Iceland glacial feature fieldwork

by Will Wenban

In late 2022 I was approached by friend and fellow glaciology PhD student Remy Veness, proposing an expedition into the highlands of Iceland to carry out fieldwork on a poorly understood and rare glacial phenomenon.

The focus was drumlins - an elongated kind of hill composed of unconsolidated till that forms beneath large glaciers and ice sheets. No-one has worked out quite how or why they form. Drumlins are not overly rare, they occur across large swathes of North America and the UK, relics of the enormous ice sheets that covered our lands in the last ice age over 20,000 years ago. Fresh drumlins that aren't millennia old, though, are rare and one of the few places in the world where you can find them actively emerging from beneath the ice is at Iceland's central ice cap - Hofsjbkull.

Remy had found a site of emerging drumlins that had never been studied, just 8km away from Iceland's F26 dirt road - an isolated off­ roading route stretching North-South through the interior. The plan was to get dropped off, spend ten days camping by the ice cap and survey the area using ground penetrating radar (GPR) to scan through the ice and find the drumlins on the bed below. Essentially, we wanted to compare the orientation of the subglacial drumlins with those which had already emerged in front of the glacier (proglacial). This would help unravel some of the great mysteries surrounding how/why they form. The one catch with this fieldwork is that GPR doesn't work well when there is a lot of meltwater, as this disrupts the signals. Consequently, GPR work for glaciers is nearly always carried out in winter and camping out in the isolated interior of Iceland in winter was going to be quite an undertaking.

DRUMICE is formed

As the months passed, plans solidified and we formed our team. Alongside myself and Remy would be Pete Tuckett (fellow Sheffield PhD student), Dr Emma Smith (Uni of Leeds post­ doc researcher) and Dr Rebecca Schlegel (Swansea Uni post-doc researcher). Emma and Rebecca both have extensive geophysics experience working with the British Antarctic Survey, so we were thrilled to have them on board. We also managed to secure funding from the British Society for Geomorphology, Mount Everest Foundation and, of course, the AAC(UK) expedition fund. Perhaps unimaginatively we called the expedition DRUMICE.

Come March we landed on a beautiful sunny Icelandic winter day. The temperature in Reykjavik was a crisp -6°C and we had just one day to make final preparations and secure any last-minute items (food, gas etc.). Friendly locals quizzed us about what we were doing, and upon telling them our plans to camp out in the highlands, over 100km away from civilisation, they all had the same reaction: "Are you crazy?!" If the hardy Icelandic folk thought we were nuts then we truly must be in for a wild time!

We had a scenic ride through the Icelandic countryside and then into the frozen wilderness in two enormous 'super-jeeps'. The plan had been to ski tour from the F26 track to the fieldsite, but upon accumulating all the gear we quickly realised this would be a mammoth task and thankfully our drivers said it wouldn't be a problem to drive us all the way to the site. Despite a nerve-wracking moment slowly crossing a large frozen river with the sounds of cracking ice all around us, we made it to the fieldsite in one piece and began to set up camp as the super-jeeps drove off into the sunset, leaving us in a desolate icy landscape.

We were fortunate to experience lots of beautiful blue-sky weather, allowing us to start surveying straight away. Despite bringing snowshoes and touring skis, the ground was nicely frozen and wind-scoured, allowing us to walk quite freely in snowboots. Unfortunately, our primary GPR stopped working after the first day, a not unusual occurrence in remote and extreme fieldwork, but thankfully we had brought two other systems we could continue to work with, albeit with slightly altered objectives.

After a couple of days of brilliant weather, the wind suddenly switched into a very strong and steady barrage of about 70km/h, which drove us to build snow walls around the tents. By sunset it also started to snow and it was very frigid, around -20°C. Camping in such conditions is an interesting experience and you certainly learn quickly not to leave anything important outside of your sleeping bag unless you're OK with it freezing solid!

The next couple of days continued withsome lovely sunny weather, but the wind persisted and made our work in the field quite exciting. Gradually our defensive walls grew in size and large snow drifts formed in the gaps inside them. Each morning we would spend a couple of hours digging out bits of the camp which had been buried in over a metre of drift. But spirits remained high as we continued to work and live in a really stunning and unique environment. Each hour the wind, sunlight and snow would coalesce in a new way to form a truly magical scene.

Checking the forecast, we saw a large storm system was on its way for the following night, bringing with it lO0km/h winds for the rest of the week. We felt that the tents might not survive this coming storm and that we risked quite a dangerous situation. Sadly, we made the decision to call for an early pick-up about half-way through our planned time in the field. Ironically, the final day of work before pick-up was the best day of weather with a clear, still sky - the calm before the storm? It was sad to be leaving early but we had already accomplished most of our objectives, having surveyed over 30km of radar lines. It would have been pointless and reckless to stay. Rather fittingly I had just been reading a book by explorer Erling Kagge in which he wrote: "Courage doesn't mean carrying on regardless of the consequences, because to be reckless is not to be brave. It's no shame to turn back, that's rule number eight of the Norwegian Mountain Code''. Indeed, even our Icelandic drivers told us we had made the right call.

Ultimately, we've come away with some amazing data to work on and some even more amazing memories. It was truly special to spend time in such a beautiful and isolated environment and I can't wait to return one day.

A short video of the expedition is on YouTube at: https://t.ly /W2K8A .

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