Riccardo Pozzobon, a 40-year-old planetary geologist from the University of Padua in Italy, died on the Mendenhall Glacier last week.
He had journeyed onto the glacier with two other Italian researchers to study ice fracture patterns in an effort to better understand the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn. The research is part of Project GEMINI and is funded by the National Geographic Grant Program. Pozzobon was also an instructor in the European Space Agency’s astronaut training course.
His companions on the expedition told rescuers that Pozzobon tripped over his crampon and fell into a stream of water that swept him down a moulin, a vertical hole in the ice that funnels surface meltwater underneath the glacier.
After he disappeared into the moulin, Pozzobon’s colleagues walked about a quarter mile to the NorthStar helicopter landing zone on the ice near Mount McGinnis and Stroller White. There, they found Jonathan Tuttle, director of guiding and glacier safety for NorthStar.
“They told me that their friend was the only one that had an inReach and phone device, so they had no phones on them,” Tuttle said.
Tuttle’s team called 911 and Juneau Mountain Rescue, and in the meantime, went to try to help.
“It was pretty quickly determined that the moulin that he went in, there was no safe entrance to, so we set a rope about 500 feet below to a moulin that was dry — that the water used to flood into — and repelled down to see if it might connect and there’d be any chance at a recovery effort,” Tuttle said.
Once he had descended about 150 feet down the second moulin, Tuttle said he could see it didn’t connect to the one Pozzobon disappeared down.
When Juneau Mountain Rescue arrived, they called off the rescue because descending into the hole filled with rushing water was too dangerous.
Tuttle called it a tragedy, and said the research team was experienced in this terrain. At least one member of the research group had done a lot of technical spelunking in both rock and ice caves.
“From a professional standpoint, it’s pretty easy to get complacent with the hazards around you and this was a good wake-up call to all of our staff and kind of everyone else on the glacier of just how quickly things can escalate,” Tuttle said.
Tess Williams, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Public Safety, said she’s not sure whether Pozzobon was equipped with safety gear at the time of the fall.
“The information that Troopers have is that he was not roped to his companions when he fell, and that we don’t believe he had safety gear on him,” she said.
Tuttle said Pozzobon’s companions reported they had stopped for lunch and sheltered in a canyon near the moulin to get out of the wind.
Pozzobon’s colleagues at the University of Padua declined an interview, but highlighted his gentle and generous character in a news release.
“Riccardo was a brilliant researcher with a limitless passion for geology,” wrote Francesco Sauro, a colleague who was not on this expedition. “He was also a generous person who was always willing to share his expertise with enthusiasm and infectious happiness.”
EuroPlanet, a European planetary science society of which Pozzobon was a member, reports that he is survived by a wife and young son.
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