Nov 22 My friend Yuki Takahashi let me tag along today on his daily trip to the top of McMurdo called “Arrival Heights.” It was a pretty brutal place. Today, this snow covered, lunar landscape boasted sustained winds of about 30 mph and gusts up to 60 mph. Yuki monitors six projects for scientists all…
November 20, 2016 The temperature soared over the couple of days to the low 20s Fahrenheit and some snow started to melt in the warmer spots at McMurdo. Worries of tracking volcanic mud into the dorms were quickly forgotten as the temperature dropped and the snow arrived yesterday. The station is hunkered down today with…
Nov 17, 2016 I spent the day out on the snowmobiles with Elaine and fellow NSF Artist and Writer, Maris Wicks. Maris is a science cartoonist (www.mariswicks.com). While I was recording their voices, Maris was sketching. The Weddell seals make a wide range of sounds both above and below water. Everything from guttural growls and…
Part 9 A Rushed Goodbye With the possibility of good weather, our project director Patrick hoped that we would have two teams out in the field today pulling seismometers. Ideally, one team would go to a long distance station in the plane and the second would go to a closer station on the snowmobiles. Unfortunately,…
Part 10 The Comforts of Yesterday Camp We arrived an hour later at the sea ice airfield and hopped into the shuttle that passed by Scott Base (operated by New Zealand’s version of the NSF) and crossed over Ross Island to McMurdo Station. I was still clad in all the necessary layers of protective clothing…