the glacier geek and his vaimo: What is productivity?

This past field season was a struggle and so it was quite a humbling experience. Last year everything went really well, so I kind of expected more of the same... The instruments that we left running over winter failed, and nearly every instrument that we brought with didn’t work as it was supposed to — at least not at first. This included a wind gauge, a precipitation gauge, a marine radar (for tracking iceberg motion), an automatic theodolite (for optical surveying), several GPS, and an ablation meter (measures ice melt rates). On top of that we had some pretty bad luck with weather during the first two weeks at our camp. The first night that we were there we had 60+ knot winds. Martin lost his tent in the wind and broke his glasses when they were blown off his face. All of the tents suffered some damage. A week later we got hit by another storm. You could hardly stand up outside, let alone try to do something productive. This was also probably the first time that I’ve ever slept with ear plugs. It was really something. I’m sure I’ll remember it fondly some day. Check out this poor tent:

In the end we managed to accomplish most of what we had set out to do. At any rate, it gave me a new perspective on how difficult field work can actually be. I was certainly feeling pessimistic about our work for a couple of weeks.

During the last two weeks — we were out for a month — the weather cleared up. Actually, it was amazingly beautiful weather. It was actually hot, and there was very little wind. That’s quite unusual, because large glaciers often have strong winds blowing down-glacier. We had a lot of time to relax during those two weeks. I passed my time by reading Finnish children’s stories and cleaning up all the dirt. Its really a dirty place.