Tuesday 14 January was a traveling day for our group. John and Melissa (along with Ben Jolly, a grad student from the University of Canterbury Christchurch, New Zealand, and Suz, a mountaineer) departed McMurdo for Tall Tower! AWS by snowmobile in the morning, with the goal of reaching the site about 8 hours later. They will be camping out at Tall Tower! for two weeks using UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) to take measurements of the boundary layer, the lowest part of the atmosphere where most of the sensible weather occurs. As such, they had to bring a LOT of cargo with them (4 snowmobiles hauling ~1200 lbs of cargo each). Hopefully they made it there in a reasonable amount of time!
Lee and I did some traveling by helicopter yesterday. We flew to our AWS at White Island, Minna Bluff, and Marble Point. The purpose of this trip was to do station check-ups at each of the AWS, and there was nothing but good news; all of the stations looked fine, with only some very minor kinks.
Flying from AWS to AWS, we saw some awesome scenery. To top it off, I got to ride in the front of the helo, giving me a great vantage point of the sights. I’ll let the pictures (and associated captions) do the rest of the talking for this post.
Sitting in the front, on the way to White Island (pictured)
White Island AWS, Lee, and the helo
At Minna Bluff. It was majestic flying over the cliffs
Minna Bluff AWS
Flying from Minna Bluff to Marble Point, we saw an isolated snow shower over Brown Peninsula
The sheets of precipitation
The distinction between land and blue ice is stark
Marble Point I AWS
Marble Point II AWS
On our way back to McMurdo we saw about a dozen penguins and half as many whales!
Cheers
Dave
