79

Bulletin of Glaciological Research ,. (,**1) 13ῌ2/
῍Japanese Society of Snow and Ice

The glaciological expedition to Mount Ichinsky, Kamchatka, Russia
Sumito MATOBA+, Sergey V. USHAKOV,, Kunio SHIMBORI+, Hirotaka SASAKI-,
Tetsuhide YAMASAKI., Alexander A. OVSHANNIKOV,, Alexander G. MANEVICH,,
Tatyana M. ZHIDELEEVA,, Stanislav KUTUZOV/, Yaroslav D. MURAVYEV,and Takayuki SHIRAIWA0+ Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo *0*ῌ*2+3, Japan, Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Kamchatka Oblast
02-***0, Russia- Graduate School of Environmental Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo *0*ῌ*2+*, Japan. Geotech Co. Ltd., Nagoya .0*ῌ**,, Japan/ Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow +*3*+1, Russia
0 Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Kyoto 0*-ῌ2*.1, Japan(Received September -*, ,**0; Revised manuscript accepted November -, ,**0)

Abstract
During summer ,**0, we carried out ice-core drilling to bedrock on a glacier at the summit ofMount Ichinsky, Kamchatka, Russia, and recovered a ++/-m-long ice core. We also prepared samples,
performed ice-core analyses in-situ, and measured the borehole temperature. The temperature of theborehole was ῌ+-῎ at +* m depth, and the pore close-o# depth was ,/ m. The melt-feature percentage, or the thickness of frozen ice layers in a +-m-long section of ice core, varied from +*ῌ to +**ῌ.
These ice layers were formed by both rainfall, surface melting, and frost on the glacier surface, which
we observed during our expedition. We hypothesize that the ﬂuctuations in the proportion of ice
layers show climatic variation in Kamchatka.

+.

Introduction

It has been proposed that the climate in the North
Paciﬁc has ﬂuctuated widely on a decadal or severaldecades-long cycle known as the Paciﬁc decadal oscillation (PDO) (e.g., Minobe, +331; Mantua et al., +331;
Mantua and Hare, ,**,). This PDO has been identiﬁed in an ice core obtained from Mt. Logan, Canada, in
the +32*s (Holdsworth et al., +33,), and in an ice coreobtained from a crater glacier of the Ushkovsky volcano, Kamchatka Peninsula, in the +33*s (Shiraiwa
et al., ,**-). Shiraiwa and Yamaguchi (,**,) showedthat the time series of the reconstructed accumulation
rate at Ushkovsky was tended to be negatively correlated with that at Mount Logan, whereas it was positively correlated with the PDO index, deﬁned as theleading principal component of the North Paciﬁc monthly sea-surface temperature variability poleward of,*῍N (Mantua et al., +331).
It has also been pointed out recently that the PDO
may be associated with not only climatic conditions
but also the marine ecological system (Mantua et al.,+331). We hypothesize that the PDO is related tovariation in the marine ecological system associatedwith chemical substances transported from the Asian
continent via the atmosphere. To test this hypothesis, we are analyzing ice cores from the regions surrounding the northern North Paciﬁc for chemical substances, as wells as for stable isotopes, of which seasonal variation reveals ﬂuctuations in the annual accumulation. On the North America side, we haveobtained ice cores from Mount Wrangell, Alaska, in,**- and ,**. (Shiraiwa et al., ,**.), which we are
analyzing currently. On the Asian side, we obtained
an ice core from Ushkovsky in +332, but we could not
extract meaningful information on chemical substances from that ice core, because Ushkovsky volcano is near several active volcanoes and thus includes a huge amount of chemical substances emitted
from those volcanoes. Therefore, we mounted an expedition to obtain an ice core from the caldera glacieron Mount Ichinsky, which is located far from any
active volcanoes.

,.

The drilling site
Mount Ichinsky (//῍.0῎N, +/1῍//῎E; summit eleva-

80

Bulletin of Glaciological Research

Fig. +.

