Foot searching in a moraine. From left to right: Barbara, Brian, and Jim contemplating rocks.

Today was our first full day in the field. We were deployed out yesterday and arrived in the deep field around 11:30am. For the rest of the day we we set up our tents and sorted bags, food boxes and science equipment. Our camp is composed of 4 Scott tents total: 2 tents that will be our home for the next 6 weeks (2 people per tent). We sleep in them, cook in them, melt snow and ice for water, write the blog in them, read, chat, and relax in them. In short, everything that you do at home in your living room, kitchen, office, and bedroom, just compressed and cramped into a tiny space. Then we have a Scott tent for science (lovingly called the party tent). In there we meet in the evening and chat about the day, we can play card games, and cook our Christmas meal together. And the last Scott tent is our Poo-tent. It is our bathroom. In there is a bucket and a box with magazines so you have something to read while you do your business. The Poo-tent is down wind, of course. And further down wind is our pee flag, where we all pee (the Poo-tent is just for what the word implies). We settled in well yesterday. Temperatures are cold, around -20C. We had a peaceful night with the wind and ice crystals lulling us to sleep. I’m so very happy for the heavy duty sleeping bags we have. The tents are cold, in the morning our water bottles were frozen again. After breakfast we finished setting up our camp: we unpacked the solar panels (now we have enough energy to blog); we set up the skidoos, we packed our day packs, survival packs, and meteorite collection kits, and after a brief lunch we set out to do a little recon on the surrounding blue ice fields. It got really cold and very windy towards the evening and we headed back towards the camp at 5:30pm. Even though the wind was ice cold and our breath was freezing instantly on the outside of our balaclavas, we nonetheless recovered 4 meteorites today, one of which is really sizable. It was a great day. Camp chores include fueling up the skidoos, filling the ice and snow bucket with new snow and ice, meteorite inventory (including image inventory), and cooking dinner. Later tonight we will all get together in the science tent, call John to see how Team B is holding up (hopefully they will get out into the field too), and later dream of a new day tomorrow filled with meteorites and the breathtaking desert landscape of Antarctica.
-Juliane, Mt Cecily/Mt Raymond, Dec. 15, 8pm local time (with the sun high up in the sky)