Can an ice climber help a glaciologist do better research? The answer is yes. Dig into Beneath the Ice below.
Professor Gulley gave me a belay so I could climb out rather than climb the ropes. The climbing inside the moulin was legitimately wild and difficult, and more so because of our location. There is no possibility of rescue, so you have to rely on your own skills and knowledge always. The ice was worse in October than it had been in August, so the pitch I climbed was overhanging radically in order to keep ice from hitting Professor Gulley. To his credit, he was up for it. We often worked together as partners throughout this project, him teaching me about glaciers, and me rigging for him and helping him explore the moulin’s system. He relied on me, and here I’m relying on him to catch me if I fall. That’s teamwork.
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The late high-wire artist Wallenda said, “Walking the wire is living. The rest is waiting.†I celebrate every moment I get to live fully. Hanging one-handed above a maelstrom on the Greenland ice cap is living.
Moulin definition: A moulin is a shaft within a glacier that carries meltwater from the surface of the glacier to the bedrock where it acts as a lubricant, playing a role in how fast the glacier flows.
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A story of curiosity, exploration and climate research inside the Greenland ice cap
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The Scout
Most of the water from the surface rivers eventually funnel into the ice sheet. What happens to the water after it goes under the ice’s surface is mostly unknown, but how that water moves through the glacial drainage system has a huge impact on how quickly the ice moves and melts, and ultimately, how quickly sea level will rise. The only way to really understand the ice cap is to explore the caves the rivers carve inside of it.
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Will Gadd
Watch Beneath the Ice
Professor Jason Gulley has made a career researching how glacial melt moves through glaciers, from Nepal to Norway. His love of science is as strong as his love for exploration and adventure. He’s a cutting-edge cave diver and teaches both geology and scientific diving. His research projects are redefining how the world looks at glaciers.
There are moments in life where you know you couldn’t possibly be living any more than you are in that moment. This is one of them for me. How did this arch form? How long will it stay? Nobody knows, but it’s a moment of wild freedom and wonder of our planet that I love. That this exists is just awesome to me, even as I recognize that the icebergs are a symptom of melting and accelerating decline of the Greenland ice cap.
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I researched what was known about glacial caves, and that took me to Professor Martin Sharp at the University of Alberta. Together we worked under the Athabasca Glacier, and found new life forms growing inside the glacier. I kept digging on the research front and wound up in contact with Professor Jason Gulley, one of the top experts on glacial caves in the world. Together, we hatched a plan for what would become Beneath the Ice, a project that pushed me farther than any other project I’ve ever done. Come the summer of 2018, I was learning how to cave dive in Florida with Gulley. Why? Because our plan involved going deeper into the Greenland ice cap than anyone had ever gone before, and do that, we were planning to dive once we hit the water table inside the glacier. When we emerged from the depth of the ice sheet, we hoped to have a better understanding of how the ice cap ultimately moves and melts. Below you’ll find a series of photos that tell the story of the two trips to Greenland that made up the Beneath the Ice project: the first took place in August, where we identified the moulin we hoped to explore further; the second took place in October, where we hoped to put our full scope of ambitious exploration into action. Though our plans to dive didn’t work out, we learned a lot about the Greenland ice sheet and I’m more curious than ever. We’ll be back. Stay curious! - Will Gadd -
Will Gadd is a professional ice climber, the 2015 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year and a UN Environment Mountain Hero.
The Mission
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OCTOBER 11, 2018
The models said we’d hit the water table at around 200m, but we found the summer’s frozen water at only about 80m. The ice on top of it was destroyed from many blocks of ice that had fallen off the walls above us. All it would have taken was one small block to smash us like bugs, so we decided to leave before we became the wrong kind of statistic. It’s never easy to make a decision to run away, but here it was clear we were going to die if we lingered in this zone, rendering our hopes to dive fruitless. Fortunately, we still came back with knowledge that could fundamentally change the understanding of how moulins work in Greenland. To help advance research is a very cool thing as an athlete, but to make such a clear contribution was one of the best moments of my career.
