Posted on by Bernhard Hynek, ZAMG

Field trip to Pasterze by TGM and ZAMG

After some attempts in previous years, again we agreed on a date and finally the weather was perfect for a joint field trip to Pasterze in October 2017. We – glaciologists from ZAMG + students and teachers from TGM made a joint field trip to Pasterze to make some experiments on WLAN data transmission in the real world and to get a feeling about the ongoing glacier retreat, and travelling safe and working on a glacier that big as Pasterze.

The path down to the glacier during nice weather in mid October 2017.
Passing the glacier front position from 2000.
in 5 minutes of walk we pass 5 years of glacier recession: The glacier front position from 2005.
Again some minutes later, we pass the front position of 2010. This was the front position only 7 years ago!
Hiking the canyon, that has formed on the orographic left side of the glacier snout.
Walking on the glacier snout on Pasterze.
Ice wall at the orographic left side of the glacier snout.
Close-up view of the ice debris at the base of the ice wall.
Icebergs in the proglacial lake of Pasterze.
We gaze at icebergs in Austria!
On our second day we even climbed up to visit the automatic camera on Freiwandeck.
The climb to the Automatic camera on Freiwandeck was steep and challenging!
And the view down to Großglockner Hochalpenstraße was nearly vertical at some points!
Nice colours and formations at the sediment deposits below the glacier.