I remember following the progress of the expedition to recover the P38 from the icecap. I don't remember it being 250 feet, but I can't argue, since I no longer have the Flight magazines that were chronicling the recovery. But Stales is right in making the assumption that the majority of the overburden was deposition rather than the aircraft "sinking" into the ice. They did some studies at the same time as I remember it.

In Zild there are two glaciers, Fox and Franz Josef, which are apparently unique in that they descend to nearly sea-level in a temperate country. At various times I've been to the neves of both of them. They rise, very steeply, to about 8,000 feet. Both of them have huge neves, heavily crevassed last time I was there. They drop so steeply that the icefalls are spectacular and damned dangerous to climb, to boot.

Glaciers are fed by snowfall in the neve as Stales says. If there isn't much snow for a few years, the rate of flow falls away. In the case of Fox and Franz, this has been the case now for about twenty years, and they have actually both retreated up their valleys about seven miles. The retreat is caused by melt-off (which everyone blames on global warming) but for a number of years before (I think) 1975 they were actually advancing at quite a rate. It's a balance between attrition and deposition, and at the moment attrition is winning hands down.

The local geologists have a field day (literally) at Franz and Fox, because almost all of the glacial landforms are there, raw and fresh, just begging to be studied. Whatever turns you on, I say!


The idiot also known as Capfka ...