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The Planetary Society Weblog

By Emily Lakdawalla

Borup Fiord Pass Field Report: Fieldwork is almost done

Weblog Archive

I just got another phone call from Stephen Grasby at Borup Fiord Pass on Ellesmere Island, updating me on the status of their fieldwork, and it sounds like it's been a productive trip.

"We've been having continued nice weather. We've had some longer days hiking up the mountains to look at the local geology, so we're getting a much better understanding of the regional geology. Damhnait has finished all her spectral work. She was waiting for a sunny day to do her grid work -- she's walked out a large grid area to compare to the satellite images. As far as she's concerned she's accomplished everything she needed to get done on this trip. We'll spend the last few days on the geology, and get a few more water samples. If the weather holds out it should be a complete success for everybody here.

"The spring is still flowing at the same rate, it seems to be pretty much constant so far. We plan to go there tomorrow to see if there's a change in the water chemistry. Things are really starting to melt now; once the glacier melts at the bottom, it may shut down the spring.

"Yesterday about five musk-ox came through the camp, so we've seen some wildlife. There's a hint of a front coming through, some high cirrus clouds, but it's shorts weather today -- we were out in shorts and T-shirts much of the day, it's quite warm, about 10 degrees Celsius [50 Fahrenheit]. The wind was calm and it was very sunny on the rocks, and we were hiking up the mountains so that warmed us up; but as soon as you get in the shade it gets quite cool.

"We've looked all around, and there's no sign of any other active spring sites for this year. We're also getting a much better understanding of what the geology is. We no longer think there was a big anticline running through the valley, so we're just reinterpreting what we're seeing. It's still not obvious why there's such a low valley here; there's nothing here that would give any reason for it. The regional geology is proving to be much more like we're in a mountain belt like the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, a fold-and-thrust belt pushing the rocks from north to south."

Steve has only one worry about the trip, and that's the status of the satellite imaging that they were hoping to acquire simultaneously with all of Damhnait's ground-truth readings. "The two days it was scheduled for satellite images, it was cloudy here; and since everything is melting so fast it's running off the outwash, about 20% of the sulfur is gone already." He said that the second day of satellite imaging had been planned for July 1, and if it happened in the morning they were out of luck; but that things had started clearing in the afternoon. I looked up the info and found that it had been scheduled for 19:38 GMT -- he said maybe that might have been a good time. I'll be looking forward to an email from Bob Pappalardo with the thumbnail from that pass.