Sept. 9 – After three days in Beijing, we flew out to Lanzhou ... Shichang has mounted six expeditions to core the glaciers of the Himaliyas, so he really is an  expert…When we have our team together and our equipment packed in the trucks, we will leave for the long drive through the mountains… Had a really great day today. A woman I met at the guesthouse practiced her English with me, and when I said I was trying to learn Chinese, she ended up taking me all over the city…
Sept. 14 – It will take a few days to arrive; there are no super-highways here. All the team members will be watching out for each other; the high mountains are no place to take chances…
Sept 18 – We have been trying to drive to base camp, but it's just too muddy… We will go to the other side of the mountain to an area we were planning to core next spring and hope we have better luck …
Sept 22 – We discovered we didn't have an interpreter who could speak to the people on this side of the mountain…
Oct 1 – It's a four-hour drive on a rough dirt road to our camp by Lake Nam-tso . Nam-tso is an absolutely spectacular salt lake, and is a deep blue-turquoise. The lake is sacred to Tibetans, and families travel around it on pilgrimages. The area is arid and mountainous, inhabited by nomads who live in small family groups and move often with their yaks. Their livelihood largely depends on the yaks… We used 15 yaks and 5 horses, though the last few kilometers  we had to move the gear by ourselves. Some of the equipment used to drill the ice cores is very heavy... From our advanced camp it is a couple hours' steep walk up the glacier to the drill site. We will be drilling at night because the sun is extremely strong, and we can't risk the ice melting…
Oct 7 – We finished drilling the first core. Things have gone really well…we are able to discern annual dust layers for most of the core length. These layers help us date the core, as you would date a tree by counting the rings… we are all well, and the weather has been good…
Oct 18 – The moon was full while drilling the second core so the  views of the surrounding mountains were beautiful! …The automatic weather station is up and running, collecting temperature, wind speed and direction and relative humidity hourly over the next year…. when Shichang returns to the US later this fall he will bring the ice cores with him for chemical analysis… It's been a successful and exciting season and we can't wait to go back to the Plateau… |
