John Schutt, First Class

As I write this,  John and Jim should be waking up on their first day in McMurdo, Antarctica.   The rest of the team is gearing up for the same trip themselves, with most people leaving the US the day after Thanksgiving.

In early October we published a preview of the coming ANSMET season, unsure how the government shutdown might affect us.  The shutdown ended about a week later, and it took about 3 more weeks of negotiations with NSF and their Antarctic contractor ASC to create a new plan.  Our goal was to preserve as much time on the ice and as many people in the field party as possible, while NSF and ASC needed to reduce impact on McMurdo and a budget already hit by the sequester (which hasn’t gone away).

In the end our season plans didn’t change too much.  We’re still heading to the Miller Range, with the following changes.

-Our season starts as scheduled,  but the preseason preparations in McMurdo (led by John with one other helper) is reduced in length (and increased in intensity).

-We’ve removed the early season work at the north end of the Miller Range from our plans to reduce the number of flights needed.

-Our season ends about 10 days early, with a nominal date of 11 Jan for pick-up from the field.

— Last but not least, I’m staying home.    I had planned to go with John to McMurdo for preseason prep work and then out with the team for the first two weeks of fieldwork.  That’s my normal routine, helping with the preseason prep, the training, initial deployment, and transition to the fieldwork. But Jim is more than capable of that stuff, and my staying home turned out to reduce the number of flights needed and population in mcmurdo enough so that NSF didn’t press for further reductions (initially they had wanted us to drop to 6 field party members).

So there you have it,  the 2013-2014 ANSMET field season, plan B.

-Ralph Harvey,  from Case Western Reserve University