Saturday

Days Three & Four - Surveying

27 July 1985
News overnight: glaciologists were stranded unfit for their arduous journey up the medial moraine, and the weather was wet.

Breakfast was later than usual due to meteorological conditions and their effect on the cold, wet, tired constitution, but at least by 11 (!) surveyors were surveying and levelling and as for the others......

What is cold, wet, boring , miserable and a jolly silly thing to do in the rain? Maybe wandering around in braided channels, sticking pegs into arbitrary positions and looking at them through thin slits and drawing wet lines on plastic paper might hint at the answer.

Plane table surveying!


You do the above about 10 times between each 2 control points (if you have enough flags!) until you have just about enough dots to join up constructing an approximate sketch (if it’s cold, wet, raining ......) and accurate diagram if you have the time, patience, weather and inclination (see map of India).










Indian clinometer (used to find points) actually called an alidade.
You bung it on a calibrated sheet with
(i) Base line
(ii) Control points
(iii) Lots of pegs

Tomorrow we should finish off (if we haven’t been sent up the glacier!) and all for the sake of an ‘A’ level geography project; yet no doubt, and ‘A’ level geography project par excellence!

And Bob’s your uncle?

Corned beef hash (i.e. corned beef and baked beans) for dinner. Yum! Then a ‘pat’ of semolina and a ‘cup’ of chocolate custard. Even yummier!

The gamblers (John, Liz and myself) were out after dinner, getting down to a raucous game of pontoon (the others, not leaders, were TRYING to sleep) which really separated the men from the boys. John and Liz were swept right off the table with a confident clean sweep.


28 July 1985

10:00am
Liz, John and myself were off to the river to go surveying with alidade (home-made cos surveyors had run off with the other ones) and Abney Levels. Woody was up on the ice, though only by a near miss was he not surveying! The others are on the terraces. It is not YET raining.

4:30pm
It is still not raining.

Having completed the empirical content of the surveying i.e. plotting the plan, John has gone to complete the sketching whilst Liz and I take welcome relief behind the basalt columns.

The day has been yet uneventful (although a VW combi full of reindeer shooting Icelanders has just driven across our horizon). 3:30pm heralded the arrival of Ian Galbraith and Ray Ward – carefully un-timed to miss a drowning session by John and Liz of each other.

The water had fallen since yesterday and has subsequently risen, but since we forgot to record the previous level, today’s measurement will be a little superfluous (although an ‘estimate’ has been proposed). Not much good eh! Now time for Abney levelling. Fun God wot.

10:30pm
Andrew N has just discovered that his boots won’t fit crampons i.e. another member must go and relieve the starving meteorology and glaciologists by lugging huge amounts of food up the glacier.

After a lengthy conscience pricking session by Ian on the lack of sexual discrimination apparently present on the expedition Mairi and I dashed to base camp to fit our crampons, and finally made our way back home at 11:30pm, thoughts full of the day ahead.

Friday

Day Two - Proglacial Geomorphology (yeah!)

Once again to be greeted by brilliant sunshine, rising and shining was a slow process (Ian providing a welcome waking hot cuppa to early risers. And a singularly unwelcome cold one to late arrivals) but by lunch the terrace surveying and meltwater river recce had commenced.

Basalt columns - eat your heart out Devil's Causeway!
The area by the braided channel turned out to be a geomorphological paradise full of many exciting ‘physical features’.
More basalt columns - scale provided thanks to
A Nicholson, a size 9?

Glacier snout and pro-glacial stream and
even perhaps a small push moraine?
A masterpiece of a crag and tail
Scale provided by E Hunnable (far right)

Bedding planes, dykes, scree collection and
some terminal moraines
The loo fell on top of our resident Oxbridge graduate, Nobel prize winner and omniscient, omnipotent prize ass, catching him in the act! However we restored it to its former glory (though not for long!). A beautiful sunset heralded the approach of a low.



It came overnight, with wind, rain and loo destroying force! The end of our tropical heat-wave.

Wednesday

Day One - Getting to know our surroundings

Breakfast served at 08.30, a combination of burnt porridge and tea, appetising to the last! Having ‘faired le menage’ troops were assembled in preparation for the day’s hike, armed with, wait for it, Healthy Life biscuits, tuna chunks and a Mars bar, we set down to the arduous task of crossing the river, a roaring torrent of freezing water – in boots without socks, bare feet, a recommended method for fast freezing. However the weather was nonetheless very beautiful.

