basagix field notes

I arrived to Lake Hoare camp a week ago and was surprised by the light dusting of snow on the valley floor. There were also older drifts scattered around camp. Some drifts are > 1 meter thick, a sharp contrast to last season when there was no snow on the valley floor. We enjoyed a high pressure for a couple of days, temperatures around -10C with sun. Glacier measurements were going well, got about half way through before a low pressure rolled in. The three day storm brought some interesting weather. First, the katabatic winds blew for 30 hours with gusts to 35 knots, removing all recent snow and warming temps to +2C. Then a dusting of snow, more winds, and then woke this morning to 9 cm of snow on the ground. The two no fly days have put me behind on glacier measurements, but hopefully the preparation work I completed allows me catch up over the next couple of weeks. From Antarctica 2009

After a smooth C-17 flight I have arrived at McMurdo Station. From Antarctica 2009 Life is now a combination of briefings and trainings, and pulling, packing, and preparing equipment. All the places and many of the people are exactly the same. Its feels timeless returning year after year. The analogy that I think of is an old record player. At the end of the season, the record player arm moves up. The record keeps spinning and time passes. Then upon one's return the record arm lowers and you pick up right where you left off. or maybe the record player keeps skipping in place...

A 430am knock at the door... flight delayed for 24 hrs. Our second delay. I used the first delay to capture some kite photos at the South Shore. The South Shore is located at the end of a long peninsula outside of Christchurch. The spit creates an inland estuary on one side, and the Pacific on the other. Good conditions, nice steady wind, about 7 to 10 knots. I forgot sunblock and had to wrap jackets around my head and hide under shrubs. I took over 500 images. It is a project to sift through them all, but I am getting better. The steady wind allowed me to capture my first few panorama images: From KAP After spending time at the spit I headed over to the estuary where the tide was starting to rise. Beautiful moss on the sand, with very interesting color in the water: From KAP

Dear all five of my readers, With about 24 hours of travel since pushing off at PDX, I am back in Christchurch on my way to the ice, season six. psheeew. sincerely, basagix

Talk about some interesting field work, I just found a link to space shuttle radio: http://www.nasa.gov/178952main_Mission_Audio_UP.asx It reminds me of trouble shooting Explorer's Cove met station in November in Antarctica, except these guys are weightless, orbiting Earth, and their equipment costs a bit more.

Africa photos: Safari, Zanzibar , Kilimanjaro , and Rhonda's photos too.

Christchurch, New Zealand... such a wonderful place for re-entry. Adjustments needed for night, green things, traffic, and people are always surprising. Had a relaxing day, despite continued over stimulation. Getting use to the rhythm of the modern world. Tomorrow I head back to the states in one very long day.

I have returned to McMurdo ( aka town, MCM, mcmurder ) to wrap up the season. The tasks at hand are to return issued equipment, have an outbrief meeting, ship items back to the States, and backup all data collected. Showers, soft beds, frosty boy and catching up with folks are the good parts of town. But after being in the field for 12 weeks, town requires some adjustments. First, there are a lot of people here (hundreds compared to six). Second, the buildings are overheated and dry. And most of all there is the ever present hum. 24/7. I recently became curious about the different sources of the hum. Inside buildings the venting systems run continuously. The sound of machines, and computers create a persistent vibration. Outside are all sorts of vehicles, especially large vehicles including huge CATs (loaders, trucks, tractors) , transport vans, and ATVs. I am not sure if others are aware of the hum and i imagine you get use to it. After 3 months of living in the valleys I usually feel...

I am tired, I am weary. The last two weeks have been pretty steady going with our second round of glacier measurements and LiDAR data collection. The melt season has taken its toll on the glacier surface, making travel difficult. The ablation area of Commonwealth was especially treacherous. The cryoconite holes had very thin lids, the near horizontal sun cups were deep, and there were ablation pits and channels of melt up to 1 meter in depth. This mess was covered by 5 cm of fresh snow. Conditions were... challenging, but the work was completed. On a different note, I have officially entered the world of kite aerial photography (KAP). Air temperatures had cooled off to -4C, but last night a katabatic blew through brought the temperature up to 3 C. After some internal debate whether to fly under such strong and gusty winds, I decided to proceed. My new FlowForm 16 kite shot in the air immediately. The winds were even stronger 100 feet higher. I was excited and decided to proceed by atta...

We had a distinguished visitor at Lake Hoare today, Rudolf Schuster, who was the second president of Slovakia . He was very pleasant and had a particular interest in taking photos and video.The sunny warm weather of the past two weeks is taking a break today as a low pressure is forming in the south.

Happy New Year from Lake Hoare! We had a quiet evening here at camp which was quite welcomed. We celebrated the incoming year with a movie and ice cream, and to be totally decadent we left our dirty dishes pile up. Simple pleasures here after a busy week. I have been steadily working on maintaining our meteorological stations. The LTER has a network of 14 meteorological stations in the Dry Valleys, four of which are located on glaciers. My tasks at each station are to download the past winter's data , troubleshoot any problems, and swap instrumentation that is in need of recal ibration. Maintaining the network gives me the great opportunity to travel through out the Dry Valleys. I posted a few photos from my last trip to the Wright and Victoria Valleys here . There was a moderate katabatic blowing which made flying over the Asgard Range a bit bumpy, but our helicopter pilot Paul navigated us through as smooth as possible. Our slower pace gave me more time to ponder the landscape be...