The moraine we’ve been searching for meteorites over the last few days.  We picked up the flags in this photo (where we’d already collected the meteorites) and put in ~60 more flags for the new meteorites that we found.

Today started auspiciously — with a resupply fight — which, even though we didn’t actually get the resupply items we requested, brought us something even better. . . .  We had been waiting several days for our resupply flight, which always seemed to be a backup for another flight.  Finally, as the time got closer to our redeployment back to McMurdo (scheduled for 5 days from now), we were asked yesterday by ‘Mac Ops’ if we still wanted the resupply.  Although the perishable resupply items were not critical, a very important item to be brought to us by the resupply flight was a groomer.  As explained in a previous blog by Ryan, this piece of machinery is towed behind a skidoo to create a smoother landing strip.  It was to let us prepare a landing strip for a larger plane (a Basler, which is essentially a DC-3).  This larger plane would allow us to redeploy straight from Davis-Ward back to McMurdo instead of having to take multiple trips on smaller aircraft to CTAM, camp at CTAM while repackaging all our gear for the (largest) LC-130 aircraft, and then take the LC-130 aircraft back to McMurdo.

So without the resupply flight, we’d have to spend extra days and effort going through CTAM (as we did on the way out here).  But Johnny was on the phone to ‘Mac Ops’ early this morning (or maybe last night?), and voila! — a flight arrived, with the groomer, at 12:25 today (although without any of the requested resupply items. . .!)  The flight also brought a mechanic to look at our misbehaving skidoos (see previous blogs) and made some adjustments.

After the plane and mechanic left us, we headed back out to the moraine that we’ve been searching for the last few of days.  Our mission today was two-fold: to start picking up the flags that we’d put out to mark the locations of meteorites (in case the GPS coordinates for the meteorites need to be reacquired), and to search more of the moraine (we’ve searched a couple of different separated segments and were trying to connect them).

So we only located meteorites today, and didn’t actually collect any (as described in the last couple of blogs by Christine and Ryan). . .   but in 2 hours of searching this afternoon, we located and flagged roughly 60 new meteorites!  We’ll collect these newly flagged meteorites over the next few days.  If the weather holds up — very good weather today with sunny skies and winds of only ~15 knots — we anticipate being able to complete our sweep through this moraine before redeployment.

We’re scheduled to begin redeployment to McMurdo on Jan 20.  Getting us all back to McMurdo with our gear and meteorites will require 3 Basler flights over 3 days (if the weather stays good. . . ).  But before then, we get to use our last 4 days to complete our meteorite hunting, collect the meteorites we found, and also collect all the flags, as well as groom the landing strip. Please stay tuned. . . .

-posted by Shannon Walker and Devon Burr, Jan 15, 2015, Davis-Ward