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Date: 01/13/04
Latitude: 79.54 degrees South
Longitude: 145.75 degrees East
Temperature: -18°C( 0°F)
Wind speed: 9 knots
Wind Chill: -27°C( -17°F)
Wind direction: not given
Elevation: 7,560 feet
Kilometers traveled: 2039

Notes on daily life:
By Dan

More Driving…
I drove second shift and by 19:00 reached site N052, this is another seismic site but it has already had the seismometer removed. There are five more seismic sites (including this one) between here and Taylor Dome; all have had their seismometers removed. We have to visit each one and dig out the remaining equipment; this consists of a large foam-lined wooden box (~3’ x 2’ x 2’) containing batteries, two solar panel towers and a heavy-duty electrical cable connecting the solar panels and the large wooden box. Depending on how deep the equipment is buried, the removal process can take anything from 1 hour to several hours.
Throughout today’s drive the wind has been blowing from directly behind the trains, the sastrugi are aligned parallel to our driving direction also. The terrain is still very flat, but the snow is getting steadily deeper and softer as we progress; the forked CAT had trouble pulling the load in tenth gear and nearly got stuck at one point.

Having the wind blow parallel to our driving direction makes collecting surface snow samples for chemistry a bit of a challenge; in an attempt to minimize the likelihood of contamination from the trains I walked well over a mile away in a direction perpendicular to the wind before taking any samples.

Date: 01/15/04
Latitude: 78.55 degrees South
Longitude: 151.28 degrees East
Temperature: -18°C( 0°F)
Wind speed: 5 knots
Wind Chill: -24°C( -12°F)
Wind direction: not given
Elevation: 7,520 feet
Kilometers traveled: 2199

Notes on daily life:
By Dan

More Driving…
Yesterday we reached site N044 and today we reached site N036, we recovered the remains of the seismic equipment from both sites. Site N036 is the site of our last fuel drop before Taylor Dome and we will spend a whole day here loading fuel and rearranging cargo on the sleds.

During the last two days of driving we have gained and lost over 100 feet of elevation several times over. It is interesting to observe the surface change as we travel up and down the snow-covered slopes; the surface is typically rough, hard and sastrugi-covered as we travel uphill with the wind directly behind us, it changes to flat and soft with very few small sastrugi as we travel downhill and along the flats.

When we arrived at site N036 the solar towers that were used to power the seismometer were drifted in up to their panels (over three feet deep), it seemed that the area was receiving a fair amount of annual accumulation. However, after Tom and I had excavated a 2m-deep snow pit we were a little surprised to discover a large amount of re-crystallization occurring about 1m below the surface. The crystals were growing up to 7mm in size and were extremely beautiful and fragile, one little touch and the crystals would crumble through your fingers like desert sand. Re-crystallization on this scale indicates that the snow is very old and has had plenty of time to sublimate and re-grow into large crystals. The fact that we found large crystals just 1m down suggests that there is not much accumulation in this area at all, the drifts around the solar towers must have been caused by blowing surface snow.

Date: 01/16/04
Latitude: 78.55 degrees South
Longitude: 151.28 degrees East
Temperature: -20°C( -4°F)
Wind speed: 10 knots
Wind Chill: -30°C( -22°F)
Wind direction: not given
Elevation: 7,520 feet
Kilometers traveled: 2199

Notes on daily life:
By Dan

Today was spent digging out fuel bundles and loading them onto the fuel sled, we also had to do some rearranging of the cargo sleds. We have just received word from McMurdo that a NASA Long Duration Balloon (LDB) has come down just 8 miles away from our present route to Taylor Dome. We have been asked to retrieve the balloon science package and parachute. The rearranging of the sleds is in order to make room for the LDB so that we can haul it to Taylor Dome with us. The LDB science package weighs in at around 1800 pounds; we should have used up enough of our fuel by the time we reach the balloon landing site to carry it without a problem.

We are now all packed up, prepared and ready to leave in the morning. Next stop N028 only three more days driving until we reach Taylor Dome!