A Painting at Palmer Station Showed Where the Ice Used to Be

Author and traveler Brad Olsen toured Palmer base with his shipmates, after the manager made an exception to the usual rule.

The station normally does not let visiting ships come ashore because it is strictly for research, Olsen said. He said he argued that three Americans were aboard and paid taxes, and the manager said to come on, including their Polish fellow travelers.

In the galley, the manager pointed to a painting of the glacier out in the bay. He told the visitors to take a picture of it, and said he would explain why later.

Outside, he pointed across the same bay to an island with a little ice cap on it. Olsen said it was clearly visible as an island, and the manager told them to photograph that too.

The two pictures showed the same place at different times. In the painting, a glacier filled that part of the bay, while the present view showed open water with the island standing apart.

The manager said the area around the Palmer Peninsula was losing ice.

The manager said he had been coming there for 20 years. Olsen recounted him saying that mountains now seen in the distance could not be seen when he started, and that the ice cover across Anvers Island was getting smaller.

Olsen said the island had been called Pi Island after its connecting span of ice broke apart on March 14, International Pi Day.

The comparison was a glacier in the old painting and an island in open water today.