Tomoko Arai, Recon team, 6th January 2013, Szabo Bluff

Though it has been a bit windy these last two days, we did go out for meteorite search on several blue ice fields around Szabo Bluff. We are glad that fourteen meteorites were recovered yesterday, and one beautiful large carbonaceous chondrite today. What annoyed us while searching are black terrestrial rocks (probably meta-sedimentary rocks), which are everywhere and look very similar to meteorites in shape and color. These black rocks were present along with other white granitic rocks in the most icefields. It was time consuming and paintaking for us to carefully check them, so that we would not miss any meteorites. We completed searching the blue ice fields around our campsite today. Tomorrow, we hope to move to the next campsite, about 20 miles south from here, if the weather permits. Have a wonderful day!

The picture shows the granite hills of Price Bluff close to our camp, and a glacial moraine rock-field with granitic boulders and some of the annoying meteorite-look-alike rocks.

PS. From Katie – congratulations Ruth and Kofi on getting engaged! Lovely news to hear, and hope that you both had a great holiday 🙂 Happy Birthday to Christian who was on ANSMET last year, and Graeme and Hannah back home – hope you all celebrate well.