Hi everyone,

About 4:15 pm this afternoon (east coast US time) I started getting a series of excited emails from individual members of the field team letting me know that G-058 (ANSMET’s science group designation) was finally scheduled to fly today after cancellation of the group that sat in front of them in the queue.  No less than 15 exclamation points were sent my way  (and two of them were red !!).  A few hours later at 8:15 pm the news was back that Brian and Amelia had established their camp at Davis-Ward.

And with that, our first step out of McMurdo has been taken, utterly critical to our plans.  Brian is now at Davis-Ward with Amelia, a BFC field support worker getting some valuable deep field experience (and,  I would hazard,  a great workout).  They have two important goals-  first,  to groom a snow runway that will allow the relatively large Basler aircraft to land,  and second,  to dig out the cache we left at Davis Ward almost 1500 days ago,  and see what has survived four Antarctic winters intact. The first means many hours driving a skidoo towing a scraper/plow; it’s the equivalent of long-distance driving over rutted gravel roads. Digging out the cache takes strength, exertion and careful resource management (no shovel-shaped holes in the tents, please). Snow that’s had 4 years of re-working in 100 mph winds can become hard as a rock.  Knowing Brian he is very, very happy to get that work started, rather than sitting in McMurdo waiting for it.

That’s all I know for now;  let’s all breathe a sigh of relief that there’s one less step to go in ANSMET’s  journey to Davis Ward.  Send your vibes of patience and preparedness to the rest of the team in McMurdo,  their turn should be coming in just a few days.

-Ralph, from foggy Novelty OH