It was picnic day today, 3rd October 2008, for the 5 of us. The GSI people were going to an epi-shelf lake at the eastern end of Schirmacher, and the 5 of us- Ramesh, Hembram, Purushottam, Kailash and me were invited to come along for an excursion. The purpose of the visit was to measure the depth of the lake, which was speculated to be more than expected.
This lake was about 15 km away from Maitri, near the Russian station, Novo. We left at 8:30am with elaborate GSI equipment and proceeded towards Novo in 2 snow mobiles, one of which was a cabin vehicle. The route to the lake bypassed Novo and went on to the ice shelf beyond it after crossing the last hills of the Schirmacher range. This lake lay where the ice shelf met the Schirmacher landmass. Hence it was an epi-shelf lake. It is one of the numerous such lakes in Schirmacher.
When we turned around the last of the hills of Schirmacher, we approached the vast, featureless expanse of the ice shelf that I have mentioned numerous times in these columns. As we approached the lake from the shelf, the vertical cliffs along the southern edge of the lake stood in attention before us like the president's bodyguard. They were steeper than anything I have seen in Schirmacher. The lake was a huge one and a very picturesque. We halted on the banks of the lake and the GSI people assembled their instrument and proceeded with their job, with one snow mobile dragging their instrument on the surface of the frozen lake. We proceeded with our sightseeing.
The edge of the lake was raised all along the edges due to the tidal action of the sea underlying the lake. Being an epi-shelf lake, it was expected to be connected to the sea. So it was subject to the tidal action of the sea, which caused the icy surface of the lake to break and be thrown up as huge blocks of ice all along the edges. This appearance can be likened to that of a pan cake, though a very irregular one. The edge of the lake was raised about 20 ft high at many places. The western part of the lake was covered with huge snow dunes. We walked across the lake to the side of the cliffs. We had to cross the raised blocks of ice at the edge. When we approached this edge, we discovered that the lake surface immediately adjacent to it was as smooth as glass. It also had a gentle slope. So it was so slippery that the only way to walk across was to crawl on our belly. But as soon as we reached the raised ice blocks, we would slide further than from where we started. We make a sport of it and soon the place was crawling with Indian polarmen sliding all around. Some caught hold of blocks of ice and we seen sliding around with them under their bellies. There was soon a competition as to who would slide the furthest. All over, there was the sound of ice breaking underneath. This is a normal feature on epi-shelf regions because of the expansion and contraction of ice. But it was scary. Finally we crossed the blocks of ice. When we did so, we saw another such accumulation of ice blocks. This means that at this edge of the lake there were 2 parallel rows of ice blocks with a clear passage between them. This passage was paved with a smooth layer of ice. But this layer was wafer thin and gave way as soon as we stepped on it. But there was a stronger layer of ice beneath. We walked along this passage with a crackling sound. As we walked on, at one place, my snow boots sank ankle deep into water. Finding water was strange for this time of the year. The only explanation was that water was seeping on the surface from the sea below, maybe because it was high tide. The glassy layer of ice I described is because of the same phenomenon. At a certain place, water could be seen flowing. We collected a sample for analysis.
We indulged in various other time pass activities like sliding on the snowy slopes of the hills. One of them was quite steep and one came down at a thrilling speed. This was quite tiring. There were a lot of interesting ice formations all over the place. We had a field day photographing them. We also brought some of them back to Maitri. The GSI experiment was over by 6pm and we left for Maitri. We finally reached back at 8pm. It was a welcome change from the routine.
Pssst.. The depth of the lake was found to be 160 meters as against the maximum of 10 meters in the other lakes of Schirmacher.
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