A usual day hiking up to the ICO- Station on the Pico Mountain


Looking up to the top
Every time it starts with checking the forecasts as well as the webcams in the evening the day before the next hike to figure out how the weather situation is or will be on top of Pico. Once again we do this in the morning and so the hiking procedure is started. Together we have a short breakfast and prepare the food for the day always with regard to the total weight of the backpack in the end when we gathered everything else we need up at the station that day (sometimes for example we have to bring some tools).
With our car we drive up to the Casa da Montanha, filling the documents for hiking up and get our GPS-tracker.
ICO-Station
Then the hardest part starts: the hiking root definitely needs some experience because of its steep parts, the sharp rocks and also the loose stones (my advice: it is always better to trust the rocks because you have more grip). Another thing is that the weather can change fast and at anytime.
Normally it takes 3 hours to go up and 4 hours to go down - with the exercising of the last weeks it takes around 1,5 to 2 hours for the ascent and the same for descending.
When we are up we cross the crater until we reach the station.
View up there around the station
We unlock the station door and have a first look on the instruments. We shortly rest for a little food to refresh ourselfs and then we go on with all the things we have to do up there.
This means several instrumentation-checks for me and for the colleagues from Michigan Tech too. Also they take samples and sometimes we have to repair something or the guys from the Casa da Montanha ask us to service for example their devices up there.
With the right weather you can see the whole island, some nice clouds and Faial too
Almost every stay up there means that time runs fast what leads to that we leave the station in the later afternoon. One old rule is also valid at Pico Mountain – the descent in the end can be quite harder then going up the mountain. But after doing it several times it became kind of a challenge to do it fast to be back at the house soon and enjoy a dinner together accompanied by a nice discussion for example about the evaluation of the days work.
 
TROPOS Instruments

The day when the helicopter brought us the instruments



Who's up for a hike to the station?


The Team: Simeon, Oliver and Claudio
Finally I want to say thank you again to Claudio and Simeon from Michigan Tech for making it possible to measure up there at the ICO-Station.

It was an interesting time learning a lot about the station and how it works - especially working together with them was a pleasure! Also their help and experience was very important and essential for the part of the Azores campaign that took place on mount Pico.





Text and pictures by Oliver

Kommentare

Kommentar veröffentlichen

Beliebte Posts aus diesem Blog

Short bye to Pico - My visit at Graciosa and the Helicopter-flight on Monday, 17th of July

Bild
Clouds over Graciosa - the only clouds that were close enough that day Last week Silvia asked me if I am interested in visiting the scientist-group at Graciosa and if I want to see how research and daily work is going on at Graciosa-airport. After shortly thinking about it (and some slight worries, that in the meantime when I am at Graciosa there could be another shut-down at the ICO-Station on Pico mountain) Birgit organized the flights. The trip to Graciosa took a whole day, because there were no direct flights from Pico to Graciosa and so I started around 9 am. First I had to take the ferry from Madalena to Horta and had my first flight from Faial to Terceira. After waiting a few hours at Terceira-airport I took of at 16:10pm and 30 minutes later I arrived at Graciosa. View from the helicopter It was nice to see how the group worked together and after a nice welcome, they introduced me a little in how everything works at the airport. The next day ...
Mehr anzeigen

Final flight or one more?

Bild
Below the helicopter Eye-to-eye with a cloud The helicopter returned from Pico with everyone smiling. As ACTOS and SMART-HELIOS were ready for take-off, the smile of the pilots got a bit smaller due to their reduced lunch break. But nevertheless, we started at 12:55. As the Stratocumulus was too far to the north, we decided to make some Aerosol-legs. In total we did four of them on 7000 ft, 4000 ft, 2000 ft and 1000 ft, so one above the inversion and 3 below. We saw some slashes of wales. But every time we got closer, they disappeared again. During our flights we overflew and circumnavigated some single cumulus clouds. In the end, the only stratocumulus like cloud was in the lee of the island. On our way back, we sampled this cloud flying upstream to the island. Then we safely returned to the airport after almost two hours. SMART-HELIOS worked again the whole time with a reduced sensor package, while the inertial moment unit of ACTOS failed. Thus, it will be hard to corre...
Mehr anzeigen

Another Aerosol flight and view to Pico

Bild
Today it was a perfect aerosol flight again. Although the 'cloud people' was a bit frustrated, aerosol people were happy to get good data. After a profile up to 7000 ft we flew horizontal legs between to fixed points in different heights. The sub cloud layer (up to 750 m) was well mixed and number concentration of particles was quite constant in one height while number concentration in the free troposphere (FT) was changing a lot. There was again a sharp increase in number concentration (6000 ft) near the probable inversion, it was again higher in the FT. We could manage a flight leg directly under the clouds as well as a cloud profile. A 10 min leg was flown in 2000 ft and 1000 ft to calculate vertical transport of aerosols. We also were lucky to have a great view on Mount Pico and the Island Graciosa, where from now on all measurements are set up and running (Thanks to Kay and Karine and Pico-Team!).   ACTOS camp from the air: everyone is waiting for the landi...
Mehr anzeigen