Jim Karner, December 22, 2012 Larkman Nunatak

Well it’s a tent day, all day, here at Larkman. A tent day is one where the team is confined to camp, we can’t go out and hunt meteorites. Tent days are caused by a few different things, like it is too windy to hunt and we can’t see the ice clearly because of blowing snow; or it’s too windy (> 18 to 20 knots) and thus too cold to hunt efficiently; and lastly, it’s so cloudy that there is no surface definition or contrast (aka a whiteout) and driving up, over and around sastrugi (Russian name for hard, wind-sculpted snow drifts) on skidoos is treacherous! Today we have all three! Whiteout conditions, blowing snow making it a ground blizzard, and sustained winds of 20 knots gusting to 29 knots! The pic shows me waving to Andrew from about 30 yards away, it’s nasty out there.

So what do we do on tent days? Well, there are several options to fill your time such as making a big breakfast (Andrew and I had bacon and de-hi eggs), or napping (I usually leave that till the afternoon), you can read a book ,or watch a movie on your computer- remember we have solar power out here and can keep laptops, IPods, IPads, MP3 players and the like charged pretty well. Of course you can always go socialize with your teammates-like tonight we have a big Scrabble game planned in our tent. A day is a day of rest, a chance to recharge, a chance to rethink your layering of clothes when you are out working, a chance to take a sponge bath if you are so inclined (I think Shaun is doing some of that personal grooming today. So a tent day can be a nice, welcome, relaxing day when you have been working for several days straight. It’s when storms stretch for 3 or four days in a row that tent days start to get annoying! Hopefully that won’t happen here.

Andrew waving in the wind