Date: December 10, 2006
Location: Taylor Dome
Latitude: 77 degrees, 47 minutes South
Longitude: 158 degrees, 43 minutes
East
Temperature: −-32°C (−11.2°F)
Wind Speed: 6 knots
Wind Chill: −32°C (−26°F)
Elevation: 2,365 meters (7,759 feet)
Written by: Joe
Meters of core drilled: 100
Notes on daily life
This morning Andrei and Mike were hard at work again finishing the beautiful new shelves in the galley out of extra plywood laying around camp that was used for the cargo transport to the field. One good thing that has come out of our departure delay is the constant upgrades to the trains, both inside and out, that various people have taken on to keep themselves busy. This will, in the end, make our lives on the road much easier and more comfortable. Gordon and Steve took out the Pisten Bully to get another shallow radar trace. Steve’s main radar unit was not working properly after yesterday’s excursion, but after an evening repair session by Dan to fix one of its computer boards that had worked itself loose it looks like it is up and running again. Lora spent some time working with her radar equipment as well to confirm that results measured in her field experiments were interpreted correctly. It is always good to double, and even triple check data in the field, as this is not exactly an easy place to come back to should something go wrong with your equipment. Brian worked on fixing his radar unit after an encounter with a rather large bump during yesterday’s data collection and in the afternoon it was ready for one final deep radar trace to the drill site. Paul, Gordon, and Steve joined him on the excursion and the data was excellent. Lora and I took out her radar once again for a few more experiments, which also proved informative. Josh completed the huge task of removing 2 miles worth of runway flags. This was no small feat as many of the flags were driven into the snow so deep that it required the strength of the Caterpillar tractor to extricate them from their icy confines. Dan B. continued work on his computer code to run his density-measuring instrument.
Date: December 11, 2006
Location: Taylor Dome
Latitude: 77 degrees, 47 minutes South
Longitude: 158 degrees, 43 minutes East
Temperature: −20°C (−4°F)
Wind Speed: 4 knots
Wind Chill: −26°C (−15°F)
Elevation: 2,365 meters (7,759 feet)
Written by: Lora
Meters of core drilled: 108
Happy Birthday Dan B.
We celebrated another birthday on the ice today, happy birthday Dan B. Dan chose hamburgers and carrot cake for dinner and Encino Man for the after dinner movie.
Our camp no longer looks like a camp, the sleds have taken shape. All the science cargo, fuel, mechanics tools and food boxes were loaded onto sleds today. The sleds will be hitched up tomorrow. The sleds are as follows: the Blue Room, the Mechanics Shelter, the Kitchen, the radar sled (or pope-mobile!), the science cargo sled, the fuel sled, the food sled, the ice core box sled, the tool/mechanics sled, the 2 inch drill sled, the 3 inch drill sled and the outhouse/shower sled. That is a grand total of 12 sleds, plus three little Nansens and one small Siglin sled that are used with the snowmobile. The little sleds will ride on top of big sleds while in transit. Our active vehicles while moving will be the Pisten Bully and the 2 Cats. The snowmobile rides on a sled.
Everyone helped to build the sleds today. It was tiring work with lots of heavy lifting. Cathy spent a lot of the day securing items in the kitchen and stocking the pantries with food for the traverse. When we are moving, the kitchen cannot function fully; no water melter or stove when the sleds are in motion. We prepare most of the food in advance as well as melt and store all water needed. We hope to have the sleds moving tomorrow or the next day. We have completed all of the science at Taylor Dome and are ready to get the traverse moving. Rick and Paul fixed the broken skis, hopefully we can take them out for a spin soon.