Date: January 3, 2007
Latitude: 79 degrees, 49 minutes, 19
seconds South
Longitude: 146 degrees, 47 minutes,
21 seconds East
Temperature: −23°C (−9°F)
Wind Speed: 22 knots
Wind Chill: −38°C (−37°F)
Elevation: 2,300 meters (7,546 feet)
Written by: Lora
Kilometers Traveled 396
Meters of core drilled: 390
We had a good, and mostly flat, day of travel today. We made it 40 km to our second fuel cache. The fuel had been dropped a few weeks ago by a Basler airplane. The fuel drop was easy to find and the drums had very little snowdrifted around them. We dug out the barrels and put them on the Berco sled. It took about a half hour with all of us helping. We expected to continue on for about 20 km after loading the fuel but the there was a bit of a problem with one of the generators.
While most of us were loading fuel barrels, Josh did the preventative maintenance on the 12 K generator that provides power and heat, for the Blue Room and Kitchen. When Josh started the generator back up it did not generate any electricity. He checked the plugs and breakers but all the simple things were in working order so something major was wrong. We stopped for the night so Josh could diagnose the problem.
At dinner, (yummy spaghetti with meatballs), Josh told us that the generator was broken; the brushes were worn down. We did not have the part to fix it, but that was okay because we have a spare generator. Josh and Brian fired up the spare generator and we had heat and power for the night. There is still one problem though, the spare generator is on the first train with the mechanics shelter. It cannot be moved to the second train with the Blue Room and the Kitchen because the fork Cat is still broken. Most likely tomorrow we will hook up one of the small generators to power the science equipment in the Blue Room and continue on to our third and final drill site.
Date: January 4, 2007
Latitude: 80 degrees, 14 minutes, 2
seconds South
Longitude: 145 degrees, 1 minutes,
38 seconds East
Temperature: −24°C (−11°F)
Wind Speed: 15 knots
Wind Chill: −37°C (−35°F)
Elevation: 2,269 meters (7,444 feet)
Written by: Dan D.
Kilometers Traveled 453
Meters of core drilled: 390
Today was an excellent day for traveling. The wind died down progressively, enveloping us in a dead calm by the end of the day. Collecting snow samples in these conditions is actually a pleasure. When you turn around and see a blue sky horizon for 360 degrees, life feels pretty good.
Not only did the wind die down, but the snow surface smoothed out considerably. Today was probably the smoothest travel that we have experienced thus far. We hooked up the 5 kW Eclipse Drill generator to power Steve’s radar and it worked very well. By the end of the day we had traveled 57 km.
We were quite pleased with our progress today and we celebrated by finishing up all of the past few day’s worth of leftovers for dinner. Afterwards, we watched a movie in the Blue Room called "The Hidden Fortress" – a fine piece of Japanese cinematic history – the film apparently influenced George Lucas to create Star Wars.