Annual glaciological field trip

 It was that time of the year: the annual field trip deep into Snowdonia was about to happen again. It is a trip in which we look at glacial striations, in order to reconstruct what sort of ice mass has created these striations. After the field trip, back on campus, the students put these measurements into context.

It is generally a very lovely field trip. The landscape is amazing, and the students often do a fine job. And I enjoy the company of my colleague Lynda, who normally goes with me. But the previous year, the weather has been pretty awful, and the week before this trip was due we had had to cancel an entirely different field trip for weather reasons. So I was keeping a nervous eye on the forecast! Fortunately, it looked good and stayed good.

I met Lynda and the students on the main campus. Everyone I expected minus one showed up! That is really not a bad score. And soon we were on our way to Pen-y-Pass, where we would meet David, who was going to be the on-duty first aider.

We got to Pen-y-Pass alright, but there was no sign of David there. That is weird; he normally is quite early. I considered the situation. If he wasn't there now, he would probably not be there at all. And we couldn't phone him; there is no phone signal or Internet signal there. Was this a problem? I myself am one of the University first aiders too. I don't like having to be the on-duty first aider if I am also doing all the teaching, and being responsible for everything. As soon as anyone needs medical attention, then all the actual fieldwork has to stop. That is not ideal! But I also did not want to abort the whole mission. I decided it would just have to do. And I wasn't really worried that something awful had happened that had prevented him from showing up; it had happened before that he just didn't show up when he had been booked, like last year on Llugwy Beach.

We walked up. This time I wanted to keep the whole group together; I wanted to show the students outcrops along the way to the actual site where they could practice recognising striations. In the past, it has happened that students were measuring something entirely different! And with them being rather spread out, it is difficult to check what they are doing on time.

The walk up

When we got to the top, I did a little brief, and then they were on their way, looking for a suitable outcrop in their groups of two or three. And I first inhaled a piece of cake as I was very hungry, but then I went on my way to check every group, and put their outcrop on the map. We had 12 groups, and it took a while.

Getting to the lake 

Striations!

Quite many groups were being rather efficient about it, and were done in no time. I figured that if everyone was done on time, we could just go back down to the road a bit earlier, and sit in the café waiting for the bus. So when everyone was ready, I did a quick debrief, and then we set off. 

When we go to the road we quickly found out that the café was closed. What nonsense! It was a beautiful day and it was quite busy; we were really not the only people there! And everybody else was as disappointed as we were. There were people in the café but they were not willing to open for us. That was a bit of a bummer! And we obviously couldn't let the bus driver know that we wanted them a bit earlier. Fortunately, it was dry, and there are a lot of picnic tables there, so we just sat down and had whatever snacks we still had ourselves. I was glad I could finally drink a lot of water! In the field, I had been too busy for this.

15 minutes later than he had said he would be back, the bus driver arrived. Not ideal, but so be it. And then we just drove back to main campus without incident. And I will barely back in the office or I received the first email from a student with their data. That was going well!

As soon as all the data is in, the students can work on the assignment. I hope they do an amazing job this year! I think the best year so far had been the previous year, and they had had to work through rain and wind. Hopefully, this lot is even better!