Skip to content

Cookies 🍪

This site uses cookies that need consent.

Learn more

Zur Powderguide-Startseite Zur Powderguide-Startseite

Language selection

Search PowderGuide

movies

Guilt Trip: A movie about skiing and guilt

A ski trip for science

by Lea Hartl • 12/04/2016
Drill core from the firn area.

Drill core from the firn area.

Bruno Long
Greenland

Drill core from the firn area.

Bruno Long
Greenland
Salomon TV (formerly Freeski TV) heads to Greenland in the latest edition. In addition to the film crew and the team riders, glaciologist Alun Hubbard is also on board. The pros have a guilty conscience because they pollute the environment with their many flights to exotic destinations and hope that their conscience can be soothed by helping a scientist with his work. Meaningful research? Or is it more of a show? And what was the snow like? We asked Professor Hubbard and Salomon Pro Chris Rubens a few questions about the movie.

The film

The team travels to Greenland and takes a look around before heading to the ice sheet by helicopter. Their destination is the area around Mount Forel, the second-highest mountain in Greenland. Due to a problem with the helicopter, the team is dropped off further down on the ice than originally planned and experiences an unexpectedly spring-like situation in terms of snow (the shoot took place during a period of unusually high temperatures). In addition, the kitchen tent threatens to fall into a crevasse. The camp is eventually moved to Mount Forel so that it can be climbed and Hubbard can take his measurements.

The skier

Chris Rubens, well-traveled Salomon athlete and frequent protagonist on Salomon TV about Guilt Trip:

PG: The movie is called Guilt Trip. Please explain what exactly you feel guilty about.

CR: As a pro skier I lead an interesting life of contradiction. I make a living off of traveling the world, showing off its beauty through the medium of skiing. In doing so we are creating a huge carbon footprint. Which in turn is harming the very environment that we love to showcase and cherish.

PG: The idea was that bringing a scientist would help ease the guilty feeling. Did it?

CR: Yeah that was definitely the idea to make the trip more justified. I don't think any of us had an illusion that just because we brought a scientist along it would make us green. Having along someone with so much experience in glaciology, climate change and just life in general made for some great discussions in camp with lots of varied ideas and opinions. Climate change is something that we all know and talk about, so I think bringing Alun along was partly selfish so that we could further understand this problem.

PG: Can you tell us a little about how this project came to be? Whose idea was it? What made you decide against just doing a normal ski movie about a trip to Greenland?

CR: This project is definitely Anthony Bonello's baby, he has been talking about it for a while. Most of Salomon TV's films have a strong story theme to them. This was certainly a more ambitious project than most episodes, but after Eclipse last year there was a desire to keep the momentum going.

PG: How did you find Alun? What made you approach Alun, rather than, say, scientists located in Greenland?

CR: Anthony was looking for a scientist that had worked with media before and could convey science in layman terms to the public. When telling the climate change story it is important to try and avoid the doom and gloom of it. You don't want people to feel too criticized or down on themselves, because that won't help anyone. Anthony is a great judge of character and I think that as soon as he got in touch with Alun, he knew we found the right guy. When you are stuck on a glacier for two weeks it is pretty important to be with the right people.

PG: In your words, what was the science that Alun did and why is it important? What were his results?

CR: Basically he conveyed to us that any information coming from the accumulation zone would be helpful as there is relatively little data from that part of the ice cap. His idea was to take ice core samples up in the accumulation zone. These were melted down and sent off to a lab in Europe to be analyzed for isotopes and particulate matter. Basically looking to see if there is an increase in particles causing the ice cap to discolour and melt faster.

Ad

Alun's more personal hypothesis was that the record warm summers we have been having are creating thick layers of ice on the ice cap. The significance of this is that when snow melts, it turns to runoff instead of getting absorbed into the snow. It trickles down, hits the ice layer and then runs off. This accelerates the loss of mass to the ice sheet. Previously people thought these ice-layers only existed at lower elevations and that they were not an issue high on the ice cap. The discovery of these ice layers proved his hypothesis right, in this location anyway.

PG: Did this trip change your perspective on skiing, climate change, travel, or anything else?

