basagix field notes

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...