Glacier vacationing: Out-of-this-world cool
Sarah Aciego, 38, is a geology and glaciology professor at the University of Michigan. Last year, she founded Big Chill Adventures (www.bigchilladventure.com) – an Arctic travel company – with her mother, a professional photographer.
Q. Why did you expand from academia into tourism?
A. As a scientist, I go to really incredible places, a lot off-the-beaten-track, to get samples that are unique. Having my mom with me made me realize how incredible those places are: It’s about sharing with more than the scientific community.
Q. How much time do you spend in those remote places?
A. Two or three months a year, on a glacier or near one. In Greenland, I’m either camping or staying at a hostel. That’s usually between May and October; in Antarctica, I go during our winter because it’s summer down there.
Q. What’s the appeal about being on a giant ice cube?
A. It’s like being on another planet. For me, being on a glacier – when there’s water on top, or when you’re looking into crevasses – is like standing on a giant diamond, with different refracting surfaces returning incredible blues and some greens. These are really intense blues you can’t see any other place.
It’s really quiet except when the wind blows – or if the glacier is calving and you hear the creaks and groans. The smells are different: The humidity is so low that you can’t really smell anything.
Often times, you can go into a glacier at its toe, where there are caves and tremendous rivers coming out that are 10 or 15 miles long. In the ice caves, you can hear the whole glacier throbbing and creaking. When there are cracks, it sounds like gunshots.
Q. Arctic versus Antarctic glaciers: Any difference?
A. Antarctica is definitely more like being on an ice cube: There’s no vegetation; nothing green. The colors are those of rock, ice and some snow. There’s little wildlife – penguins and seals. In Alaska and Greenland, even though its cold, at least there’s moss, caribou, musk ox and birds. We don’t usually go where there are polar bears.
In Alaska, you may see mountain goats and trees; this helps you determine the size of a mountain. In Antarctica, where you don’t have any of that, your depth and height perceptions are completely missing.
Q. What about isolation?
A. That’s a really big difference. In Antarctica, there are tourists and scientists, but nobody lives there permanently. In the Arctic, there’s a long history of native populations.
Q. Name two favorite spots.
A. In Antarctica, there’s a little valley several miles wide and hundreds of miles long. It’s next to a glacier and has its own small glacier. It also has sandstone rock formations – and one of them looks like the Sphinx. It’s an amazing place.
In Greenland, it would be this place next to an ice sheet: It has this lake that small icebergs fall into. The area next to the lake is really green – tundra, but with big arctic bushes. What’s really cool is when a musk ox herd drinks at the lake and the animals rub their belly fur on the bushes. There’s all kinds of interaction between wildlife and biology.
Q. What’s the group size when you’re there for tourism instead of science?
A. On a scientific trip, about four. For tourism, about six tourists plus me and a photographer. That lets you use a helicopter or four-wheel truck. For a scientific expedition, we usually camp and have a lot of more gear for collecting samples and measurements. For tours, we travel lighter and stay in real hotels with showers and hot chocolate and those kind of things.
Q. Where do you go on vacation?
A. When I do, I like Thailand. It’s hot. And I like the food.
This story was originally published July 3, 2015 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Glacier vacationing: Out-of-this-world cool."