A New Mount Logan Ice Core
By Alison Criscitiello
In the spring of 2022, after four protracted years of planning, multiple head-spinning pandemic-induced delays, and a successful-but-hasty reconnaissance in 2021, we drilled and retrieved a 327-metre deep ice core from Mount Logan’s brutal summit plateau. The highs were high (a record-breaking high-altitude ice core offering tens of thousands of years’ worth of climate insights) and the lows were devastating (only half of our starting team made it to the end). It took eleven days of drilling at high-altitude, fourteen hours-a-day, with near-impossible logistics to accomplish our goal. But let’s start at the beginning.
The author on her way to Prospector’s Col from the team’s Camp 3 high on the King Trench Route. Photo: Rebecca Haspel
Drilling an ice core on Logan’s summit plateau required climbing the mountain first so the drilling team was safely acclimatized to live and work above 5,300 metres at high latitudes. We flew into base camp on May 2 and climbed the King Trench Route to access the summit plateau in ten days. Due to its high northern latitude, Logan’s altitude is heavily felt by the body. We double-carried our way up the mountain, climbing every section twice, and finding the same crux as we did the previous year – the King Col Icefall. The icefall, which has historically been a fairly straight-forward ski, has in recent years become an exposed and mobile maze of seracs.1 We carefully picked our way through it twice (once on our carry to Camp 3, and then on our move-up the following day), only to say good riddance weeks later on the final ski descent. On May 15, after a night of >80km/hr winds at our Camp 3 below Prospector’s Col, we skied up and over the high saddle to our summit plateau High Camp.
The author drilling with the Canadian Eclipse drill on Logan’s summit plateau. Photo: Rebecca Haspel
Climbing Logan is no small effort, but in this case arriving on the summit plateau was the true beginning. Though we had completed a radar survey the previous May on the plateau allowing us to locate the ideal drill site, we did a final radar survey on May 18 this year to narrow down on the final drilling location. The drill itself – a Canadian Eclipse drill – and all other ice coring equipment and supplies, was heli-slung up to the plateau in 300-pound loads by a pilot on oxygen. In one day, we had set up the drill and camp, and the race to the bottom was on. On Day 1, we drilled sixty metres of ice, but as work progressed, that daily rate would decrease due to the increased travel time of the drill – up and down – in the borehole. By Day 11, for instance, we only drilled twenty-three metres. While one team member had to descend during the climb up, two others had to descend while working up on the summit plateau – all related to the altitude’s toll on the body.
An “after” shot of the 2022 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Mount Logan Expedition members near Kluane Lake. Left to right: Dominic Winski, Etienne Gros, Steve Andrews (film crew), Rebecca Haspel, Alison Criscitiello, Greg Hill (film crew support), Bradley Markle, Leo Hoorn (film crew). Photo: Kristina Miller
Other than three distinct volcanic layers, the cores came up one after the other, day after day, ad nauseum. We settled on a shift schedule that allowed us to keep the drill running fourteen hours a day, while also allowing us all to get some rest during the day as we slowly deteriorated living and working that high. We drilled the core without drilling fluid (unusual for cores deeper than ~100 metres), and I feared that we might pay a cost in the core’s quality at depth. That fear surprisingly remained unfounded, as even the deepest ice when pulled up to the surface was not very fractured. On May 30, we drilled our last metre of core to 327 metres, and immediately started packing up the drill and drill camp. Now, the race was on to get down as quickly as possible, down to oxygen and warmth.
We had taken advantage of all good weather windows while up on the summit plateau, flying ice off at every occasion when several loads staged. As a result, the day after we drilled our final meter of ice core, we were able to fly the last of it off the plateau, and ski ourselves all the way to base camp – luckily flying out that very evening. The slow day-in day-out monotony had suddenly revved to a sprint.
Rebecca Haspel and Alison Criscitiello happy atop Prospector’s Col after replacing the wind sensor on North America’s highest weather station. Photo: Leo Hoorn
After being heli-slung off the plateau, the ice was flown directly to a freezer sea-can staged at Silver City, the landing strip in Kluane National Park and Reserve used for most flying into the St. Elias and the Icefield Ranges. The freezer unit sat there for the duration of our time on the plateau receiving ice loads, with spare parts to every component of the precious freezer and a technician on-site. When the last load reached the freezer sea-can, it was trucked south to the Canadian Ice Core Lab (CICL) in Edmonton, Alberta, nearly beating me back home. With the ice safely here at CICL, and a whole lot of processing and analyzing ahead, there are many more questions than answers for now about what discoveries are contained within the ice, and how long this record actually is.
There are non-scientific questions, too, that I’ve found myself pondering – questions that the ice, in an indirect way, has already answered. What keeps us going when our bodies want to stop suffering and get down low? When our team is reduced to half by the brutal reality of being too long too high? What keeps us working hard in thin air for a common cause that, over time, seems impossible? It’s the people we surround ourselves with, and a dream that’s bigger than all of us.
Alison Criscitiello is an ice core scientist and high-altitude mountaineer. She is Director of the Canadian Ice Core Lab (CICL) at the University of Alberta. The National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Mount Logan Expedition comprised of Alison Criscitiello, Rebecca Haspel, Etienne Gros, Dominic Winski, Bradley Markle, Seth Campbell, and Kirk Mauthner.
References
1. See Zac Robinson, “Last icy stand: Four researchers team up too ascend Mount Logan, measuring change and resilience on Canada’s highest peak,” Canadian Geographic (Mar/Apr 2022): 32-45. https://canadiangeographic.ca/articles/last-icy-stand-scaling-mount-logan/