Date: 12/24/03
Latitude: 81.65 degrees South
Longitude: 122.60 degrees East
Temperature: -22°C( -8°F)
Wind speed: 7 knots
Wind Chill: -31°C( -23°F)
Wind direction: not given
Elevation: 9,722 feet
Kilometers traveled: 1350

Notes on daily life:
By Dan

Today was spent much the same as yesterday; Andrea worked extremely hard to prepare a Christmas feast with the help of Tim. Tom and I spent the day digging snow pits and sampling at our chosen site. John, Matt, James and Lynn worked hard around camp to prepare the trains for the upcoming journey to the Megadunes site. What we are doing is taking down TAMCAMP, packing some of it up onto our own sleds ready for transport to Megadunes and stacking the rest securely onto airforce pallets ready for retro. There are other science groups waiting for us to build them a camp at the Megadunes site, this is why we are on such a tight time limit.

Again, we were very lucky to have beautiful weather; I have been assured that having this many days of nice weather is rare on the East Antarctic Plateau.

At ~8pm we sat down to our Christmas meal and festivities. We ate Cornish game hens, stuffing and squash; a nice change from the usual ham or turkey. The socks from Ann and Debbie in Maine were received very well, as was the soap from Andrea. We stayed up into the early hours and much fun was had by all.

MERRY CHRISTMAS