2016 / 2017 Field Season – Page 5 – ANSMET, The Antarctic Search for Meteorites

Condition 2

January 25, 2017

The alternate title for this blog entry is "The Waiting Game". We are in that state where we get together for an early breakfast, hopefully checking the flight manifest screens and typically seeing our flights up there (yeay!), but then peering around the wall at the outside weather and...

RPH In Sydney

December 15, 2016

Hi all, just a quick note since I'm in Sydney and have 4 hours to kill. Duck and I sat at Willy field until 1 pm yesterday while the crew waited for the ground fog to burn off. Would have been awful but Some kind souls brought us pizza...

We are ready to go (again)

January 25, 2017

Our cargo is now reconfigured for one 6-person team and we are ready to go to the EET camp. We need seven Twin Otter flights to transfer our team, all our gears and supplies, a small fraction of which is shown in the picture. – Alex from McMurdo.

Baaack in the cargo yard agaiiinnn…

December 15, 2016

Now that we're pretty officially headed for Elephant Moraine, which is accessible from McMurdo by Twin Otter, we got to see all our gear again, get it out of the big triwalls, weigh it, measure it, and put it back into the cargo stream. It was satisfying to get...

Omnipotent Antarctic Gods (cue The Rolling Stones: “Under my Thumb”

January 25, 2017

That the Antarctic Gods control the weather here is known to all Antarctic travelers. What is less appreciated is that the gods also control activities that humans mistakenly think are under their control. Take for example, cashes of aviation fuel out at Shackleton Glacier camp. Our plans to fly...

E is for Elephant Moraine

December 15, 2016

After 24 hours of wondering, proposing, and negotiating (in both the maneuvering and bargaining senses) we have a new plan. We're sending our field team of 6 to Elephant Moraine. There's a lot of work associated with this switch- basically all the work that went into organizing our cargo for Shackleton...

Plans A through Z cancelled; on to a whole new alphabet

December 15, 2016

This has been a busy, shocking afternoon, as our existing plans for this season were completely tossed out and new, leaner plans are being built on the foundations. It all started about 1:30 this afternoon when I saw a friend in the Crary lab that shouldn't be there- it was...

Pressure ridges adventure

December 15, 2016

Hi, it's me, Minako Righter. Today is Sunday, means everyone gets day off here in McMurdo. No flights going in and out today, so no staring at flight info screen to get update. Our flight is planned on Tuesday to go to Shackleton Camp. So we have a couple more...

Musings on a McMurdo Sunday Morning

December 15, 2016

There are few times in the summer that McMurdo is truly quiet, but Sunday morning is one of them. This is the only day the local workforce gets off every week, so no aircraft are flying, no administrators are administering, and the worker bees tell the queen to buzz...

The Touchy and the Feely

December 15, 2016

Jani and Minako here! we had a few fun experiences around town we'd like to share with you. The first is a trip to the Crary Laboratory touch tank, a place in the basement of the science building where you can actually touch many of the sea creatures you'd...

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