Earlier in the week one had gotten pulled into the water and needed a good drying out. They managed to get it back into good working condition. The vent that we decided to monitor first is one we call Trail Vent as it surfaces very close to a trail that hikers can take out onto the glacier. It is a very new vent. In fact it just opened up a couple of days ago.
New vents can form from year to year and old ones can plug up and stop flowing.
The same is true of moulins. This particular vent is best suited for this approach. After getting the ISCO set up we hauled 160 pounds of rock salt, a plastic barrel and a couple of five gallon buckets out to the nearest moulin, maybe a quarter mile or so up the glacier. After looking it over we decided to go to one just a little farther away as it looked like the better of the two to work with. We decided to use a lot of salt initially since we weren t sure how much it might get diluted before exiting through a vent.