Svínafellsjökull Glacier
An EIS team member provides scale in a massive landscape of crevasses on the Svínafellsjökull Glacier in Iceland.

Birthday Canyon
An EIS team member surveys Birthday Canyon, which is approximately 45m deep. The black deposit in the bottom of the melt-water channel is cryoconite, a gritty deposit comprised of silt and soot blown from afar mixed with bacteria that actually live in the ice sheet.

Ancient Air
Bubbles of ancient air – possibly 15,000 years old – are released as this Greenland ice sheet melts.

Rising Icebergs
Icebergs in Greenland rising 60m above the surface float into the North Atlantic Ocean.

Columbia Glacier
Layers of eroded sediment stripe an iceberg calved from the Columbia Glacier in Alaska, USA. An EIS team member stands at the top.

The Setup
For the EIS project, we used Nikon D200 and D300 bodies, secured in weatherproof housings. Powered by solar panels, batteries and other electronics, they are able to withstand temperatures as low as –40˚C and winds as strong as 255kph, as well as blizzards, landslides and avalanches. Here we see Matthew Kennedy and Daniel McGrath of the EIS team install a camera at Orne Harbor on the Antarctica Peninsula. The stop was part of the Extreme Ice Survey’s first expedition to the southern hemisphere.