17. When there is a glacier and there is an ice bridge how do you navigate the glacier?

Claire,

Carefully! This is a major problem for many field teams. Glaciers “crack” and form crevasses in areas where there are different flow speeds. These crevasses can be drifted over by snow and difficult to recognize.

If you are traveling on foot through these areas, you use a rope with team mates, so that if one person falls, the others can catch them. You definitely want to travel perpendicular to the crevasse and not parallel to it.

If you are driving, like the traverse vehicles here do, they use radar on a boom in front of the first vehicle to detect crevasses.

Where I’m going, the ice flow is slow and uniform, so there are no crevasses to worry about.

T.J.