Columbia Glacier, Alaska, Kadin Camera
Columbia Glacier from Kadin
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June 2008
Adam LeWinter
Adam is Extreme Ice Survey field operations manager. While camped at Greenland’s Ilulissat Glacier in May 2008, Adam, along with EIS team member Jeff Orlowski, witnessed the largest calving event ever captured on film. Adam’s degree in engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder was put to good use during the design of the first EIS time-lapse camera systems.
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| In April 2008, I traveled via helicopter to check on how the cameras at Columbia Glacier held up during the winter. Columbia Glacier is an important site for EIS. When we reviewed our first set of images, the team noticed the whole glacier was bobbing up and down with the change of tide! Now buoyant and ungrounded, the glacier is much more likely to continue to lose mass.
We know snow burials of the cameras are a serious possibility in a place infamous for receiving dozens of feet of snow in a single winter. I arrived at the site of the Kadin camera on the west side of Columbia to find a perfect and uninterrupted mountain of snow—and no camera in sight.
Returning in June of 2008, Jim and I found the Kadin camera just peeking out of five feet of snow. The power of the snow was astounding; quarter-inch aluminum plates had been snapped in half, rock bolts were torn from the bedrock, and steel cables were hanging loose from the bent aluminum frame. Amazingly enough, the Nikon D200 camera functioned perfectly fine when powered, so we installed the system 20 feet up a vertical cliff, with a new aluminum mount, hoping it wouldn’t get buried again. We’ll see . . .
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