A meteowrong, but a cute one

We awoke today to find our neighborhood greatly changed, namely, covered in snow! The fresh snow had sufficiently covered our snowmobile tracks and changed the landscape to remind us, yet again, how truly isolated and awe inspiring the Miller Range is. The sky was bright and clear, though with all the sun one could ever ask for, the fresh snow crystals sparkled and danced like the stars the ANSMET team dreams of seeing. While snow is a beautiful sight, we’d prefer to be seeing meteorites. Unfortunately, the half inch of snow was enough to cover much of the blue ice that had been exposed and many meteorites along with it. We spent the morning collecting specimens that we’d already found in the moraine close to home since these were marked with flags and relatively easy to dig out. We found all that had been marked plus one that hadn’t yet been found – 61 in total! There was no exposed blue ice in sight so we went exploring to determine the extent of the ice coverage and survey the local geology. To get a view of the area, we climbed to the top of Mount Schutt (Johnny made it to the top first and we don’t know anyone else who’s climbed it so that must be its name, right?). From there, we could see lots of snow but unfortunately, no blue ice. All we need is a wind storm powerful enough blow all that snow away and allow us to get back on the ice tomorrow to search for more meteorites. The wind has picked up significantly since we’ve been back in camp this evening, and, optimists that we are, we’ve got the Skidoos covered in anticipation of a night of gale force winds. In case that doesn’t work, though, if you happen to have an industrial size and strength snow blower and could deliver it to the Miller Range (83deg30’S, 157degE) just as soon as you can, we sure would appreciate it. We’ve been working on rigging one up ourselves, but we seem to be missing a few parts. Thanks!

Impending snow while refueling snowmobiles

Steve and Alex morning faces

-posted by Morgan. (Editing by rph)

note from rph, i can’t get captions to work right on my ipad, so they may look funny