Hattie Butts

4 July 2018

Little Red and the Zone of Fracture

“We are too close to the glacier,” warned Doctor Pezinsky from the front of the S.S. Little Red,
“we might get hit if pieces start calving.”

“Right,” said the sailor, “I’ll pull her back some.”

“Is there a way we can get to shore and hike up to the top of Jakobshavn glacier?” asked
Pezinsky.

“I’m afraid not,” replied the sailor as he throttled the small red boat away from the glacier’s
face, “the top of the glacier is too scarred by crevasses to traverse.”

From the stern of the boat, one of Pezinsky’s students shouted, “Professor, look! There is a
piece calving from the face!”

The crew aboard the S.S. Little Red listened as a low rumble echoed across the water.

“It sounds like a dump truck,” said one of the students.

“Or a tractor,” said another.

Snow from the top of the glacier cascaded into the cold water. The loose flakes were
progressively followed by larger balls of snow, until large snow boulders were plummeting into the
ocean waves. A sharp crack was heard and it seemed the glacier face twisted on itself as a 200 foot
section of the glacier separated itself and tumbled into the ocean.

“Does anyone want to name the new iceberg?” asked Professor Pezinsky jokingly.

“I wonder how much of that glacier is lost to basal slip, and how much to rising temperatures,”
said one of the students.

“We can only hypothesize that with measurements from the zones of accumulation and
wastage,” replied Professor Pezinsky, “and that means a long walk.”

“By the looks of that firn, I’d say we aren’t walking on top of Jakobshavn,” the student said, “the
snow is too loose to hold our weight.”

“How can we measure the glacial budget if we can’t walk on the zone of fracture?” asked
another student.

“How good are the lenses of the cameras?” asked the sailor.

“We brought a four hundred millimeter and an eight-hundred-millimeter lens for our DSLR,”
replied one of the students, “we can shoot videos from almost a mile away.”
 “I can dock at Ilulissat, you can hike up to the mountain summits south of the town,” replied the
sailor, “It starts you below the snowline, but you will be able to get your measurements.”

“Jakobshavn is one of the fastest moving glaciers, it has a plastic flow which culminates in
almost 65 feet daily,” Professor Pezinsky stated,” the difficulty isn’t finding a place to film, it’s finding
our markers from last season, so we can read the rates of accumulation or wastage.”