CR: The skiing was super crazy on this trip. It was a real challenge to find something to ski. I haven't spent a lot of time around ice so it was really fun to swing some tools and get scared. We were also using ropes almost all the time so it was great for the rope skills. It was really cool to see the culture in Greenland, watching people with old traditions and beliefs.

As for climate change, when you travel somewhere for the first time it is hard to know what it is supposed to look like. You are just having your own experience there. I find that my view on climate change is more formulated from my experiences at home, where I know what it is supposed to look like or how much something has changed.

I wouldn't say that the trip has particularly changed my view, I already knew that climate change was happening. The last month of touring the movie around and talking to people has really changed my view and perception. A lot of people have really enjoyed the movie but the hardliners wanted to know more, they want to see how it affected us, how we are going to change our lives and what they can do to make a difference. It has been a really interesting month and I can confidently say that this whole experience will really change my life.

PG: Should we all stop traveling because of climate change?

CR: It's a really tough question. On a theoretical level, yes, air travel is very carbon heavy. But that is coming from someone that has done a huge amount of traveling and owes a huge amount of what I know to traveling. The things I have learned from traveling have been invaluable in how I view the world, so it is hard to tell someone not to travel. Everyone around the world lives their lives a little differently and I think that it is very good for people to see this.

My hope is that with environmental awareness we will start pushing for greener ways to do things and make traveling less carbon heavy. I think this is totally attainable. I have also realized that it's time for myself to cut down on my traveling. I have done some amazing trips around the world but it does have a huge impact. For me traveling less is an easy way to cut down on my carbon footprint. Am I going to cut traveling out completely? Most likely not, my job depends on it, but cutting down is a start.

PG: How can the hedonism of skiing be justified? Do we need to justify it?

CR: I think this is a personal question and would be different for everyone. I would be miserable without skiing or going outside and enjoying the outdoors. If I'm a miserable person I won't be contributing positively to society. Skiing and being in the outdoors makes me appreciate nature, inspires me and helps me realize how important it is to help save it. I think we can also do a much better job of making skiing a more sustainable activity. The mountain community that is built around skiing and the outdoors is one of the most progressive, open minded and in touch groups of people in the world. Taking playing in the outdoors away from them would have a negative effect.

PG: How will skiing change in the next 30 years?

CR: Well, hopefully there will still be snow. As morbid as that sounds, I feel like if it warms as much as it has in my lifetime (32 years), in the next 30, that might be a real question. That being said, I have faith that we are going to tackle this problem and hopefully slow the rate. I think that the ski industry will look for greener, more sustainable solutions in product development and in how we run ski hills. The trend into ski touring isn't going anywhere. People love moving through the mountains under their own power, it makes the skiing that much better.

PG: Who has a higher carbon footprint, you or Alun?

CR: I would imagine that most of the time it is probably comparable. These days though he is a professor so he probably doesn't travel as much for field work. When he is traveling for field work his footprint is similar to mine. He isn't afraid to travel and spread the message, he also accepts the fact we are living in a fossil fuel based society, so you can go hide under a rock and reduce your footprint, but at the end of the day that isn't really going to help the bigger picture.

Bruno Long
Greenland
Bruno Long
Greenland

Greenland's ice sheet

An ice sheet is a very large glacier (at least 50,000 km2) that largely covers the relief of the underlying land mass. There are currently two ice sheets - the Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Greenland Ice Sheet (area: 1,710,000 km2). The ice sheets - like the rest of the cryosphere - are important for our climate for various reasons. A much-discussed topic in research is the contribution of melting ice sheets to sea level rise. There is a consensus that this contribution is high - compared to that of mountain glaciers, for example - but not all relevant processes can be quantified exactly and so there are always new approaches to calculating the possible rise. Although the results do not differ in the general statement (sea level is rising), they do differ in the specific figures.

Alun Hubbard has done a lot of research in Greenland and has also published on the subject. In a recent paper (Mikkelsen et al., 2016), which he co-wrote, he discusses the possible influence of flat ice lenses in the firn region on the outflow of meltwater. Like a mountain glacier, the ice sheet has an ablation area (depletion area) and an accumulation area (nutrient area). Until now, it was assumed that meltwater can seep into the firn of the accumulation area in summer and is stored there instead of flowing into the sea. In the above-mentioned paper, the authors hypothesize that in very warm summers, massive ice lenses form in the firn area, through which the meltwater can no longer pass in the following years. Instead of disappearing into the snow cover, it flows away. This process would be a possible explanation for the fact that there was significantly more runoff in 2012 than in 2010, although both years were similarly warm. In 2010, such an ice lens could have formed, which then caused greater runoff volumes in 2012. If less water is stored in the firn area than assumed, the calculations for sea level rise must also be adjusted.

