I just got off the phone after talking to the half of our people that are in the Miller Range.  They are in a fantastic mood, very upbeat and feeling fine.  They haven’t posted a blog in a while because they have very limited ability to charge up electronics;  all their solar power stuff is at CTAM camp and the small generator they have is being prioritized for the critical satellite phones.  Weather is good and they’re hunting for meteorites, but they don’t have enough collection gear to recover the specimens,  so they’re just flagging them for now.  The area they are in is made up of lots of little odd-shaped icefields rather than a single large icefield,  and they’re finding meteorites on these patches,  so they really have to concentrate and scour every corner of every patch.  They’re also working in local moraines and doing some reconnaissance.   They’ve got plenty of food and fuel for the time being and they’re very comfortable,  so no worries from a survival standpoint.  They feel isolated from the rest of the ANSMET family, however,  calling them “the other team”……  but to prove they don’t really feel that way,  they’ve decided to put off celebrating christmas until the team is made whole again!   I think that’s fantastic.

Meanwhile Jim and the newbies Alex, Morgan and Manavi are still in mcmurdo.  The christmas holidays begin right now and so there won’t be any flights.  A few LC-130’s need fixing and crews get maxed out on flight hours quickly so delays continue.  But they’ll get a very nice holiday out of it- I’ve been lucky enough to experience christmas in McMurdo and it can be a very fun experience.

I hope all our readers will ask Santa for miracle LC-130 cures and a bunch of flight crews that are bored and looking for things to do……

Merry Christmas!

-posted by rph from mcmurdo