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2007

Date: December 19, 2007
Location: East Antarctic Plateau, Drill site 4
Latitude: 88 degrees, 30 minutes, 34.308 seconds South
Longitude: 178 degrees, 31 minutes, 50.844 seconds East
Temperature: −24°C ( −11°F)
Wind Speed: 2 knots
Wind Chill: −28°C (−18°F)
Elevation: 3125 meters (10253 feet)
Kilometers Traveled: 1076
Ice Core Drilled: 369 meters
Written by: Nicky

Our brisk drilling pace continued today, aided by a morning filled with beautiful weather (winds are calm!). Today, rather than lacking Paul, we are lacking Dan D. He is monitoring the crevasse radar for the second of Brian's deep radar surveys. His absence provides personal growth opportunities for other core processors. Elena takes over Dan's station (cleaning, measuring and recording) and Sharon multi–tasks by taking over Elena’s job (bagging and weighing) as well as remaining a dedicated core pusher. No personal growth for me, stratigraphy calls! However, while I wait for each core to come up, I fill my time by pre–labeling sample bags, strapping full ice core boxes and dragging a couple of them over to the science sled. We drill through the day and end with approximately 94 meters around 6:30 pm.

A poll taken at dinner determines that most people would prefer to put in a few extra hours of work overnight in hopes of leaving for Pole on Friday, rather than Saturday. So after dinner Mike reames the hole (puts on a cutter with a slightly wider diameter and cleans out the entire hole) and then Paul, Gordon, and Dan D. along with Mike, drill a few more meters. Because the hole is now so deep, the core takes a long time to come up from the bottom. So in the interim, Dan D. and Paul drill a 2.5m Kovacs core and sample it into 182 of the 200 Whirlpack bags Elena and I pre–labeled throughout the day.

Dan B. and Gordon drilled two more holes and then set up their GPS poles. Dan B. then settled in for a long day and night of running cores through MADGE. As the night wore on, he watched the weather deteriorate and knew before everyone else what we would be waking up to (spooky!).

Brian, Josh and Dan D. headed out around 8:30 am this morning to continue their deep radar survey. Brian said that today would be more interesting because they would be driving uphill! While they were out, an interesting thing happened; A Hercules LC–130 flying from McMurdo to South Pole flew very low overhead. Meanwhile back at camp, Luke was still listening to the HF radio (we'll discuss the finer points of radio frequencies at the end of this log) and overheard the pilot's conversation with MacOps. The pilot had seen our tracks in the snow and had then seen the PB track. Noticing how spread out they were, the pilot became concerned that perhaps someone was lost. Just as Dan D. was taking his surface snow sample the HERC flew right over (checking on them), low enough for him to make out most of its identifying features! Luke used the HF to radio the pilot and explain our situation. Honestly, it was more excitement than you could shake a stick at.

Luke, Luci, and Paul continue to coordinate phone calls to South Pole to discuss our arrival and what we will need. We recently learned that we have been officially invited to Christmas Dinner at the South Pole. Yum!

 

FINER POINTS OF RADIO FREQUENCIES

In a previous log, I made a mistake discussing the type of radio frequency we were using to listen to the BBC. Admitting this here will be a learning opportunity for you! I said we were using VHF. VHF stands for Very High Frequency and is generally used for line of sight communication (i.e. the antenna you're using can directly sense the antenna that is broadcasting). These are very much like the walkie–talkies some people take with them on long family car trips or vacations to Disneyland and also your car radio. So, clearly we could not see the BBC broadcasters and therefore were not using VHF. We were actually using the HF radio, which stands simply for High Frequency. HF radio is used for long distance communication. In the HF radio's case, the broadcast electromagnetic waves can bounce off the upper atmosphere on the way to their destination. That is how it can be picked up by someone half a world away.

 

Date: December 20, 2007
Location: East Antarctic Plateau, Drill site 4
Latitude: 88 degrees, 30 minutes, 34.308 seconds South
Longitude: 178 degrees, 31 minutes, 50.844 seconds East
Temperature: −24°C ( −12°F)
Wind Speed: 22 knots
Wind Chill: −40°C (−40°F)
Elevation: 3125 meters (10253 feet)
Kilometers Traveled: 1076
Ice Core Drilled: 379 meters
Written by: Nicky

Today we awoke to a near whiteout. The winds had whipped themselves into a frenzy overnight and there was damp snow blowing all over. Despite our best intentions and our earnest efforts yesterday evening, the weather seemed to be throwing a little kink in the line. Perhaps we would be unable to leave on Friday. This storm was not as terrible as the last, but still we elected to batten down all the things that could potentially blow away and take the rest of the morning off.

The winds blew on as Dan B. and Gordon, intrepid as they are, headed out with the PB to conduct their local site survey. Luke and Dan D. braved the wind to do what they could to clean up camp. Luci melted water and the remainder of us stayed inside for the majority of the day. When the wind finally died down a little, we decided to drill some more. Mike and Dan D. drilled for three hours while Sharon, Elena, and I each took a 45–minute shift because we weren't all needed at once. At dinner time we ended with a 107m core. We all were rewarded for the day's effort with a delicious dinner of surf and turf and an impromptu game of "guess the name of these animals' collectives". Here, you can play too: Do any of you know what a collective of jellyfish is called? A smack! What about a collective of turtles? A bale! Last, but not least, what about a collective of hippopotami? A bloat!

We decided, prior to this exciting edification, that tomorrow morning Brian will conduct this CMP survey. Some of us will drill some more core and those of us who appear jobless will work on packing up camp. If all goes well, we'll be headed off to the South Pole tomorrow afternoon!