Fig. ,.

Location of Mount Ichinsky.

View of Mount Ichinsky from the relay point.

tion, -0*1 m) is in the central part of the Kamchatka
Peninsula, Russia (Figs. + and ,). It is a stratovolcano
and the highest mountain in the Sredinny (central)
Range of Kamchatka. On its summit is a caldera
measuring - kmῌ/ km. The caldera is covered with
an ice cap that is approximately /** m in diameter.
Mount Ichinsky erupted several times in the Holocene. The age of the earliest volcanic deposit overlying a Late Pleistocene moraine is estimated as about+****ῌ+/*** years, and the most recent eruption occurred within the last +2** years and at least several
hundred years ago (Volynets et al., +33+). Glaciers
ﬂow from the caldera down both the steep northeast
slope and the gentle southwest slope.

-.

Humanity and Nature (RIHN) and the Institute of Low
Temperature Science, Hokkaido University (ILTSHU), Japan. The participants in the project are as
follows;
Dr. Sumito Matoba (ILTS-HU), leader and glaciologist
Dr. Sergey Ushakov (IVS-RAS), chief of logistics andvolcanologist
Mr. Kunio Shimbori (ILTS-HU), chief driller
Mr. Tetsuhide Yamasaki (Geotech Inc. Ltd.), driller
Mr. Alexander A. Ovsiannikov (IVS-RAS), logistics
and volcanologist
Mr. Alexander G. Manevich (IVS-RAS), logistics andgeophysicist
Mrs. Tatyana M. Zideleeva (IVS-RAS), cook and glaciologist
Mr. Stanislav Kutuzov (Inst. Geography-RAS), drilling
assistant and glaciologist
Mr. Hirotaka Sasaki (Grad. Sch. Environ. Sci. -HU),
ice-core processor and glaciologist
Dr. Yaroslav D. Muravyev (IVS-RAS), ground supportand volcanologist/glaciologist.
Initially, we planned to carry out the project inJune, ,**0, and Dr. Takayuki Shiraiwa of the ResearchInstitute for Humanity and Nature, Mr. Kazuo Higuchi of Mountain Activity Support, Hokkaido, and
Mr. Tatsuru Sato and Mr. Takeshi Toida of the Graduate School of Environmental Science, Hokkaido, werealso expected to be members of the expedition. However, we were forced to change our plans because ofcustoms troubles and bad weather at Mount Ichinsky.

Participants..

This project was launched as an international
collaborative program between the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, Russian Academy of Science, Russia (IVS-RAS), and the Research Institute for

Itinerary

We traveled from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky,
where the IVS-RAS is located, to Esso, the helicopter
site closest to Mount Ichinsky, carrying +/** kg of

Matoba et al.

equipment by truck, and the members of the expedition by bus.
We ﬂew personnel and equipment from Esso to
the summit of the caldera via a relay point at thenorthern foot of Mount Ichinsky in an MI2 helicopter
on +* August, ,**0. One ﬂight was required from
Esso to the relay point, and four ﬂights from the relay
point to the caldera summit, to transport nine people
and the equipment.
After establishing our camp, we started ice-coredrilling in the afternoon of ++ August and ﬁnished in
the afternoon of +0 August. We measured the temperature in the borehole from the night of +0 August
until the morning of +1 August. In tandem with theice-core drilling, from +, to +1 August, we also measured the density of the ice core, observed its stratigra-

Table +.

81

phy, and collected samples for chemical analysis fromhalf samples of the ice-core samples from surface to.1.,, m depth.
All personnel and equipment, and the ++/-m-long
ice core, were ﬂown to Esso by the same helicopter on,+ August, which required two ﬂights from the summit to Esso. The ﬁrst ﬂight did not stop at the relay
point because the helicopter had mechanical trouble
and had to return Esso as soon as possible for repairs.
The ice core was stored in a freezer truck at Esso andtransported to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on ,+ August. The itinerary is summarized in Table +.

