Lambert could be made out some 260 km away. The wind was very gentle from the NW as we passed the various massifs constricting the flow of the world's largest glacier, which drains about 10% of the Antarctic ice sheet into the Southern Ocean at a staggering flow velocity of 700 metres a year. The glacier is 40km wide at its narrowest point and 400km long. Even 400km in from the edge of the Amery Ice shelf there is sea-water underneath it, with measurable tides on the surface. Really the Lambert glacier sits on top of the world's mightiest fjord. To our right passed the imposing Fisher Massif still covered on snow and Blustery Cliffs, a famous trig point esatblished by earlier surveyors. What a spectacular job that must have been ? To the left was Clemence Massif before we sidled along the Mawson Escarpment. At this point, Dave and Tom in the Squirrel veered off to the right to pick up TS5 and TS6 while Leigh, Anya and I continued on as the escarpment grew more spectacular further south. Beneath us, enormous blue rivers of surface melt winded between crevasses as striated ice, a very bizarre sight. This had to be one of the spectacular locations in the world. A km to our left the crest of the escarpment was still above us, suggesting a consistent elevation of 1000m above the glacier. An almost continuous barren cliff bare of any snow, ice or vegetation. Darker intrusions striking across its face in chaotic fashion were quite remarkable, like broad brushes of ink across an enormous brown canvas. The cliff line was broken by several smaller tributary glaciers, some of which were still large by world standards being a few km wide. At the foot of the escarpment lay large lateral moraines, from the Lambert, augmented by rock falls and landslips off the escarpment. In the distance just before Dalton Corner was the highest and most vertical bluff right at the end of the escarpment. South of here was the endless ice sheet. We landed next to the GPS site and Anya and I swung into quick action as the weather was looking quite threatening, with clouds to the west and east. While Anya was gathering cosmogenic samples, I downloaded the GPS receiver with its three weeks of data and cleared the memory. Unfortunately the DSCC was toast and could not be powered up to extend the data gathering capability of the site. I called up Paul on the satellite phone and we decided to leave the Z12 receiver as is gathering data for another year. We departed and headed out to the TS5 tidal site to RV with Tom and Dave, flying over the tormented and striated surface of the glacier near the Cumpston Massif. High ridges of ice had been undercut by the sun into large blue caverns and blue melt pools. Rivers of ice were everywhere. One wonders what it would be like to sail down these rivers for many kilometers. We met up with the others and loaded some stuff into the S76 before taking off on the return flight, following lines of crevasses all the way back. It was a terrific and exhiliarting experience and three rolls of film were conservatively burned off. Back at Beaver Lake it was a balmy 2 degrees with no wind at all. Most of the snow around the camp was disappearing very quickly. A decision was made that this was the moment to get back to Davis to make the return ship and we all hectically arranged our gear. Dave took me up to the GPS site to make a few last tries to get the system fully operational (instead of just getting three weeks data) and an hour later Leigh flew in to pick me up to head off. Just as we were about to take off Dave reported that the weather had clagged out over the Amery and had to return back. We would try again the next day, hopefully a ship or two would wait for us ! Apart from that setback we were still quite pleased to get the opportunity to get some more useful work done. After several weeks of relative inactivity, everything seemed now to be happening too fast. Our buoyant moods were fuelled by some lovely red wine cracked for the occasion and we enjoyed a great evening with the congenial company of all the others. It had been an excellent team effort by all.

Dalton Corner (DALT) Technical Inspection

Dalton Corner, Geodetic monitoring site S 73°40'40" E 68°30'20" Elevation 1126m

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