Mike and I landed up on the glacier 16 times today. The weather was far too windy and white-out to land up on the high glacier with skis, so we had to use the lower glacier with our bush wheels. The ice is usually really rough and the strip we were using today was no exception. On the glacier the wind almost always blows downhill, but today we got no help from the wind. The wind was blowing 40 knots 2000′ feet above us, but down at our elevation it was perfectly calm. We generally count on some down-glacier breeze to slow us down for landing.
Airstrips have personalities and it really depends on how you hit them. Five of my landing were relatively smooth, but three of them felt like a controlled crash. There are a number of factors that play into this temperament, and sometimes there is little you can do to control it. For instance, twice today I got a tailwind on short final. Adding 3 mph to my groundspeed sent me hob-knobbing out over the ice like a 5 year old on trampoline. The other bad landing was caused when I bounced just wrong through a small crevasse and dang-near tore my tailwheel off. Landing on the glacier is more of an art than a science, but it has high stakes, and it can only be learned through experience.
This mountaineering team will be on the mountain for 2 weeks. They will spend the majority of their time on a rope learning the skills to successfully navigate glacial terrain.