/.

Camp site
Our camp (Fig. -) included a drilling tent, kitchen

Dates of ﬁeld studies and logistics.

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Bulletin of Glaciological Research

Fig. -.

Campsite map.

tent, sleeping tents, and an ice-core processing trench.
We chose a ﬂat area for the drilling site, where webelieved that the strain of ice was simple, and where
the thickness of glacier was the largest. The GPS
position of the drilling site was //῍.*ῌ-2.-῎N, +/1῍.-ῌ
,2.,῎E, -/3/ m a.s.l. To prevent the collapse of thetents by strong winds, we dug down /* cm below thesnow surface before erecting the tents, and we constructed +-m-high snow walls on the windward side of
all tents. We also dug a trench (. mῌ, m, , m deep),which we covered with plywood and vinyl sheets. In
this trench, we made a --m-long worktable and a +-m-long light table with snow, installed a band saw(Ryowa model BSW-,**), and carried out ice-core processing.
There was heavy rain with strong winds from thenight of ++ August to the morning of +- August; as aresult, the guy ropes of the drilling tent were pulled
out of the snow surface, and the drilling tent wasalmost blown away on the morning of +- August.
We repaired the drilling tent in the afternoon of +August and were able to restart drilling in the afternoon of +. August. From +2 to +3 August, anothervery heavy storm tore the kitchen tent and two sleeping tents, so four expedition members lived in theice-core trench from +3 to ,+ August.
After the rainfall on ++ August, some crevasses
appeared up near the drilling and kitchen tents. We
connected the kitchen tent, drilling tent, and the icecore processing trench with a life rope so that we
could walk safely between them, even during whiteout conditions.

0.

Ice-core drilling

We used an electromechanical ice-core drillingsystem developed by Geotech Co. Ltd., Nagoya, Japan.
The system was also used for an expedition to Mount
Belukha, Altai Mountains, Central Asia, in ,**-. The
details of the drilling system are described by Takeuchi
et al. (,**.). We used a generator (YAMAHA model
EF ,-**) with a four-cycle, single-cylinder gasoline

engine for the drilling operation. The fuel was 30-octane gasoline, which we bought in PetropavlovskKamchatsky. For high-elevation use, we replaced
the fuel spray nozzle in the carburetor with one witha smaller hole. To prevent the air intake from closing up because of a frozen air ﬁlter in the cold conditions, we removed the air ﬁlter made of sponge fromthe air ﬁlter unit. To prevent the carburetor fromfreezing, we attached a metal plate from the exhaust
mu%er to the carburetor, to conduct heat to the carburetor.
After installing the drilling system in the drilling
tent on ++ August, we started the ice-core drilling in
the afternoon of ++ August. On +- August, heavy
rain and strong wind tore the drilling tent and wet thecontrol box of the drilling system. We needed + day
to repair the drilling tent and control box, and then werestarted drilling on +. August. On +0 August, werecognized that the drill was slipping on a hard layer,
could not advance any more, and tips of rock werecollected in the drill barrel, so we made the judgmentthat the drill had reached bedrock. The length of thewire was ++..33 m, and the number of drilling runs
completed was ,-0.
The temperature in the drilling tent was morethan *῏, and this warmth caused various problems
during the drilling operation. Ice chips melted on the
drill easily during the preparation in the drilling tent,
and the melted ice refroze onto the inside and outsideof the barrel or the head mount of the drill in theborehole, where surrounding borehole temperature
was below *῏. The frozen chips in the barrel scratchedand broke the ice core during the drilling operation.
When we pulled the ice core out of the barrel, thefrozen chips acted as prongs and obstructed smoothdisplacement of the ice core from the barrel. Whenthe melted chips froze on the shoes, that is, the parts ofthe drill head that control the cutting pitches of thedrill, we felt with our ﬁngers through the wire that thedrill’s cutters slipped on the bottom of the borehole,and the drill did not advance.
To prevent such problems, we shortened the amountof working time between when the drill was brought
up above the snow surface and when it was returnedto the borehole. Four or ﬁve people participated in
the drilling operation, which involved taking down
the drill, pulling the barrel out of the jacket, removing
the ice core from the barrel, blowing the ice chips outof the barrel and jacket with an air compressor, replacing the barrel in the jacket, putting the drill backup, and inserting the drill into the borehole. To remove the ice core from the barrel after pulling thebarrel out of the jacket, we inclined the barrel andtapped it with a plastic hammer to dislodge ice chips
from the inside of the barrel. After a rather large
amount of ice chips had dropped, the ice core was free
to slide in the barrel and could be easily removed.

