The melt is on……

Chris called from camp this morning and reports that the melt is on. Bizarrely, the surface around the camp seems to have gone up by about 5 cm, presumably because water flowing downslope overnight is freezing at the surface, but I am only guessing this. The team are collecting snowmelt from the bottom of the snowpack, and report that depressions in the ice are now filling up with cold water.

The team’s morale is very high. They are clearly enjoying the changing environment, despite the increasing wetness and the cold, and are working very hard to get as many snow and snowmelt samples as they can. They report signs of biological activity already. We’ll want to publish this in a high profile journal and so I can’t comment any further, other than to say that it’s great they are there to record the start of a new biological growing season.

Jim will be flying out of camp in the coming fortnight, and I hope that we will be able to post photos of the changing camp scenery shortly thereafter.