Barbara is surveying our impressive lunch spot inside a massive wind scoop behind a mountain.
Vapor deposited ice crystals.
Despite our fear for bad weather yesterday we woke up to a beautiful sunny and totally windless day. Temperatures were still below zero F but with no wind the sun felt warm. I even dared to go out without my 5th fleece layer (granted it came back on after lunch because temperatures dropped but I’m still proud of myself). We had a fabulous day in the field. We visited a huge wind scoop behind one of the mountains and decided to have lunch there. In this area I was also introduced to crevasses. They are beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Beautiful because of the deep deep blue color they expose in depth and the huge vapor deposited ice crystals that grow inside them. Terrifying because they can swallow you up whole and if you are not experienced you might not recognize them since they are snow covered. One wrong step and you crash through them which could be the end of you. Lucky for us we have Brian with us who was carefully guiding us through that area. The day ended with a total recovery of 18 meteorites.
Temperatures continued to drop and to our dismay we awoke today to partially overcast skies and wind. Wind makes everything so very cold. We decided to wait for an hour to see if things would clear up. Overcast skies are good for finding rocks on ice but bad for distinguishing terrestrial rocks from meteorites. And overcast skies take away the contrast and shadows of the ice and snow. What normally looks like hilly and treacherous snow areas in which you can tip over the skidoos now looks plain white and smooth. Very dangerous. At 10am things seemed to clear up and we headed out. All my layers were back on today. Light snow had fallen over night and the blue ice was dusted with what looked like powered sugar. So pretty. We traversed a lot but only found a few meteorites today but of those, 3 were achondrites. That brings our total meteorite count up to 71 including 7 achondrites and 1 iron meteorite. We are the first people to set foot on and search this particular ice field which makes us feel like true explorers and since explorers get to name the area of exploration we christened our ice field “Achondrite Orchard”.
Overall it was a good but very cold day. I had to put on a 6th fleece layer that I had taken with me just in case. By the time we were back in camp we all had frozen feet and hands. My water bottle, which is tucked into a cozy-thermos, froze while in the field. So back in the tent I was delighted to find my other water bottle still contained liquid water. This particular water bottle has a drinking cap which freezes all the freakin time and then you can’t drink from it anymore. So it became my tent bottle very early on. I was very thirsty coming back from the field for obvious reasons. The tent was very cold as usual but I my tent bottle still contained all liquid water. I didn’t think about it any further and started drinking. On my second or third sip I suddenly felt the liquid water that just left the bottle turn into ice while entering my mouth. It was such a weird sensation that I almost spit the entire thing into Barb’s face because I was not expecting this and for a se cond didn’t understand what was happening. I yelled out a swear word, held up the bottle, and before Barb’s and my surprised eyes the liquid water in my bottle crystallized into ice. We had just witnessed a supercooled liquid (water) turning solid (ice). Physics, always ready to surprise you. Literally super cool 🙂 Fun ending to a super cool (cold) day!
Juliane at Mt Cecily, Antarctica, Dec. 20th at 9pm