Matoba et al.

Fig. ..

Cumulative drilling time (h) versus depth (m).

Table ,.

Drilling operation.

Fig. /.

Temperature proﬁle of the borehole wall.

each drilling run. No brittle ice was found in thewhole depth, although brittle ice usually appears below a depth of +** to +/* m in mountain glaciers or
small ice caps (Takahashi, +330; Koci, ,**,). No thickvolcanic ash layer, which had been trouble for drillingat Mount Ushkovsky (Shiraiwa et al., +333), damaged
the cutters of the drill. The drilling operation is summarized in Table ,.

1.

According to Zagorodnov et al. (,**,), an e#ective
way to avoid jams caused by ice chips is to brush andlubricate with antifreeze the barrel and the insidesurface of the jacket. However, we did not use liquid
antifreeze because it could contaminate the ice core.
We also did not brush the barrel, because it warmed
up during brushing. Instead of brushing, we blew
the ice chips out of the barrel and jacket with an air
compressor. We completed these procedures within, min for each run, and inserted the drill back into theborehole before the ice chips in the barrel and jacket
melted.
It took a total of .,./ h to drill down to ++..33 m(Fig. .). The production rate was ,.1+ meters perhour. An ice core 3*ῌ3- mm in diameter and approximately *./ m long was consistently recovered from83

Borehole temperature

The temperature of the borehole wall was measured after the ice-core drilling was completed, fromthe evening of +0 August to the morning of +1 August.
The wall temperature was measured with a thermistor sensor (Techno-seven model BYE-0.), which was
kept in direct contact with the wall of the borehole byleaf springs (Kameda et al., +33-). The resistance ofthe sensor (+, Kohm at *ῌ) was measured by a digital
multimeter with resolution of +* ohm. Because of thelarge di#erence in the resistance between the sensor
and the cable, the cable resistance was considered tobe negligible.
The sensor was inserted into the borehole andstopped for measurement at the bottom (++-.0/ m), andat +*/, +**, 2*, 0*, .*, -*, ,*, +/, +*, 1, /, and , m below thesurface. The sensor was stationary during all walltemperature measurements. Readings of the digital
multimeter were made at +, +*, -*, and 0* min after
placement at each depth. The temperature decreased
with time because the frictional heat generated by
movement was dissipated until the equilibrium tem-

84

Bulletin of Glaciological Researchperature was reached. We estimated the equilibrium
temperature from the equilibrium curve that we obtained from our measurements.
The temperature at +* m depth was ῌ+-.*῍, andthe temperature at the bottom of the borehole wasῌ-..῍ (Fig. /). From +* m to the bottom, the temperature increased linearly with depth.

2.

