I read with attention and interest the paper by Julkie Wee et al "Characterizing ground ice content..." I found the paper interesting, well written and illustrated, and I see no obstacles to its publication.

The Gruben rock glacier / debris-covered glacier is a key site for understanding the permafrost/glacier relationships, and there are numerous papers on various aspects (thermal behavior, geomorphological characteristics, geophysics, etc).

The merit of this paper is not that of having used the individual investigations (which are not innovative from a methodological point of view), but of having used a Petrophysical Joint Inversion in this well-known site, which has been at the centre of many scientific discussions. The built dataset consists of a potential distribution of ice, water, rock phases, eventually associated with thermal and surface dynamics data. What derives from this exercise is an integrated synthesis that supports a robust and adequately quantitative interpretation, as is necessary when we want to disentangle complex mechanical processes (glacial sediments transport/deformation, permafrost creep of frozen material) that lead to landforms that are not always clearly distinguishable.

The methods are illustrated with the necessary summary, the data are well illustrated and their interpretation clearly exposed.

In some points in the text reference is made to the contribution of geomorphological knowledge in integrating the interpretation of the data, or even some choices in the model. I understand that this is not the purpose of the paper, but I suggest adding (even in parentheses) some information about it.

In the comparison between the results of the conventional RST and ERT inversions and the PJI-derived ones, the differences relating to seismic velocities are highlighted. I suggest discussing whether those relating to resistivity are irrelevant or could have a weight in terms of data interpretation (especially the minimum resistivity values).

I added a few minor annotations to the paper’s PDF file.

Hope this helps

Best wishes

Adriano Ribolini