The scientist

Alun Hubbard is currently a professor at the Faculty of Earth Sciences at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. In addition to his many scientific publications, he has also repeatedly worked on popular science media projects, such as the BBC series 'Frozen Planet'. During the trip with Salomon TV, Hubbard extracted drill cores from the firn area with the support of the others. They contained massive ice lenses, just like at the sites in western Greenland discussed in the paper mentioned above.

The drill cores were melted after the initial analysis on site and taken away to examine the exact composition later in the laboratory. In recent decades, the ice surface of the ice sheet has darkened. This changes the albedo and influences the melting rate (we know this from Saharan dust on Alpine snow). The reason for the change in color is not fully understood and the particles in the water of the drill cores can provide information on whether soot or other material is blown onto the ice.

Video of the drill core extraction:


Bruno Long
Greenland
Bruno Long
Greenland

Alun Hubbard on the 'Guilt Trip' project:

PG: Who is more fun to hang out in tents with, skiers or scientists?

AH: As I said in the film - I used to dream of trips like this to far flung mountains - hence it was a pleasure to work in such a stunning location with talented yet laid-back people - something about Canadians? They knew what they were about with little to prove and were happy to drag me along for the ride without laying it on or any bull. That's refreshing and welcome relief from the usual 'big science' fieldwork campaigns to Greenland or Antarctica that can be rewarding in different ways but are often quite fraught because of the logistics and stakes involved. Senior academics also tend to be quite serious and pompous individuals, who are intensely competitive (don't necessarily exclude myself here) - making it a bit of a chore even when you're in these sublime locations doing amazing things. Its a bit sad really, hence it was just great to have been on this trip with the Salomon crew who certainly knew how to work and play hard.

PG: How accurate what the representation of what you were trying to do science-wise in the film?

AH: It was spot on - it unfolded just as the film reveals. It was a hell of a grunt getting up there to drill into the firn zone of the ice sheet and when we did - I had no idea what we'd find. Yes, the science story was somewhat simplified and cut to render it accessible to all. But it's not easy to convey the full complexity of processes going on up in the firn zone. Hence, it gets reduced to a few sound-bites but they were not far off the mark in terms of what we were doing and why.

PG: How do you launch your drones when there are no pro skiers available?

AH: Okay - so that sequence was a tad contrived. We actually had a few successful UAV (Editor's note: Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) missions - where the drone was hand-launched and was landed just fine (mostly - it had one very hard landing but survived after repairs). So when it didn't return from the mission over Mt Forel - I was genuinely disappointed. When it headed off on that sortie, I knew its chances were slim but it did make for an entertaining section of the film.

PG: In your previous work you and your coauthors have outlined how ice layers in the accumulation zone may affect runoff. The point of taking the cores shown in the film was to confirm that ice layers are present in an area other than what was discussed in that paper, correct? In what year did the ice layers in those cores form? Were they more recent?

Drill core from the firn area.

Drill core from the firn area.

Bruno Long
Greenland

Drill core from the firn area.

Bruno Long
Greenland

AH: Yes - there's been a lot of work focussing on the western - Kangerlussuaq - sector of the ice sheet. I wanted to see if what we found there in terms of the impermeable, refrozen ice layers was happening elsewhere at high elevations across the ice sheet.

The biggest hurdle is that the accumulation zone is a very costly and difficult place to access (as we see in the film), so when Anthony offered me the place - it was a no brainer to propose a series of cores in the Mt Forel region. And yes, I did find very distinct, thick ice layers - likely from 2007, 2010 and 2012 in the core, and, now - after this last record warm summer - another extensive 2016 layer will have formed too. I'll know for sure when I get the geo-chemistry analyses back in the next month.

PG: Was there something else that you learned from the cores?

