Day 24: Speed and Melt of Glacier

Last night I was a little paranoid that I might snore especially as I was in the non-snoring room! Apparently though I didn't which is a relief. However, I was in one of the top bunks which unknown to me were the ones with a thick plastic base, so apparently I crinkled all night!! Also one other point that won't come over in the TV programmes is that although the sleeping bags were very good mine smelt of feet (not mine) terribly!

In the morning we ventured out into the cold to see the view. It was a slightly overcast morning which was a little disappointing but it was still invigorating. Mike's water had frozen into lenses but they had cracked quite a lot. Kathy's water-filled balloons had not even frozen - just shows you how good air is as an insulator!!

We had time to spare before the helicopter took us back to the equipment for the second day of measurements. So we had a bit of fun filming a spoof about the hut. Kathy introduced the ‘Hut' to the camera, took it on a guided tour. Meanwhile I was in bed reading a book and when she came over I read a passage out which was very appropriate! Then she went out to see Mike L who was in the dunny! … Now the mountain hut had its own loo away from the Hut. It must be a loo with one of the best views in the world. As Kathy opened the door there was Mike L reading the newspaper!!

We took the helicopters back to luncheon rock and to the equipment. Found that the protective plastic sheets for the equipment were missing and I thought at first that it was due to the wind from the helicopters. After finding the bags I noticed that they were all pecked to bits. In fact it wasn't the wind that had removed the covers, it was a little bird! They are called cheeky Keas in the area and they are famous/infamous for pecking, stealing and generally causing havoc on the west coast of New Zealand! All the protractors were misaligned and one even had its plastic mm gauge bitten off!

So we set up the protractors as best we could and then started to make the measurements on the new position of the glacier flag. This all worked out well for the right hand protractor B, but protractor A could have been way off. Kathy used the angle measurements to put into the maths (trig) and this overcomes any drawing errors that you might get sketching the scale drawing. Anyway it all worked out OK and we got an estimate of about a movement of about 1m for a day's glacier advance.

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