The rebel base is just in the background. Can you spot it?

Sorry for the silence from over here, ANSMET fans–we had a long and successful day of searching yesterday and I was too sleepy to post last night. This morning we awoke to a strange fog and diffuse light, which is delaying our start. The effect is very otherworldly–if a tauntaun came out of the mountains right now, I would not be surprised. The light here is highly variable, and it’s incredible how the character of the landscape can change from day to day. I’m beginning to understand the draw that this continent had for the first explorers, who endured incredible hardships to experience this beautiful landscape.

Yesterday we did a traditional ANSMET systematic sweep (see my tracker for details) on the ice close to camp. This area has very few terrestrial rocks, so any rocks we encountered were likely to be meteorites. It was a beautiful, sunny, mild day with little wind, and we were able to cover a lot of ground. We brought back 46 samples with an apparent diversity of compositions. While every meteorite is a gift, we do enjoy finding ones that might not be ordinary chondrites. On New Year’s Day, Johnny gave us a special treat by taking us to see some massive metamorphic rocks near our search site for our lunch break. Seriously, the folding in this area is out of control. These rocks were seriously mashed!

Now I’m in our cozy tent watching Morgan cook up some french toast to a soundtrack of Odesza. Team Sparkle really doesn’t mess around when it comes to food or ambiance.
More later as we see what the Antarctic weather has in store for us this afternoon.

Morgan shows off the gorgeous massive metamorphics while Ellen and Con provide some background scale.

–Posted by Nina in a cloud of french toast vapor, New Sparkle City, south Miller Range, 3 January 2016