12/11/2001, Meteorite Hills
It was a beautiful weather day (relatively warm and no wind!) so we went to a site fairly far from camp to search for meteorites. We spent the whole day searching the area but only found one meteorite there (though we did find 5 others on the way to and from the site!). We were in an area of some beautiful dark blue ice, which has been compressed to the point where it has very few air bubbles in it (the ice with air bubbles is white - most of what we search for meteorites is somewhere in between this dark blue and white - more light blue). The ice is compressed as it flows around some kind of obstacle (in this case an obstacle below the ice!) and often forms a moraine, which is glacially derived sediment (or in non-geology speak, an area of rocks on the surface of the ice that have been scraped off the underlying rocks by the glacier). You can see some of the blue ice in the picture - with my bunny boots for scale! This was taken looking straight down at my feet - isn't it amazing?
Having lots of obstacles under the ice means that there may be lots of crevasses in the area - which there were! The new people among us were a little freaked out (including me!), but we've been given explicit instructions as to what to look for, and what we can and can't drive over, so we avoided what we needed to avoid and did just fine! Hats off to our field guides!
All in all it was a beautiful day with the weather, the blue ice, the moraines and the pinnacles of ice (little mounds of ice) all around. We are all a bit sore from snowmobiling over the very bumpy ice and snow but we'll get used to it soon, and we're having so much fun its easy to forget the pain in your knees and driving thumb - especially when someone finds another little rock from space!
12/10/2001, Crary Lab, Mc Murdo
After taking a rather hurried pace over the past several days, I now have time on my side. I'm waiting for Linda to show up and escort her through the Mactown experience. I'll be taking her through the survival training that all the other team members had to go through. Ours though will be a little shorter in time as were trying to get into the field a little sooner than planned to start our search and help the others. So in the mean time I'm taking care of task Ralph assinged to me, like sewing gear bags for the front of the snow machines so folks can put gear they use during the day in an accsesible place. Then getting my gear rounded up and staged for our flight etc, etc. So really just keeping myself busy.
I'll also have time to take in other fun things as well. This afternoon I'll be heading out with the divers to watch them go through 4-6 feet of ice to scuba-dive and retrieve samples from the ocean floor. This is always neat to watch them put on 3 layers of long underwear, then a drysuit to protect them from the 28 degree water, very cold no doubt. I'll have photos of that tomorrow. It's really cool to experience other science projects that go on during the austral summer in Antarctica.
A little note on the flights I took to get the 8 snow machines into the base of Meteorite hills. It was very exciting no doubt. At one point on one of the 5 flights (1 hour each way) we hit some turbulence, and I was all the way in the back with 2 of the machines when we were really rocked hard, all the machines slammed into the ceiling and came back down in an intense slam. It certainly woke me up. The weather during those flights was spectacular, which made it go so smooth, except for that little bump. We also could not have done it all without the help of so many great folks in McMurdo, namely the BFC, USAP cargo, Kenn Borek air (Steve and Louie) as well as Alana and Janine Fixed wing Ops.
The team really worked well together and everyone did a great job during the shakedown. It's a little intimadating to folks during our training to have to be taught in a hurried fashion rescue procedures for crevase extraction, cold weather camping, snow machine operation, packing, staging etc. Everyone chipped in a ton and it went really smoothly. In my mind to get 8 folks, 1900 lbs of food, over 5000 gallons of fuel, 8 snow machines, 5 polar tents, stoves, radios, sleds, cook kits, etc into the deep field of Antarctica, you have to be a hard working team. We were all that....
Jamie
12/10/2001, McMurdo Station
I just returned from my afternoon session with the divers. As you can see from the photo it's very icey and cold. Rob Robbins (one of the divers) said the ice was 10 feet thick. In order to get through the ice, a special machine (auger) drills through until water is reached. Then they pull a little mobile hut with a heater over the top of the hole. Similar to ice-fishing. Then they gear up and dive in. Today they were diving for samples of the ocean bottom to analyze certain contaminents.
12/10/2001, Meteorite Hills
The wind died during the night so we were able to get out of our tents and start our work today.
In the morning Ralph and John took us to an area downwind of a rock formation. We learned to get a feel for some of the common types of native rock such as dolerite and shale. Ralph found our first meteorite in the midst of a million of these rocks. We put some of them next to it for a direct comparison. It was a great example because it illustrated most of the meteorite characteristics such as a rounded shape and a black fusion crust. In addition it was much larger that the surrounding rocks, which is what drew Ralph to it. Since the native rocks are distributed by wind, they tend to vary pretty uniformly in size with distance from the parent formation.
In the afternoon we began our meteorite search in earnest. It was a blast. I forgot about my cold fingers and toes. All in all we found seven meteorites, one of which Duck thinks will make Cecilia very happy. I found two of the seven. Since I am not a geologist I was worried about my ability to identify them. While we were in McMurdo I had a horrible dream in which Ralph left me in the field because I had not found any at all. Now I think that I am going to be just fine.
Hello to all my friends and family. Carla, I am very glad to hear that Jake and Cautious have homes. Minnow, thanks for your message. Bob, if you send me a package could you please throw in a pair of Cebe 1919 sunglasses from Sport Chalet? I am sorry to add to your workload but I broke my first pair five minutes after the Twin Otter took off and am now using my backup pair. I miss you all!
-Mags