This is a look up at the 70m route we descended straight down into the moulin. I always felt like this world was sacred, a cathedral of ice where we wanted to keep our voices down and not swear out of respect for the place. At the same time, it felt alien. There’s nothing human here, just ancient ice and the sounds of the ice cap creaking and heaving with deep booms. Nobody had ever been here before, so it was true exploration. We had no idea what was down the hole. The models predicted a straight drop, but when we got to the bottom of this one we realized it went horizontal and opened up into a huge room.
AUGUST 24, 2018
AUGUST 27, 2018
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I would squeeze into places no human had ever been all because it was wildly interesting and scratched the raw itch of curiosity.
Roughly 70 per cent of the Earth’s fresh water is locked up in ice, and the Greenland ice cap holds about 10 per cent of the world’s fresh water.
OCTOBER 13, 2018
You could say this is another moment where life couldn’t get any better.
There are moments in life where you know you couldn’t possibly be living any more than you are in that moment. This is one of them for me.
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While scouting a moulin to come back to in October was a huge part of our trip in August, getting accustomed to diving in frigid water was also on the list. Diving in a drysuit is complicated because you have to manage the air in the suit: if you don’t bleed that air off as you ascend you’ll pop up to the surface like a beach ball, which could be fatal. It’s just one more piece of gear to manage while diving and is necessary for the really cold water. On this day the water was only about 1C, which numbed our heads and minds rapidly, but seeing the icebergs underwater was incredible.
AUGUST 25, 2018
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During our trip to the ice cap in October, temperatures plunged down to -30C with really strong winds. Trying to rig up climbing gear in these temperatures and winds was really difficult. Basic tasks such as going to the bathroom could result in flash frostbite.
OCTOBER 14, 2018
We decided to leave before we were the wrong kind of statistic, but we came back with knowledge that could fundamentally change the understanding of how moulins work in Greenland.
The same icecap that Professor Gulley and I were working on supplies the icebergs in Disko Bay, which is one of the most active iceberg areas in the world. These massive bergs break off the icecap, float down the fjord, and then mill around in the bay for days. They always flip over as they melt, often with disastrous results for anyone too close to them. I chose my ‘bergs carefully for stability, but honestly every time I climb one of these, I get on and off as fast as possible. It’s never really “safe,†but they are incredibly beautiful and climbing them is an incredible feeling. As an ice climber I know ice, but this is different…
Greenland is melting, literally. Roughly 70 per cent of the Earth’s fresh water is locked up in ice, and the Greenland ice cap holds about 10 per cent of the world’s fresh water. As fresh water reserves melt, sea level will rise by many meters. The glacial rivers Professor Jason Gulley and I walked beside during our first expedition to Greenland are only one symptom of how quickly glaciers are melting globally.
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Get to know Christian Pondella
Christian Pondella
Walking the wire is living. The rest is waiting.
What goes down must come up, or something like that. The ice here is ancient — think tens of thousands of years old — with huge crystals that make it really, really hard to swing a tool into. Often the ice is under massive stress from the temperature gradient so it will literally explode at times, which is exciting when you’re hanging on it! As we climbed out of this moulin in the Paakitsoq region of the Greenland ice sheet, Professor Gulley and I knew we had a good site to come back to when the water froze up in October.
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Curiosity, more than any other emotion or motivation, has always pushed me forward. It has taken me to the edge of human understanding and ability, a place that gets me up in the morning. The excitement of answering “What would happen if we…†first drove me to explore caves in my teens around the same time that curiosity introduced me to ice climbing. I hooked up with an older crew of cavers who brought me along primarily because I could squeeze my skinny frame through holes they couldn’t. We’d move through the rock thousands of feet below the mountains, and then they’d send in “the probe.†I’d squeeze into places no human had ever been all because it was wildly interesting and scratched the raw itch of curiosity. Lately, more than three decades after my first caving experiences, my worlds of ice climbing and caving have collided. Yet again, it was curiosity: what is down those moulins, those big holes in the glacier? Maybe it was time to send in “the probe†once again.
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AUGUST 26, 2018