Then we began the ascent up scree slopes and rock gulleys, pausing to admire the striations.



..glacial terraces..



......the delta



(Below) glacial snout

As well as the occasional 'short break' (with a little nap to settle our lunch)
We walked..... and we walked..... and we navigated ridges .... and fell down.... screes
And about 5 hours later..... our first real view of the ice cap


The snow cap, ice fall, medial moraines and Snofjell the nunatak where met and glaciology were camped under...
... and all around the cloud was coming down (up through the valley)

And soon we were closed in...
Finally we reached our destination, the Glacier Dammed lake
- which was supposed to be near full, at which stage it would force the glacier up and flow down under it to flood our own pro-glacial lake in what is known as a Jokullalp. See diagram below.
Gedit?

Anyway, it wasn’t full and just about to overflow to the disappointment of most people.

The two most hearty souls strode ahead (whilst having lost the rest whilst they were on a short one hour break!) reindeer spotting and in a hurry to reach the facilities offered in camp, even to the extent of refusing a warm cuppa from the Life Scientists further down the valley.

Having missed the ‘dry’ river crossing due to navigational error, we un-socked and waded across the now even colder, more torrential river and staggered back to camp.
The sun now being far over the yard-arm, the metre arm and the horizon, dinner was collected and water boiled for a brew to welcome the others.

Curry, rice and beans filled the ever increasing intestinal gap to a fairly satisfactory degree helped by Cuppa Soup and instant hot chocolate before we dragged our weary bodies onto the welcoming sleeping bags.

Tuesday

Day Zero (23 July 1985) - Departure & Arrival

6.45 pm
Heathrow airport – assemble the troops, farewell loved ones, and finally discover just how much your rucksack weighs!

11.00pm
Board F155 to Keflavik, dinner of cold Haddock in white sauce with garnishes. Annoy hostesses for coke/orange juice.

11.55pm (local time)
Arrive Keflavik. Greeted by an immense USAF base, not another commercial plane to be seen.

Queue for immigration (through the Duty Free), unfortunately no room for the statutory allowance of 12 bottles of alcoholic beer though Toblerone/Cognac among others.

Queuing aided by sudden discovery that boarding pass was not in fact JUST boarding pass but also the ticket → trek back a few sorrowful souls to reclaim those vital documents (imagine being stranded here forever!!). Some even left passports too.

24 July 1985
A few hours later.

The coaches are located, trailers found and loaded and expeditionaries packed in. A short detour to pick up X-country skis and we’re on our way!

At various intervals during the journey (i.e. every petrol station) – a short break to refresh the drivers, find out there isn’t a loo and buy premature stacks of stamps and postcards.

10.30am A short stop to see the icebergs scattered on the pro-glacial lake of Europe’s biggest glacier – and a taste of civilisation in the other hordes gathering around.








A quick word with the drivers by our venerable leader and we’re on our way. Right up to Base Camp.

11.45am
Arrive at base camp, unpack the buses and pile the luggage. The first light drizzle since our arrival.













Pot noodles, and cups of tea along with the first ‘welcome’ (?) delivery of Healthy Life Biscuits, John West pate and our daily Mars Bar to tide us over until dinner.








The each group depart to set up camp. Us geomorphs – to recce a suitable site for immediate permanent camp (2 weeks) as a base for our exploits.

A river terrace a little way upstream from base camp, partially sheltered, flat and slightly less rocky than base camp was reported a suitable and, after a quick general briefing, the geomorphs, led by out indomitable leader Ian Galbraith, accompanied by aide-de-camp Greg Englefield trudged down and along till we reached the site.












General stores were collected from Base camp and ‘dinner’ (dehydrated beef and onion stew, baked beans and Smash followed by a ‘spoonful’ of tinned fruit cocktail) beautifully executed on 2.5 temperamental Primus stoves by Liz.

Then ‘orienteering’ for all, the speed of which was more determined by good eyesight and tailing skills around a twelve marker course in order to determine that ‘RAY WARD IS FAB’ wasn’t quite right.

Having returned to camp, weary and eye-sore, we discovered that Ian had dug our trench and we set about pitching our tarpaulin to complete our ‘piĆ©ce de resistance’ loo with a view – which became increasingly difficult to use as various members fell down the sides. However topped with a survey flag and supplied with ‘Bless You’ Jey cloths it was comfortable and nonetheless very beautiful.
FINALLY BED