Happy Holidays, all! The whole AWS team was together in McMurdo to celebrate the Christmas holiday! It’s been a while since I’ve updated this, and for that I apologize. There has been many developments, especially in the past 5 days. Lee and Mike made it to South Pole Station after a week of delays, and they were even able to complete the 2 site visits to Henry and Nico and make it back to McMurdo in time for Christmas! I’ll try to post a couple blog posts detailing the events the have recently transpired.

The five of us as we wait in line for the Christmas feast.

Every year, McMurdo has a holiday feast (for both Thanksgiving and Christmas) where they feature some specialty dishes, including prime rib, lobster, crab, and a great assortment of desserts. It’s always a great time, and as we were eating we were treated to some snow! A white Christmas in McMurdo!

The feast! We enjoyed it with members from IRIS/PASSCAL and UNAVCO, projects with whom we work alongside here on the ice.

Christmas snow!

They even had the yule log, and of course, a Christmas tree.

Some quick group and schedule updates: Mike is due to redeploy on Thursday, December 27. Elina and I will probably start trying to head to WAIS at the end of this week. As I mentioned previously, Lee and Mike finished the field work at Nico and Henry, but the new PCWS was unfortunately not ready in time for install at South Pole. Out of McMurdo, Elina and Dave took a Twin Otter flight to Gill (Margaret has been consistently canceled due to weather, no surprise there haha).

That’s all I have for now. Cheers! -Dave