Heard from McMurdo that Jim, Ryan, Devon and Shannon made it to mcmurdo last night; John and Brian are still out at CTAM trying to get the last few loads organized.
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Hello again the world!! Christine and I made it to McMurdo. It sounds like nothing, but it has been a real challenge. Just back a bit in time, the initial planning was to have 3 DC3-Bassler flights directly to McMurdo. Then, yesterday, the planning was having John, Brian, Shannon...
Yesterday went according to plan. . . for the most part. The beautiful weather at 7am had degenerated by late morning, when the Twin Otter aircraft was due to arrive, to completely overcast conditions. But we had put out duffel bags to mark the landing strip, and the pilots were able...
I just got done communicating with the fixed wing coordinator in McMurdo. The pull out from Davis-Ward is underway, and it's an amazing plan. One Twin Otter today, taking a load to CTAM and another load straight back to McMurdo. Then THREE twin otters do the same tomorrow, and again...
We enjoyed our final day of field work yesterday. We were actually surprised this was our last day as we had been expecting another day or two of work. More on this later. But, we wrapped-up our field work by doing a number of different activities. Firstly, we did...
We got the necessary camp duties accomplished yesterday -- e.g., inventorying meteorites, organizing flags, inventorying dehydrated food -- for the redeployment to CTAM. With some more grooming , the landing strip also is now ready to receive aircraft, and we have great weather for it.
Image caption: The new Davis-Ward...
I know yesterday I said I was going to write about why we collect meteorites today. I lied. Turns out I do that kind of a lot. To be fair, I do have a pretty good excuse (this time), namely that I’m tired and it is late. Also, the...
Basically, when you want to find a right spot in Antarctica for finding meteorites, you need a place where the ice is vertical (because blocked by an obstacle, like a mountain), and is ablated by wind in order to free all meteorites kept within the ice. So...
Today started auspiciously -- with a resupply fight -- which, even though we didn't actually get the resupply items we requested, brought us something even better. . . . We had been waiting several days for our resupply flight, which always seemed to be a backup for another flight. ...
Today’s weather dawned cool, clear, and windy (you know, for a change). Luckily the wind had dropped to a borderline value of ~12 mph, just enough to stream some snow across the surface and make us very uncomfortable. On a normal day, we might not have gone out (since...