Glacier Day

[Written by Elizabeth Leonardis for our old blog, So Civilized]

Alex practicing his self-arrest technique

Alex & I both think it is very cool that we have a glacier in our new backyard. A short 25 minutes out the backdoor, finds you at the top of the glacier. Sunday was a gorgeous, sunny day and is also the only day off for everyone that works here. That means absolutely everyone on station was outside hiking, skiing, boating, etc, including Alex & me. We spent the first half of the day on the glacier exploring and mapping out a route for Alex’s ultramarathon that he plans to run here. He is going to limit it to a mere 50K. There are flags that limit where you can walk on the glacier based on where there are known crevases. We then slipped on our rain overalls and proceeded to slide down the glacier and practice our self-arrest technique.

Mountain pose with binoculars

Mount William 1600m, view from the top of the glacier

Later that day, we jumped on a zodiac with some other people on station, and took a tour around the islands. There is a 3 mile boating limit that we have to stay within, you can see a boating map here. Lucky for us one of the closest islands to us is Torgersen Island, where there is a breeding Adelie pengin colony that just arrived a few weeks ago. We will be able to stop over periodically and check in on their egg laying (should occur in the next few weeks), and then when their chicks hatch (probably early December).

Adelie penguin and me

Alex with adelie penguins, Mt William, and Palmer Station in the background.

Alex on the zodiac with Mt William in the background

It was reiterated to us multiple times that this is NOT a normal day. The clarity was unbelievable and you could see for miles. We are hoping that every week we get a sunny Sunday. Fingers crossed.