The 2023-2024 ANSMET camp at Davis Ward Icefields. Basically in the same spot as every other recent visit, on the west side of the main “mitten” of ice.

Two messages were delivered to me from the field this afternoon- one in the form of an email from Robert Citron (via his sister Amy) and one more directly via voice from Jim Karner.   Let’s start with Robert: 

Greetings from the ANSMET Davis-Ward field camp! A lot happened the past few days and we had some trouble setting up our Iridium link to send the blog posts, so there’s a lot to recap. More details to come, but here’s a quick recap.

Jan 10 Lauren, Erin, and Robert took a Basler flight from McMurdo to the field camp. After arriving around noon the afternoon was spent setting up the tents and getting situated.

Jan 11 Jon and Jim came in on a Basler, and an additional Twin Otter flight brought the remaining cargo and also had a fuelie on board to retrieve samples from the aviation fuel cache for testing. With everyone finally reunited at the camp, the team set out for a quick evening meteorite search. We searched the wind row near camp and flagged 6 or 7 new meteorites for future collection.

Today (Jan 12), we spent the morning organizing the field camp. In the afternoon we set out on our skidoos to do our first systematic meteorite search. We visited the tip of the big ice tongue, starting near where the last field season left off. We did a couple passes and also searched on foot the moraine that borders the search area. The team collected 11 meteorites!

Everyone is excited to finally be out in the field and already starting our systematic search. Camp is mostly set up and everyone is finishing up getting settled in.

Weather this morning was a toasty -4 degrees F with a 18 mph wind, perfect for some meteorite hunting!

-from Robert, via Amy

Lined up for a search near the end of the ice tongue.

Next, the message from Jim, and I’m paraphrasing here.  This was basically a courtesy-call on his part since he was busy getting ready for the day’s work and he knew I was starving for information.

The first thing Jim told me was that today’s weather was gorgeous; a “Blue-Bird Sky” is what he called it,  with barely enough wind to shuffle the flags.  But the wind in the last few days during the put-in was a bit more brisk, and he said they’ve had to dig out the tent doors every morning so far. He and Brian were very much looking forward to introducing the newbies to the best kind of meteorite recovery day.

As far as searching goes,  Jim noted that there seemed to be more snow on the ice than he remembered from 2019-2020.  I asked him if it was new snow (loose and moving) or old snow (in the form of hard sastrugi) he was referring to, and he said the latter.   This is always a value judgement for us,  of course;  I do remember vividly that John and Jim said the snow cover on the ice was exceptionally low in 2019-2020,  so what they’re seeing this season may simply be a return to normal rather than anything exceptional.

I asked Jim about the state of the cache, including the fuel Robert mentioned earlier.  He said the items in the cache all seemed to have fared pretty well over the seasons;  the food was edible and the drums,  which had been carefully laid on their sides with the bungs horizontal (to keep them wet), took a little work to get out but seemed fine.  The “fuelies” did visit and take samples home with them;  both Jim and I were surprised (maybe “mortified” is a better word) that the test samples have to be flown to Auckland for testing.  Please insert old-man-style rant here about “we took care of things right there, right away back in my day”……

The last thing Jim and I talked about was how eager he was to get the group trained up in all our protocols and get their eyes trained up for identifying meteorites,   turning them into the proverbial well-oiled machine that is the hallmark of ANSMET meteorite recovery teams.  He noted that the searching so far has been mostly opportunistic, with partial teams doing a little searching during pauses in the work of setting up camp.  Now that people are getting acclimated to the conditions and challenges of daily life on the plateau, he’s dreaming of making the best possible use of the Blue-Bird day that lies ahead.

-Ralph, from soggy nasty Novelty Ohio, where today’s motto is “At least the electricity hasn’t gone out yet”.    Go Browns!