Four Month Mark

Four months have come and gone. Sun is up constantly now. Always seems like it after noon, even at 11PM at night. I have been busy as hell till this week. Putting in over 70 hours a week, and actually working 6 out of seven days gets tiring. I am finally getting out though. Last Tuesday I went to the Dry Valley's on a site survey mission. Flew to three mountain tops to survey the location to possibly install radio repeaters next year there. The mountain tops were Hill 1750 (Some hill), Mount Mahoney and Mount Newell. We left at 7PM and got back at 11:30PM. Spent most of the time in the air in a small helicopter flying from place to place. I still took 389 pictures from the helicopter. The temperature on the mountain tops, with no wind was -8F. With the wind on Mt. Newell it dropped to -28F.

I took a lot of pictures of the actual glacier fields and geography of the Dry Valleys.

It was hard to judge distance from 2,000' in the air with no familiar size references (normal cars, buildings, even trees)you would normally see on the ground.

The sea ice was interesting too. So many different patterns the ice can assume from movement, drifting, melting and thickness.

Ice and snow are melting in McMurdo and the Dry Valleys. It still doesn't get above 32F degrees temperature wise. Sun must melt the ice and snow even at that temperature. With the wind it is commonly still -8F to -20F.

Went to Moor's Bay to help fix a internet connection problem. This research station out there has dropped sensors down into the ice (drilling holes) and then detects reflected neutrinos from space. The camp is about 50 miles south of McMurdo, and only has the one big tent and 4 small ones. They need network to pass data back to servers here and back to the US. We installed a 802.11 shot all the way out there with a repeater on Mount Discovery. Pretty ingenious archetecture for support. Anyways, here's a few picts of that area.

And the rest.......

Lots has happened, and I have a few more months left. Will try to enter more but time is minimal when working this many hours and trying to loose weight. Have done pretty good at that so far as I have lost 20 lbs.

Till Later