From Icefields to Insights: My Journey with the Juneau Icefield Research Program

This is looking down over the Gilkey Trench from Camp 18. The curved lines on the glacier are called Ogives, they form at the bottom of ice falls and each dark and light pair represents a year.

In the summer of 2022, thanks to help from the Backcountry Squatters Scholarship, I participated as a student in the Juneau Icefield Research Program (JIRP). This program is focused on teaching glaciology, geology, atmospheric science, earth science, hydrology, and ski mountaineering to approximately 30 undergraduate and graduate students over the course of a 2 month expedition across the Juneau Icefield. The traverse began in early June in Juneau, Alaska and ended on Atlin Lake in British Columbia in early August. Over the course of the summer, we moved across the ice to permanent camps on rock outcroppings on the ice sheet and tent camps on the snow. During this time we got technical safety training on how to travel on glaciers using ropes, use crampons, do crevasse rescue, and more which allowed us to move safely to field research locations. The program was supported by volunteer faculty and staff from around the world, who taught us in a variety of disciplines and led research teams.

A photo of us digging a mass balance pit and using the snow to build a snow fort. There was plenty of fun and whimsy on the ice, this particular day was the fourth of July and likely my favorite day of the summer.

These research teams varied throughout the summer. I learned more basic skills: how to take rock samples, dig mass balance pits, conduct glacial flow velocity transects, and study albedo changes due to algae. I also did more intensive projects that lasted a few days. One was on positive degree days (days whose temperature reached > 0°C) on the icefield and how their frequency had increased over the last 30 years. To do this, I learned to code with Matlab and found that in recent years there were 30 more positive degree days a year than in the past – a terrifying finding when considering glacial ablation. During the last few weeks of the expedition, I focused on a single project for about two weeks – looking at surface level lapse rates on the icefield and how the glaciers could be susceptible to changes if this increased, due to their low slope angle. This project ended up becoming a poster that was presented at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in the fall of 2022.

This is a mass balance pit, used for studying how much mass glaciers gain during the winter and keep through the summer.

There was a lot about the program that I found rewarding. I enjoyed getting to learn in the environment while things are going on around you – glide avalanches make more sense when you slowly watch the cracks form and then catastrophically fail. Being outside, out of service, and doing almost exclusively field work was wonderful, it helped me to remember why I care at all. Additionally, getting to engage with a wide variety of sciences is rare and wonderful, it allowed me to develop a fuller understanding of glaciers’ relationships with the land and the world as a whole. It was rewarding to find statistically significant results in some of my research (even if I didn’t like what these results were) because it gave me hope for field sciences as actually adding something to the science world.

This is one of our sleep quarters, 30 of us in one room can be a littleeee tight. 

Outside of science, the program was rewarding on a personal level: I formed strong relationships with the other students, the staff, and the faculty. I formed a deep connection with place and took the time to appreciate letting the world move while my life moved slowly. It was a summer of science, art, skiing, and beauty and for that it was one of the best summers of my life.

My summer at JIRP has deeply impacted my future career goals. After the summer, I used the technical skills I learned to become a mountain guide on Mount Rainier and Mount Olympus. Looking into the future, I want to continue bringing JIRP into what I do. I would like to use my love of teaching as a late elementary school teacher helping my students to find the value in place based learning and pursuing what they are passionate about. Long term, I would like to continue my study of snow. In the next few years, I am hoping to pursue a masters in snow science with the goal of being an avalanche forecaster – JIRP’s emphasis on safety made
this goal feel even more important. If snow science and teaching lose their glamor, I am also quite interested in going into the medical field and being a field doctor for programs like this.

A film portrait that Ben Huff took. He was a photographer that joined us to try and capture life on the icefield.

JIRP was an extremely valuable experience that taught me a lot about science, the world, and what it means to be a person. I can draw lines from most pieces of who I am now to JIRP, and I feel that what it taught me has been invaluable if also not quite tangible. This summer I am returning to JIRP as staff and I look forward to facilitating the science and mountaineering education of many aspiring scientists, artists, and people. I cannot thank Squatters enough for helping me to attend this program and for all the benefits I have reaped from it.

–Tory, BCS Scholarship for Outdoor Education Recipient

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