The Glacier
A large glacier was located near Palmer Station. Glaciers form when more snow falls during the winter than melts in the summer. When this happens over long periods of time the layer of snow turns to ice that is compressed or pressured by its own weight. Some glaciers in the Antarctic are over 4.8 kilometers or 3 miles thick! A glacier does not stay in one place. It moves very slowly just like a "river of ice" as it flows downhill under its own massive weight. A glacier carves out great valleys and carries large rocks with it as it flows. Many glaciers flow into the sea where large pieces break off into the water to form icebergs. 
A glacier can be a dangerous place to be. Large cracks can form in the surface of the glacier. A crack like this is called a crevasse and it can be very deep! Crevasses can make walking on a glacier difficult and dangerous. Sometimes a thin layer of snow can cover a crevasse and if a careless hiker steps on it, they might fall in and be seriously injured!
We wanted to isolate bacteria from the glacier so we could measure DNA damage caused by intense UV light. We used sterile techniques to isolate the bacteria because we had to be sure the bacteria we isolated was from the glacier and not from our own skin or clothing.
We decided to gather bacteria in the ice from different depths within the glacier. This meant that we would have to lower ourselves down inside a crevasse by rope to collect our ice samples. This technique is called rappelling. I wasn't scared to lower myself by rope because I had been trained by the Search and Rescue Team in many ways of climbing before I was allowed to go down into the crevasse. I learned that climbing back out of the crevasse was much harder than sliding down into it by rope!
My partner in this adventure was Ross Hein of the Search and Rescue Team. He helped me with the rappel and to collect the samples. We climbed as deep as we could into the depths of the glacier. First, we cleared off a three-foot square section of ice from the top of the glacier to remove contamination from melting snow. This melting snow is also called run-off. Next, we used a sterile ice pick to collect the ice samples. We put this ice into sterile containers and sent them up by rope to helpers on the surface. We collected ice samples from depths of 37 feet, 24 feet, and 12 feet from the surface.
When we got back to our lab we melted the ice very slowly. Then we filtered it to remove the bacteria. We now have these bacteria in special containers in our lab in Texas. Our goal is to find out which different species of bacteria were isolated and to learn about how they repair DNA damage. The bacteria will give us new knowledge about how living organisms repair DNA damage caused by UV radiation.