Ice-core processing and ice-core properties

We processed the ice-core samples from the surface to .1.,, m depth as follows. We recorded thestratigraphy of the ice core on chart sheets at real
scale using a light table and measured the bulk density of the core. We then cut the ice-core samples inhalf vertically with a band saw. Half samples of theice-core samples were packed into polyethylene bags
and packed into insulated boxes and transported toEsso. The other halves of the ice-core samples were
cut at /*- to 1*-mm intervals, and each subsample wasplaced in a new polyethylene bag in the ice-processing
trench after the surface of ice sample was removed
with a band saw. The subsamples were then melted
in a water bath, or at ambient temperature, and decanted into pre-cleaned polyethylene bottles either onsite, or later in a laboratory at IVS-RAS. The total
number of subsamples was 23..
Bulk densities from the surface to /* m depth (Fig.
0) were calculated from the diameter, weight, andlength of each ice-core segment obtained in a single
drilling run. If part of a sample was lost, we excluded
it from the measurement. Several calculated density
values were too high because of the low precision of
the scales and so on. Therefore, we multiplied all thedensities by *.30/ as a correction value to adjust thehighest density value to that of pure ice. The poreclose-o# depth was at approximately ,/ m, which isshallow in comparison with that of the Ushkovsky
glacier (// m) (Shiraiwa et al., +333).
We also recorded the proﬁle of the melt-feature
percentage (MFP, Fig. 1), which is the thickness offrozen ice layers in a +-m-long section of ice core.
MFP is generally used as an indicator of summer
temperature at a site where ice layers are formed only
by melting occurring at the snow surface (Koerner,+311). However, the ice layers observed in the icecore at Mount Ichinsky were not only formed bysurface melting. As described above, heavy rainfalls
occurred during the expedition. We observed on thesnow wall of the trench that rain inﬁltrated into theaccumulated snow, pooled at the boundary of snow
layers, and formed ice layers without disturbing thesnow layers between the surface and pooled layer ofrainwater. After a heavy storm on +2 August, weobserved rapid growth of a thick frost layer on theglacier surface on +3ῌ,* August, when the air temperature was below *῍ and a large amount of mist

Fig. 0. Bulk density proﬁle of the ice core from thesurface to /* m depth.

Fig. 1. Proﬁle of the melt-feature percentage (MFP) in
the ice core. MFP indicates the proportion of ice
layers in +-m-long sections of the ice core, measured at *.+-m intervals.

from the Sea of Okhotsk was carried over the site bya strong wind. The interior of the frost was composed only of ice, which formed on ,* August, and its
surface was covered with frost or snow ﬂake, whichwere attached on the morning of ,+ August. The
thickness of the frost was *.+ῌ*.. m, so the contribution of the frost to the surface mass balance and MFPanalysis was not negligible. We expect that the mec-

Matoba et al.

hanisms of formation of these various kinds of ice
layers will be revealed by detailed stratigraphic observations and chemical analyses of the ice core, allowing information on climate variations on the glacierand related environmental variations in Kamchatka
to be extracted.

Acknowledgments
We thank Kazuo Higuchi of Mountain Activity
Support in Hokkaido, and Tatsuru Sato and Takeshi
Toida of the Graduate School of Environmental Science, Hokkaido University, who also participated inthis project during the ﬁrst campaign in June. Without their contributions we could not have succeededin completing the expedition in such a short period.
We also thank Kazuki Nakamura of the Japan Weather Association in Hokkaido for provision of weather
information. We are grateful to Akiyoshi Takahashi
of Geotech Co. Ltd. for technical support and comments for the drilling operation. We are grateful toDmitry Isaev of the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology for his substantial contribution regarding
customs procedures. We are grateful to Ubix Corporation for giving us a pulse oximeter to measure oxygen saturation in the blood for monitoring altitudeadaptation. We would like to acknowledge an anonymous reviewer for valuable reviewing this paperand comments. This study was ﬁnancially supported by the Amur-Okhotsk Project (Human Activity in Northeastern Asia and Human Impact on Biological Productivity in the North Paciﬁc Ocean) sponsored by the Research Institute for Humanity andNature. The ﬁeld research was also supported by aGrant-in Aid for Young Scientists (B) (No. +21.*,23 to
the P.I. Dr. Matoba) from the Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan.

85

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