Snowmobile plunge claims life of Antarctica researcher

A leading Antarctic researcher died on 22 October after his snowmobile plunged 30 metres into an unseen crevasse. Glaciologist Gordon Hamilton of the University of Maine Climate Change Institute in Orono was fatally injured as a result, according to a statement released yesterday by the National Science Foundation. At the time, Hamilton was working with a team from the US Antarctic Program (USAP) actively identifying and filling in newly formed crevasses along the McMurdo shear zone. This is a stretch of intensely crevassed Antarctic ice where the Ross and McMurdo ice shelves meet. Hamilton was using robots equipped with ground-penetrating radar to study the stability of the ice shelves.