Mt. Waddington

In June and July of 2023, the CCIC team embarked on a mission to extract an ice core from Combatant Col to bedrock. With a total ice time of 22 days, we drilled a total depth of 219 meters with the thermal drill. This depth accounts for a successful deviation at 174 meters, and drilling completed when the borehole reached an impenetrable layer of sediment. Check out the first of three articles on this field expedition from the Globe and Mail here. 

Other science projects on the Col this year included: PulseEkko radar imagery, seismic fiber-optic cable sensing, and measurements of snow pit densities and snow surface and firn core isotopes. More to come...

In late July of 2022, the CCIC team spent a week on the Col collecting snow surface samples and a 14-meter shallow core for water isotopes, 2-meter snow density measurements, and radar measurements. We used two distinct radar systems for two separate purposes. First, we used a 10-MHz radar to survey the ice thickness and use this relatively low frequency wave to propagate through water in the firn aquifer and create a reflection off the ice-bed interface. Second, we used a 100-MHz radar to survey the firn aquifer itself. We got a strong reflection off the water table, so it is quite easy to know where there is standing water and its relative depth below the snow surface. We did not get a good reflection from the bottom of the firn aquifer, so it is harder to know the total volume of water present or how deep the water can infiltrate before all available pore space is closed off as the firn transitions into solid ice. Read more from Dr. Ben Hills blog here.

In July, 2010 a team led by Dr. Peter Neff and Dr. Eric Steig from the University of Washington and Doug Clark from Western Washington University spent 26 days retrieving ice cores at Combatant Col, near Mt. Waddington, British Columbia, Canada (51.39°N, 125.22°W). Beth Bergeron (Ice Drilling Design and Operations) led the operation of 4-inch electromechanical and 3-inch thermal drills, reaching a maximum depth of approximately 140 meters at the initial borehole before difficulties, resulting from glacial meltwater filling the borehole, halted drilling. 

A second borehole reached 90 meters depth. GPS surveys conducted in previous years and a high-resolution ground penetrating radar grid surveyed in late May 2010 indicate an ice depth of 250 to 300 meters. In addition to these new cores, work completed in 2006 yielded 65 meters of ice and demonstrated preservation of annual stratigraphy regardless of summer melt at Combatant Col (elevation 3000 meters, ~10,000 feet). Read more here.

The Combatant Col Ice Core Project began in 2005 and 2006. Known as the "Waddington Range Ice Core Project", this collaboration included Eric Steig (University of Washington), Doug Clark (Western Washington University), and colleages in British Columbia and Alberta, under the auspices of the Western Canadian Cryospheric Network. 

Radar surveys performed by Kenichi Matsuoka, Eric Steig and Howard Conway in August 2005 displayed an ice thickness of at least 140 m with additional surveys in May 2006 that used a higher frequncy system and confirmed these initial results.

Preliminary coring at the site, conducted in September 2006 to 65 m depth (using the Ice Core Drilling Services 10 cm (4") drill, with electromechanical and thermal coring heads), suggested high annual accumulation rates, and demonstrated preservation of seasonal cycles in soluble and insoluble chemical species throughout the firn and into the uppermost glacier ice. Data from this preliminary core, however, are discontinuous and thus not of sufficient quality for rigorous comparison with the new record (though we do report on water stable-isotope data from the upper 6 m of the 2006 core).

We thank climber/glaciologist Yann Merrand for originally suggesting this location.