Russell Glacier, and another permutation of the plan...

Today dawned overcast with rain. It seemed that things weren't looking too good for a trip to Russell Glacier, as shooting in the rain isn't too high on anybody's list.

So we didn't head out first thing in the morning. This gave me a chance to catch up with the plans that the National Guard had started making for flights this week, and we weere able to come up with the next plan. Now, the goal is to fly to Summit tomorrow, then back from Summit the next day, and hopefully turn right around and fly to Raven that same day. This makes the shooting schedule tight, but at least I can get it all done. This is all contingent on having another plane with skis fly up from New york tomorrow, because the guard wants to have a second plane with skis available for search and rescue if anything goes wrong. This plane will perhaps fly around midday tomorrow, so our flight to Summit would launch around then as well.

But today we did indeed go to the Russell glacier, just after lunch. It turned out to be a very successful day of shooting. It's late, so I won't go too much into it now, but at the end of our shooting we still hadn't gotten much of the way of falling ice, so we decided to wait 10 minutes more, and trained the camera on a particularly active piece of ice. 2 minutes later a huge chunk of ice fell off and crumbled. It was a very spectacular scene, and we got it all on tape, as the camera was pointed straight at it. wahoo! Now we're hoping that was a harbinger of good luck to come, rather than that used up all our luck for the trip! we'll know more tomorrow.


An afternoon interview, with Russell Glacier in the background.