AH: Yes - they also tell us how much snow the ice sheet is receiving. The ice sheet is like a bank account - it receives mass input as snow deposits and spends it through melting and calving outputs. There are though very few measurements of precipitation across the accumulation zone. It's well established that overall, the Greenland ice sheet is now losing its mass at a mean rate contributing over 0.8 mm of global sea level rise a year (risen up to 1.2 mm in 2012) - but we're still uncertain about the spatial and temporal variability in the snow recharge - hence any real data (rather than modeling/re-analysis estimates) from the accumulation zone are crucial.

We're also analyzing the samples for dust and organic carbon; it'll tell us how much soot is being deposited onto the ice sheet from wildfires and combustion drifting from North America. This is an important issue since the ice surface has been darkening over the past decade - and that albedo reduction radically alters the amount of incoming sunlight that is absorbed and available for melting ice. We're still not exactly sure what's causing that darkening - whether it's material emerging from within the ice or being blown onto it or actually biological. Its probably a combination of all three but the core analysis will shed some light on that.

PG: Would you say that this Greenland trip was scientifically successful, in terms of publishable results? How important was getting some publicity for science and the climate change discussion?

AH: Definitely. I plan to publish one paper on the firn core stratigraphy and changes in density/refrozen ice layers therein and a second on the geo-chemistry/organic carbon analysis.

For me - none of it was about the climate change discussion; I've done much more targeted media stuff, for example in the BBC's Frozen Planet documentary and recently in a youtube short film. I'm weary of ramming climate change down people's throats and also try hard not to be too preachy - particularly to already converted audiences. To be honest - I didn't have a clue how the Salomon film was going to pan out - or that it was even called 'Guilt Trip' until a few weeks before it was released.

PG: Climate change guilt is a common theme in the skiing world. Do you feel guilty when you get on a plane to gather field data? How about when it's for a conference?

AH: Not really - I very much enjoy my existence on this lovely planet though do attempt to minimize my impact on it. It's why - of all fieldwork - I've most enjoyed operating in Greenland, Antarctica and elsewhere off a sailboat. As well as a lower footprint - it's also (mostly) more relaxed, enjoyable and effective than helicopters. Sadly though, a boat won't deliver personnel and kit to the interior of the ice sheet - so ultimately you can't escape the money and fuel burners if you're chasing the big science stories.

As for conferences - I tend to avoid them as much as I can - at least the big ones. Next week is the "AGU" (editor's note: American Geosciences Union, world's largest geoscience conference) - a massive conference with over 20,000 geoscientists all descending on San Francisco to inform the world how important their work is. I go every few years - to do my bit and remind myself what a circus it is. Perhaps, that's a little harsh - I went last year, gave a few talks and got lots out of it. I'm happy to missing it this year though. I do really enjoy the low key, informal conferences with around 100 people. The International Glaciology Society holds its annual branch meetings each autumn - they are really good fun - you get to meet and talk to everyone - usually over a beer or two and that's always when the best plans are laid.

Bruno Long
Greenland
Bruno Long
Greenland

PG: Final question - who has a higher carbon footprint, you or Chris?

AH: Tough call... Chris lives the life but then I've done my fair share of JetA burning too. I've driven hovercraft, skidoos, speedboats and aircraft on and around the ice sheet. At home I drive a camper van and a dodgy Russian motorbike-sidecar outfit built in 1969 - not exactly efficient - maybe slightly better gas mileage than a Hagland or Humvee. I am though loving my new Salomon touring skis (courtesy of the trip)... so maybe will be a little cleaner and greener this winter after all.

Literature: Mikkelsen, A. B., Hubbard, A., MacFerrin, M., Box, J. E., Doyle, S. H., Fitzpatrick, A., Hasholt, B., Bailey, H. L., Lindbäck, K., and Pettersson, R.: Extraordinary runoff from the Greenland ice sheet in 2012 amplified by hypsometry and depleted firn retention, The Cryosphere, 10, 1147-1159, doi:10.5194/tc-10-1147-2016, 2016.

Photo gallery

ℹ️PowderGuide.com is nonprofit-making, so we are glad about any support. If you like to improve our DeepL translation backend, feel free to write an email to the editors with your suggestions for better understandings. Thanks a lot in advance!

Show original (German) Show original (French)

Related articles

Comments