LAAS master’s student Bridget Hall is back from a field season in Antarctica. We caught up with Bridget about her time in the field.
The Profile: How did your work end up bringing you to Antarctica?
Bridget Hall: It goes back to my undergrad years as a geology and environmental studies double major at Mount Holyoke College in Western Mass[achusetts]. For a long time, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Then I took a class called Earth’s Surface, about surface processes, and I really enjoyed learning about the glaciers, learning about volcanoes. In my junior year I got asked to TA a class about climate change in Greenland, very heavily focused on the glaciers, and because I was TA-ing it it meant I was digging into the material a little more than I maybe otherwise would have. I found that I really loved it and thought okay, this it is, I want to do this.
After that, I started looking for summer opportunities, and was connected by my advisor to Heidi Roop. Heidi then connected me to Peter Neff. I reached out to Peter, and got to be a part of the Mount Waddington Project in British Columbia, where we took an ice core in 2023. After that, I stayed connected with Peter throughout senior year, then applied to come [to the University of Minnesota] for a master’s. Through Peter I also got attached to the NSF Science and Technology Center called COLDEX (the Center for Oldest Ice Exploration), and because I’d been in the field with Peter, he encouraged me to apply to join an Antarctic field team, so I did.
TP: What’s it like to go somewhere relatively few other people have been?
BH: It’s pretty crazy. It took a long time for it to hit, that I was actually there. We flew around to a few different sites to get different measurements, and every time we would get out to a site, it was very possible that we were the first people to ever step there, and that’s mind blowing. It’s mind blowing every time.
TP: Can you describe the work you were doing as part of the field team?
BH: Just to preface, the science the field team was doing is not my science, so it was a chance for me to expand my knowledge. COLDEX is looking for a site where they can drill to get the oldest continuous ice core they can. The main goal of our field site was to see whether the site would be a good place to drill. We were getting radar imaging to see what the layering [of ice] is like, we were also using a different type of radar to show the crystal orientation of the ice, and we were also measuring the horizontal velocity of the ice flow. There were two systems set up to measure seismic activity, and then also one with magnetic fields. We had a lot of different pieces of science going on!
TP: What was the most challenging part of your time on the field team?
BH: One thing is just the uncertainty of what’s happening in a day. Say you’re looking for a flight, even just to get down to the continent at all, but also out to a field site once you’re there. Because the weather is so difficult, and changes so often, you don’t know when you’ll be able to fly. You can be manifested to fly at 9:30 am, but you’re the backup flight, so if the 5:30 am flight flies, you go at 9:30, but if it doesn’t fly at 5:30, then you’re actually flying at 5:30. So you’d better be ready to go at 5:30. It’s a lot of hurry up and wait, as they say.
The other thing is the cold, or rather how much clothing you have to wear to be protected from the cold. Maneuvering around all the layers of clothing makes simple things like eating and drinking much more time consuming.
TP: What was the most exciting part of your time on the field team?
BH: Definitely the wonder of stepping off the plane and realizing you are somewhere no one has ever been. I also really enjoyed a lot of the community. At South Pole Station and out at the field site, everyone was there to make the science happen, helping in their own way. The folks plowing snow at South Pole Station are just as important to being able to get the science as the people collecting measurements at the field sites. It’s a great community to get to be a part of.