Bidding Farewell to the Jewel of the Lotus

Aaron Putnam, a postdoctoral researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, led an expedition to Bhutan to examine links among climate, glaciers and water resources in the Himalaya. This is his final post.

Mike Roberts Ed Cook of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and Paul Krusic of Stockholm University compa red samples of Juniper shrubs in the Thampe Chhu river valley.

Friday, Nov. 2

A long, tiring drive over a narrow, cliff-bound gravel road took us westward from Sephu back to Thimpu. We dropped Tshewang Rigzin and Pashupati Ssarma at their respective houses, and finally arrived at our hotel where David Putnam and I were met by an enthusiastic and relieved Ed Cook and Paul Krusic. After checking into our room, we compared notes on our respective journeys out of the mountains from Rinchen Zoe.

Ed and Paul said that as they were taking their final steps out of the mountains, they could see the growing storm that would bring blizzard conditions to our high camp at Rinchen Zoe La. Needless to say, they were concerned about our welfare and were doubly relieved to see that we made it from the field site unscathed.

Mike Roberts Paul Krusic cored an ancient Juniper near the Timberline beneath Tampe La.

We recounted our saga to Ed and Paul, and they filled us in on theirs. They were able to exit the mountains on schedule for Mike Roberts to catch his flight. The good news was that Ed, Paul, and Karma Tenzin of the Council for Renewable Natural Resources were able to make a reconnaissance collection of samples from the ancient juniper trees growing at the timberline below Tampe La.

These will be among the highest growing trees they have sampled in Bhutan. Ed and Paul were excited about the possibility of reconstructing several centuries of atmospheric temperature from these trees, though they wished that there had been more time to build a larger sample collection. This is clearly a prom ising avenue for further research.

Soon it was time for dinner, and it turns out that our arrival coincided with the departure of Summer Rupper and her student, Josh Maurer.

Mike Roberts Professor Summer Rupper and her student, Josh Maurer, worked on Drukso Gangri.

They decided to delay their ride to the airport in Paro for one more dinner with the team. Our group met at the local pizza restaurant in Thimpu, whose specialty is the dangerously spicy “Devil's Pizza.” Also joining us for dinner was Phuntsho Namgyal, who had been so instrumental in helping to plan the logistics for the excursion.

Even though only weeks had passed since we were last in Thimpu together, and even though many of the team members had first met upon our arrival in Bhutan, it felt like a reunion of old friends. Notably absent were Scott Travis, who was afflicted with altitude sickness and had to turn back early in the trip, and Mike Roberts, who departed Bhutan the previous day.

After dinner, Summer and Josh were escorted to Paro and they departed Bhutan.

The next day, David, Paul, Ed and I were to convene at the Ministry of Economic Affairs where I was to deliver a formal debriefing lecture for Karma Tshering, director of the Department of Hydromet Services, and his colleagues. Tshewang met us at our hotel, where he dressed David and me each in a formal gho, which is the traditional male dress of Bhutan (and also requires a fundamental level of skill to put on, which neither David or I possessed).

Ed and Paul were simultaneously dressed, and we were es corted to the department building. I delivered the debriefing lecture for the glacial geology portion of our research. In previous days, while we were still on the trail, Summer and Ed had delivered debriefing lectures on the glaciology and dendrochronology components of the field work.

Tsencho Dorji A debriefing at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Department of Hydromet Services.

My lecture focused primarily on the motivations, methods, and expectations for our attempt to discern the record of past glacier fluctuations from Rinchen Zoe. Of particular interest to Karma and his colleagues was the potential for reconstruct ing fluctuations of mountain snowlines in response to ongoing climate change.

Hydropower in Bhutan is generated largely from runoff resulting from melting snow in the mountains. Thus, any upward migration of the mountain snowline will serve to shrink the existing snowpack available to melt throughout the summer, and diminish the amount of power that can be generated.

Glacier extents hinge on the altitude of mountain snowlines. So if we can use the record of past mountain glaciation to determine how past climate changes have influenced mountain snowline altitudes, then it will be easier to anticipate how rapidly the snowpack will diminish with future warming.

Mike Roberts The glacier team'in the Rinchen Zoe field area. Standing, from left to right: Sangay, Tshewang Rigzin, Pashupati Ssarma, Mike Roberts, Summer Rupper, David Putnam and the author. Kneeling, from left to right: Sangay K., Karma Tshering, Josh Maurer and our wonderful cook.

Our discussions combined elements of cross-cultural communication, as well as the void between geologists, who strive to understand how things come to be, and engineers, who are concerned with how to put those things to use. We discussed the water derived from the monsoon versus the winter snowpack, as well as the possible impact of a strengthening monsoon on glaciers.

Again we confronted our differing research questions and expected outcomes. It would take a late r visit from Professors Joerg Schaefer and Peter Schlosser of the Earth Institute at Columbia University to iron out those issues to everyone's satisfaction.

Our last major task involved shipping the samples back to Columbia University. We had spent five weeks traveling, 16 days walking in the mountains, and several days on the winding mountain roads to collect those 57 bags of rock, and it was imperative that they make it safely to the laboratory in New York. Tshewang and Phuntsho had acquired the necessary export permits, and to our delight, the precious 200 or so pounds of samples were whisked away without issue by the local air carrier office.

David and I spent our last day in Thimpu purchasing bundled prayer flags in the open market by the river, kiras for our wives, and visiting the “zoo” to see Bhutan's national animal, the takin. After noon, we loaded up a Department of Hydromet Services vehicle for the one-hour drive on the tortuous road to Paro.< /p>

Sitting on a high promontory above the Paro valley, we surveyed the ancient pattern of rice paddies, Paro Dzong on a rock outcrop over the river, and the walled Royal Palace complex as the sun set. That evening, in the corner of the hotel lobby where the wireless signal was the strongest, I was interviewed by Marco Werman of PRI's “The World” via Skype.

The next day David and I made the obligatory pilgrimage to the Taktsang Monastery, precariously perched on cliffs above Paro. The steep trail up the mountain is punctuated by clusters of prayer flags, prayer wheels, and prayer mills, where tiny rivulets are harnessed to turn a prayer wheel and send the jewel at the heart of the lotus, Om Mani Padme Hum, downstream to the masses in India and Bangladesh.

The following morning we again boarded a Druk Air flight bound for Delhi. Seated on the right side of the plane we were graced with a day of pure, clear, mountain air. The sacred snow-cone of Jomolhari was the first to rise into sight, followed in awesome succession by Kanchenjunga, Makalu, Everest and the great spine of the world stretching eastward to Afghanistan.

We re-entered the modern world in the New Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport, the past five weeks in Bhutan rapidly becoming a memory as fleeting as a prayer carried on a mountain breeze. We had experienced the uncompromising freedom of the high mountains and had fled back to the shackles of our lives.

David's furrowed brow reflected renewed worry about his courses and students at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. I began fretting about the samples, and speeding up the geochemistry. The envelope of random receipts promised days of accounting for the expense report.

David Putnam A last glimpse of the Himalaya, featuring Jomulhari or ‘bride of Kanchenjunga,' at the head of the Paro Chhu river.

Fog prevented our landing in Newark and after a grueling flight from Delhi we sat on an abandoned runway in Newburgh, N.Y., for several hours. David missed his connecting flights, and my wife, Katherine, picked me up hours late in Newark and whisked me home to our apartment in Tappan, N.Y.

The normal routine of life had almost resumed, and then - Hurricane Sandy! But that is a tale for another blog.