Dear authors,

thank you very much for your detailed responses to the two reviewer reports and the additional short comment by S. Wolfe. In my view, they are adequately addressing all points raised - however, as many of these comments are very major and point to potential problems in the methodology as well as in interpretations and generalisations drawn from the results, you should make careful decisions how to incorporate the criticism and the many suggestions in your revised manuscript.

All comments highlight the value of the data set as such, although certain comments criticise some of the methodological steps, both regarding lay-out and analysis of the data. Obviously, regarding layout and some of the analyses, no changes can be made at this stage. Where methodological shortcomings (being intentional or unintentional) are present, they must be clearly stated and corresponding uncertainties should be named. If necessary, too speculative interpretations should be omitted.

A second group of critical comments addresses the generalisation of the findings and the description of their linkage to (a) regional/geologic/glaciological aspects and (b) material composition of other permafrost environments. In my opinion these comments reflect a certain ambiguity in the present manuscript, i.e. the necessity to show the usefulness of the data but also the necessity to state all methodological uncertainties and to admit that spatial heterogeneity on many scales may prohibit quantitative exploitation of the data for many research questions.

A solution could be to better highlight the fact that this study should be seen as one of many (future) steps towards the quantitative assessment of ground ice, carbon and soluble cation contents and their comparison to other environments. The study does not have to address all possible links in detail - where uncertainties are (still) too large, interpretations or generalisations should be avoided and can be omitted. The corresponding research questions can then be revisited in a future study with improved methodological design.

In this respect I am looking forward to your revised manuscript,

kind regards,
Christian Hauck

Dear authors,

thank you very much for your revised manuscript. As you have seen, the reviewer very much appreciated your efforts, but still found some minor issues which have to be addressed before publication.
Please address these comments by a point-by-point responses and highlighted changes in your revised manuscript.

kind regards,
Christian Hauck
Editor

Dear authors,

many thanks for your thorough revisions. I am now happy to be able to accept the manuscript for publication.

Thanks again for submitting your work to The Cryosphere,
all the best,

Christian