Hi Everybody,
We've been pretty busy
getting ready for our field camp, but in the meantime we've been able to
get outside a little bit and check out the scenery!
(A selfie up on Ob(servation) Hill, and hiking around near Scott Base,
home of the New Zealand scientists just on the other side of the hill
from McMurdo)
We also found our Christmas photo with Santa during the Christmas party.
This
will likely be my last email before we head out to the field. We're
scheduled to fly out to the Dry Valleys (Wright Valley, near Lake
Brownworth if you feel like looking it up) tomorrow via helicopter.
We've been continuing to load up our gear and getting safety/regulatory
briefed. There's quite a few regulations in place in the valleys that
are necessary to keep the extremely delicate microbial ecosystem in
balance. As far as safety, we've been given survival training,
helicopter and radio communications refreshers. In the field we'll have
VHF radios, which are your typical handheld radio, though they don't
have the best range, an HF radio, which is heavy and cumbersome but has
an extremely long range and will work if you don't have a clean line of
sight to the people on the other end, and Iridium phones, which are
expensive satellite based phones that allow you to call anyone anywhere
in the world, so I might be able to give some of you a call on my
birthday. We'll be setting up 3 Scott tents similar to last year,
capable of withstanding hurricane force winds, and an Endurance tent,
which will serve as our cook tent. Soon we'll be sampling some seals!
(a Bell 212 dropping our gear off last year, and one of our camps from last year in Taylor Valley)
I can't really think of much else to say
at the moment, other than I'm hungry and it's lunchtime. Hopefully the
weather's good and we make it out tomorrow.
In any case, Happy New Year!
No comments:
Post a Comment