6 comments SUMMIT CAMP, GREENLAND– Working in the snow all day takes a certain type of skill set: digging skills, drilling skills, and snowmobile driving skills. It also helps to love what you do.
Zoe Courville studies snow and ice in the Arctic and Antarctica. She has a PhD in material science and works as a research mechanical engineer at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab in Hanover, New Hampshire. During the summer of 2008, Zoe’s research took her to the top of the Greenland Ice Cap. From November 2008 through February 2009, she’s reporting from along a 1,865-mile (3,000 km) journey from the South Pole to Troll Station as part of the Norwegian–U.S. Scientific Traverse of East Antarctica. Zoe loves working in the polar regions and sharing her experiences with others. 
Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. 
How awesome you love what you do. I have a odd job that no one seems to want even though we make
good money. Some of us are lucky to do what we do.
It’s great to see all the burley women. True Snow Freaks love a frosty work out; so happy ya’ll are safe and cheery!
Dear Zoe Courville,
During summer camp this year we watched a few of the Ice Stories videos and talked about what it might be like to be a scientist on the poles. The campers had a lot of fun watching your videos about how much enjoy studying snow.
After watching the ’snow freaks’ video, summer camper, Fawn had a question for you:
What do you do with the snow after you have shoveled it out?
Hi Fawn!
That is a great question! Usually, we leave the snow in a pile next to the pit, and then use the pile of snow to fill in the pit after we are all done working. (It’s always a good idea to stomp on the snow you fill the pit in with to get it nice and compacted, and then mark the filled-in pit with flags so that no once accidently walks or drives a snowmobile there.) We also use a saw to get nice, square snow bricks out of the pit and use these bricks to make wind blocks around where we work.
This year though, for one of our pits, we were working close to the “bamboo forest” at camp, which is a bunch of bamboo poles standing up in the snow that are used to measure how much snow falls. (When it snows, it buries more of the pole, and the staff up at camp measure how much of the pole has been buried.) Because we were close to the forest, we had to move all of the snow back to camp where it wouldn’t be blown by the wind, messing up the snowfall measurements. Luckily, we were able to use an electric snowmobile to pull sled load after sled load of snow back into camp. To fill the pit up when we were done, we had to bring snow back in from camp again with the snowmobile. If it weren’t for the electric snowmobile, we would have had to pull all the snow back on sleds by foot. And it would have taken forever.
Luv Snow Freaks…I will tell the band when I see them. This could be there big shot!!!! Jim
Interesting website, i have bookmarked your site for future referrence :)