Canada Glacier at night

I got out to our field camp at Lake Hoare for a couple of days. The best time of "day" at Lake Hoare is in the middle of the night when the sun is low in the sky at the west end of the valley. It is very bright at Lake Hoare all day now except for a couple of hours in the late afternoon when the sun dips behind the mountains in the Asgard Range on the north side of the Taylor Valley.

This night was calm and the sky was bright blue. The glacier face gleamed with the sun shining on it. I could hear water dripping from the face of the glacier, but there was no sign that Andersen Creek was starting to flow yet.

Early in the morning a section of the glacier peeled away and came crashing down onto the lake. This is a fairly regular occurrence and it provides a convenient source of ice berries that we collect to melt for our camp water.

Here is a picture looking to the west of our camp at Lake Hoare in the evening light.

Another trip south

I'm back in McMurdo for my 17th field season with the McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER project. I've been in Antarctica for a few weeks already. I'm posting a few pictures from my trip south. We travel to Antarctica from Christchurch NZ, which is a beautiful city with many parks and gardens. Every year on the way to McMurdo I spend some time soaking up the greenery at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens.

My favorite spots are the water garden and the NZ garden which are both tucked away in a far corner of the garden away from the main entrance. The NZ garden features many native plants, in particular many varieties of ferns. I love this sculpture that marks the entrance.

The ferns in NZ can grow as big as trees. It's nice to walk under a canopy of ferns.

I baby duck came up to meet me while I was on the path near the water garden.