Joel Plummer and Richard Stansbury climbed Observation Hill outside McMurdo today. This moderately steep climb generally takes people 1-2 hours to climb. There was also an uphill race today. The winner ran up this hill in about 7 minutes! Wow - that is conditioning. The guys shared their photos for this blog. [View Full Entry]

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Much of McMurdo was closed today because of the holiday. Many people spent this time hiking, eating, and relaxing. In the morning, we spent much of our time using the internet to upload photos and perform various tasks. Our team decided to use our afternoon for tourism. We met out at Derelict Junction to catch a ride to Scott Base. Scott Base is the Kiwi (New Zealand) base about a mile and a half from McMurdo. Only the store is open for Americans most of the time. Otherwise, you must be invited to be at their base. We rode along in [View Full Entry]

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A look at what we saw when we explored Discovery Hut and Hut Point. Robert Falcon Scott in 1902 established the camp at Hut Point using a prefabricated large hut made in Australia. Scott chose to winter in McMurdo Sound at the end of Hut Point Peninsula on Ross Island because this area is one of the ice-free areas of Antaractica. He originally was just going to have a small party go winter ashore, but because the building turned out to be unsuitable, the party ended up staying on the ship. The hut is built of Scots Pine and Douglas fir, [View Full Entry]

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After a nice breakfast, Jennifer, Joel, Jerome, and I took a guided tour of McMurdo Station. It took us about an hour. The tour introduced us to the various buildings that we may need to visit during our stay. One of the highlights of the tour was finally seeing Scott's Hut from a distance. After the tour, we attended a Outdoor Activites briefing, which informed us of the various routes about camp that we can hike, ski, etc. There are a suprisingly large number of hikes. However, many are now off limits due to the weakening sea ice. Apparently, our landing [View Full Entry]

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Captain Cook (Penguin) visits Chapel of the Snows. Berkley and OzGold (bears) look around at the rocks and soil [View Full Entry]

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Gallery and Journal Photos [View Full Entry]

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The station personnel held a big Christmas party for all support staff and science groups here. It was great. [View Full Entry]

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We made it to Antarctica. The trip was surprisingly uneventful. We checked in at 6:30am. We were weighted with our luggage and then cleared for breakfast. At 7:20, we reported back for a briefing and baggage screening. Then, it was off to the C-17 cargo jet. The C-17 was much nicer than the LC130 Hercules in that it takes only 5 hours to travel to Antarctica instead of 8 hours. Their insides were quite comparable. Lots of head room, but our legs were crowded with such large hand carry bags. We were also given a huge sack lunch. About 5 hours [View Full Entry]

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I just returned to McMurdo from New Harbor, and the ROMEO camera is underwater! Things were hectic trying to get the equipment running, since I thought it would be impossible to make any of it work after the technical failures last Sunday. More details on that tomorrow after I get some sleep. Thanksgiving is celebrated on Saturday here as Sunday is a non work day on station. The meal was fantastic and I am ready to head North on Tuesday. [View Full Entry]

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I finally made it to New Harbor Camp in Explorer's Cove Antarctica. This is going to be a short entry because I have been awake for nearly 40 hours now. Lets just say a bunch of horrible technical problems came up that I spent a lot of time figuring a work around for. Finally I went to bed at 1 so I could get up at 5 to move my cargo to the helicopter pad, but never was able to fall asleep. I think it was a state of hyper anxiety, sleep deprived delirium and my half concious dreams detailed me [View Full Entry]

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