Off to the Columbia Icefield yesterday. This is a high area where the weather remains cold throughout the year and there's enough ice to feed eight major glaciers. The ice is replenished by snow throughout the year (including whilst we were there) and the eventual river water flows into three different continents.
The thickest part of the ice is around 350 metres and the area around the Athabasca glacier where I took the pictures is around 100 metres thick. Moving across the ice is slow and there's many crevices covered with snow but mightily deep. I don't think survival chances are very high if one were to fall in. The vehicle of choice for this section looks like something from Thunderbirds but seems to do the trick.
Naturally we were above the tree line, but approaching through the last trees, they have a 'half tree' shape, like a flag. That's because of the cold continuous convected wind (katabatic) which blows from the glacier and freezes the sap on the tree's glacier side.
I filled a water bottle with the glacier water. The formula is something like that it takes 150 years to turn from snow into ice and then back into water and if I did'nt catch the water it would take another 40 years to flow out to the Arctic Circle.
Only one bottle but I'm drinking it like a fine wine.
No comments:
Post a Comment