James captures a photo of the team searching the blue ice in formation. The flag on the back of “Sparky” can be seen flying against the direction of travel.
Antarctica… the frozen frontier. These are the voyages of ANSMET Team Bravo. Our continuing mission, to recover possible remnants of strange new worlds, to seek out new irons and new chondrites… to coldly go where no one has gone before. Pan out. John begins singing the Next Generation theme song fervently as James drives circles around on his skidoo. Music ends. James drives off. Camera focuses on the face of our team captain, John Schutt. In a perfect Patrick Stewart voice he comments: Meteorite hunter’s log, Earth date two zero one seven point one two point two five. Team Bravo has reached the blue ice at Nødtvedt Nunatak. As expected, there is no life to be found anywhere beyond our search team. The ice was heavily crevassed and required careful navigating during the passes up and down. We located two lost space explorers during our journey. This was the most blue ice I’ve ever seen with the fewest meteorites. We found ourselves chasing snow shadows as the only dark patches on the vast ice rippled in sastrugi. The winds picked up as the away team returned to camp. It is howling out now, flapping the tent walls violently to the point it sounds like a helicopter is near. The search continues tomorrow… End. Today was a full field day. It started with James signing Christmas carols outside John and Ioannis’ tent this morning (glad I dodged that, though I am stuck with him singing Spice Girls songs in his sleep – James loves his homeland to the core). We set off and covered a lot of ground today on both skidoo and foot. The winds weren’t bad once we left camp. The higher elevation blue ice was littered with crevasses – many that could easily swallow a person for a Christmas feast. John has us trained well on what to look for and often shows us a thing or two each morning as a refresher. The lower altitude ice was more free of crevasses but also equally free of meteorites. As stated in the Star Trek spoof above, while entirely my own words, John did comment he has never seen this much blue ice with this few of meteorites. The drive home was into an escalating wind that has intensified considerably through the evening (it is still bright as morning, evening is simply a reference to the local time). If this persists it is safe to say we’ll be staying in the tents tomorrow. However, it tends to get worse before it gets better so fingers crossed we can get out there and cover some more ground tomorrow – there’s still a lot of ice to search. Once again, a very happy Christmas to one and all. We have covered 26 miles since arriving at Nødtvedt Nunatak.
Posted by Scott from Nødtvedt Nunatak camp on 2017-12-25 at 21:45 local.
Post-writing note: After reading it to James in its entirety, I’m now getting Christmas carols sung as payback for the Spice Girls comment. Worth it – I have ear plugs and noise cancelling headphones.