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July 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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We left the car before sunrise, slowly climbing up out of the valley, above tree line, into the heart of Glacier National Park. Together with a crew from the U.S. Geological Survey, we were making the first revisit to the EIS cameras at Grinnell Glacier. Because the area is known for winds equivalent to Class 4 hurricanes (140 mph or more), heavy snowfall, and loose rock, we were anxious to see how the cameras fared over one year.
Grinnell feeds a glacial lake that began to form in the 1930s as the glacier receded. Since 1910, it has lost approximately 90% of its mass, while the lake has grown to be 190 feet deep.
Eight miles into the hike, my heart sank. We found the Grinnell camera hanging from the power cable, the tripod head support broken in half by a fallen rock. We had gotten only one month of shooting before the camera failed—a severe disappointment.
After a few moments of hanging our heads, it was time to bring the Grinnell camera back to life. I replaced all the electronics, including battery, timer, and the solar panel charge controller. I removed the broken tripod head, and cannibalized my tripod to make a replacement. Once the camera had been returned to working order, we began the long walk down, reaching the car well after dark.
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