Overnight Camping at Lake Hoare

On Monday afternoon, Byron, Zach, and I flew out to Lake Hoare field camp to spend the night there. We didn't really need to spend the night in the field but we wanted to have some fun by going on a hike and eating a good meal in a change of scenery from McMurdo. Lake Hoare camp is the home base for the Dry Valleys scientists because it is a central location and there is a camp manager who stays there all summer. The other camps are more "fend-for-yourself" using the available facilities than Lake Hoare.

Camping at Lake Hoare is pretty nice. In fact, I don't know if it's really accurate to call it camping! There's power, wireless internet, a phone, hot meals cooked by the camp staff (there were 2 staff at the camp when I visited), and the tents are already set up. We had some really good steak, homemade bread, baked vegetables, and a salad for dinner, with some chocolate macadamia nut cookies for dessert. It was better than the cafeteria food! The field camp has a main building, 3 labs, bathrooms (well, outhouses), a helipad, and a few other buildings. The camp is on the north side of Lake Hoare right next to the Canada Glacier.

Three lab buildings, DLH pond, two of many tents around camp (mine is the one on the right) and Canada Glacier in the background

The buildings (from left to right): 3 labs, the main field camp, and a cluster of bathrooms, generator, and fuel cache. You can also see a mountain tent and a Scott tent, part of Lake Hoare, the Kukri Hills on the left, and the Matterhorn on the right

Main field camp building

One of the jokes is that I am supposed to pronounce the name of the lake as "Lake Hoe-are-eh" when I tell my mother about it. (For those of you who aren't my mother: It's pronounced just like the word "whore." The little pond in the middle of camp is called DLH aka Dirty Little Hoare!)

So we got there at about 4 PM then helped move some heavy stuff around. We had dinner then after cleaning up the dishes, we went on a hike up to the top of Canada Glacier. To get there, we walked south along the edge of the glacier. There is a little stream with melted glacier water running along the moraine and glacier edge. There are frequent little waterfalls coming off the glacier as well.  We passed by another seal carcass too. To get onto the glacier, we needed to walk along the edge of the glacier until we reached the marked path free from crevasses. It was actually quite easy to walk onto the glacier. It was just like climbing a small hill except we were wearing ice traction devices on the bottom of our boots called STABILicers. We took some pictures on top then headed back to go to sleep.

One of the little waterfalls coming off the glacier

Byron and I on top of Canada Glacier with the ice falls in the background

Taking a drink from fresh glacier water. It was cold but tasted great!

The next morning, we left to walk across Lake Hoare on the ice to the south side of the lake. The ice was really solid except for the moat around the edges. We were lucky to find a solid spot to walk onto the shore on the south end.

There were two experiments we were supposed to sample. The first one is just a series of 9 Bundt pans going up the mountainside. The pans are supposed to collect wind-borne sediments but they don't collect very much at all. One of the theories is that wind can disperse nematodes, tardigrades, and rotifers, but so far they have only found microbes in the sediment traps. The second experiment, called the Elevational Transect, was much more tedious to sample. There are 3 different locations with 17 different samples collected at each. The experiment is designed to monitor the effect of elevation on the soil ecosystem. It is one of the longest-lasting soil experiments in Taylor Valley, being established back in the 1993-1994 field season. The highest sampling location was quite high up the side of the valley located on a relatively flat bench. We carried those soil samples down in our backpacks then added more soil at the other 2 locations. By the end of the day, all of our gear plus soil samples easily made each of our packs 65 pounds or more. We finished about 1 1/2 hours before our scheduled helo pickup time and then they got a little behind schedule so we sat around freezing for a couple of hours.

Byron (L) and I (R) sampling the lowest of the Elevational Transect locations

One of the Bundt pans. It is designed to catch sediment in the bottom of the pan. The marbles supposedly help trap the sediment. There are much better designs on the market but this is what we have to work with...

Byron and I freezing while waiting for the helo. Matterhorn is obscured by clouds as a storm rolls down Taylor Valley

When we got back to Mactown, the communications link between McMurdo and the U.S. was down so we had no internet or phone access to the States (There are backups like true satellite phones in case of an emergency). Kristen was starting to get a little worried by the time it started working again!