Greetings from (balmy) Antarctica!

It’s Dave, back at the blog-posting frenzy that defines our Antarctic field season! It’s good to be back on the ice, especially when friends back home in the Midwest are dealing with an *Arctic* blast that will at times make it feel 100 degrees colder in the US than here in McMurdo. Talk about the perks of going to Antarctica.

This year, Melissa Nigro, a post-doc from the University of Colorado-Boulder, and I flew down together to meet up with Lee Welhouse, who has been here since 10 December 2013. We arrived in McMurdo yesterday in the late afternoon.

Prepping to leave Christchurch on the LC-130. Lots of cargo, but luckily still enough leg room

Getting off the plane and onto the Antarctic ice (Melissa is in the foreground on the right, with the blue hat)

One of the first things we noticed was how slushy the snow was at Pegasus airfield. The road to Pegasus is in pretty poor condition because of the warmth (it was around 40 F when we landed), and we think that’s what caused Ivan the Terrabus to break down on its way out to pick up all of us and bring us to McMurdo. We rode in on a shuttle van, and that was a bumpy, fish-tailing, wild ride!

While I will be doing work with Lee on AWS maintenance, Melissa will be camping out for a couple weeks with John Cassano, also from CU-Boulder, at our Alexander Tall Tower! AWS. In addition to conducting their research, they may be able to take care of a few maintenance issues with Tall Tower.

Lee has been busy prepping for this field season by getting cargo ready and scheduling helicopter and Twin Otter flights. He has also visited three AWS sites: Pegasus AWS (changed data transmission to freewave), Schwerdtfeger AWS (changed the power system), and White Island AWS (changed the power system and fixed minor issues caused by vibration). Hopefully this season will be full of numerous blog posts about all the AWS we visit.

That’s all I have for now. Stay warm in the US!

Dave

Me after landing (photo taken by Melissa)