Glacial retreat at Gold Harbour, South Georgia: discovering unforeseen geology, remembering unexpected guests

• Main Author: Stone, Phil
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Antarctic; Austral; Gold Harbour; Bertrab; Cooper Bay; Barff Peninsula; Bertrab Glacier; Antarc*; British Antarctic Survey
• Online Access: http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/525903/; https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/525903/1/Gold%20Harbour%204%20text%2Bfigs.pdf; http://www.falklandislandsjournal.org/

Back in the early 1970s it was my good fortune to work on South Georgia for the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). I spent three austral summers deciphering the geology of the north-east coast from Barff Peninsula down to Cooper Bay, and for the 1971-72 season, with support from Eric Lawther as GA1, my area of interest spanned from St Andrews Bay to Gold Harbour (Figure 1). Since then, the island’s glaciers have retreated rapidly as a well-established result of global climate change, with those flowing out towards the north-east coast the most dramatically affected (e.g. Cook et al. 2010). Many parts of the coastline now have a very different appearance from that which I remember, none more so than Gold Harbour where, in 1972, the Bertrab Glacier had tumbled over a spectacular ice fall and extended to the sea (Figure 2). Today, the lower part of the glacier has vanished, the ice fall has gone, and only the top section of the glacier remains. In most respects these changes are to be regretted, but from the geological perspective there are some benefits. Large areas of clean, ice-smoothed rock are now exposed that were previously concealed, revealing a substantial section of folded strata on the south side of what was the Bertrab Glacier ice fall – more on that later, after some reminiscences and historical scene-setting.