Crater Hill and Arrival Heights

Well, we're getting into the swing of things now. We've completed most of our training (we still have our Antarctic Drivers Licences to go), and have had our in-brief. All our gear is out of storage, and we're going through testing it now.

The weather the last few days has been mixed. Rachelle got back in from AFT before the weather really turned nasty, although some of the photos from it look interesting. We had some travel restrictions put in place for most of Thursday due to the weather. But then yesterday and today have been gorgeous- hardly any wind, and great weather to get out and get a feel for the surroundings.

Last night, at about 9:30, I went for a walk up Crater Hill again. On such a clear evening, you could see for miles, and I was able to see my first open water in Antarctica! In the distance the sea-ice edge was visable beyond Inaccessible Island and Cape Evans. Its amazing how much closer the ice-edge is this year! We'll be flying over it to get to Cape Roberts later in the month, and will get a close-up view from Cape Royds in a week/10 days when we head out there.

Then today (Saturday) we headed up to Arrival Heights, where we are doing some surveying, with Mike from AntNZ. This was to take a look around, and so that he could explain the work that he wants us to complete up there. It's an Antarctic Specially Protected Area, so we had to get a permit to even go there.

On the way back we checked out the gravity hut at McMurdo, and dug the snow out of the entrance.

It's the Halloweeen party at McMurdo this evening- most of the base seems to be heading over. I bought down one of my costumes from the Wellington Sevens a couple of years ago. Although I didn't bring down all the props, nor do I have the beard I did then. But i'm sure it'll be a good night. The only problem is that we're on dinner dishes this evening, and the vehicles will be heading over reasonably early, so I'll probably end up doing the dishes in my costume, which should be interesting!

A few photos from my second walk up Crater Hill:

The Road to Willy's Field

The crater at the top of Crater Hill

The dark line on the horizon is the open water.

Walking around the crater

The sea-ice runway out in front of McMurdo

Icebergs and open water in the far distance

The shortcut down to SB

And now some from Arrival Heights:

From the roof of the Lab

Mike adjusts the webcam.

Clearing the entrance to the Gravity Hut