Waiting for the helo to take us to New Harbor
Half the team takes off
Here we go!
David, Bob, Kevin, and Julie
McMurdo from the helo! Ahhhh! Look at Mt.Erebus smokin' in the background
The Hercules - these are the planes that fly to the South Pole
The ice runway and the airfield
Some plane taking off (?) on the ice runway
Smokin' volcano
Cape Evans
The edge of the sea ice
Big ass crack in the sea ice
Icebergs stuck in the sea ice
Fun ice patterns
View of the Dry Valleys from the helo
New Harbor
New Harbor! Remote field camp for 2 weeks (I'm here for one)
Sea ice
New Harbor camp
The dive Jamesway on the sea ice
Landing
Inside the Jamesway
Some folks sleep in tents, I chose to sleep near heat. Very exciting to be warm.
Sally
Views from camp
The Arctic Oven tent and the hotsy melting our hole
How to melt a hole through 15 ft. of ice
The seal flippers? Of a guy with a gun?
Erebus and the ice
Paul and Jennifer
New Harbor field camp
Erebus
The Arctica Oven - a place of hard work and fun play (from 6pm to 7pm)
David and his orange
Cocktail hour in the Arctic Oven.
Paul crackin' up
Snooze time
You can see the Arctic Oven in the distance
Kevin, Jennifer, and David on a hike after dinner. I crashed....
My shadow and the Jamesway
Kevin and Jennifer on the ice getting ready for a dive
Real Antarctic diving with no hut!
The dive hole
Nutter Butters down!
Kevin O'Conner!
Done for the day....we work hard and usually get a break for an hour before dinner.....and then we usually work again or collapse
Paul making us a lovely dinner
Stacy and the Paul Cuffee water drop
Bye bye
Making room for a diver
In goes Fisher
Tight hole for Fisher
Bob and water drops
Heman delivers cooler
Ahhhh - a hard day of work ending with a good celebration glass for all the hard work
Interesting glass for DJ
The man never stops smiling
I'm actually in this picture!
Kevin's great hair
Lovely Paul
Water drops at a team meeting
Resupply of water and other goods for us!
DJ pilots SCINI with some water drops! You can see some features on the top left screen. That is one of Paul's old floaters!
Yeah!
Mixing Crown Royal and Bailey's together after we found all of Paul's old floaters, transects, and cages! Celebration time!
My sweet sister sent me some chocolate! It arrived in New Harbor via helicopter. Must be the coolest chocolate ever eh??
Kevin and I were given a few hours to hike to a huge glacier as a treat before we left New Harbor. Here we are leaving the camp far behind. Look carefully and you can spot our yellow tent on the ice (for SCINI dives and normal divers)
Iceberg in the distance
Camp
Our first good view of the Commonwealth Glacier
Wow.
Kevin strikes a pose
Me!
New Harbor with Mt.Erebus in the background
The Commonwealth Glacier - Dry Valleys, Antarctica
Julie and the big hunk of ice
Meltwater ice
Kevin walking along the streambed
The bolete-shaped hunk of ice
Kevin hydrating with some glacial ice
This was wierd. We think it might be an invasive?? There probably shouldn't be a filamentous green algae growing in Antarctica. We were shocked to find this and have some research to do because of this find...
Kevin was shocked by the sight of something green.
Neat rock
Dirty hiking boots
For Lance's class
Along the moat on the way back to New Harbor - see Mt. Erebus in the background?
I love this place.
Hiding in the big reds
The New Harbor walls
My name and Kevin's
Getting picked up to go back to New Harbor and trade time with Tina and Kamille
Sad to leave
Bye bye New Harbor
Erebus smoke
Hut Point and our dive hut with Erebus in the background
Our dive hut
Turtle Rock and seals
LT's (the driller) crazy rig - the cat, the driller, the hut, and the drill. Our Tucker is close behind..... we took all of this out to Turtle Rock and then took it all back to McMurdo because we were not successful at drilling a hole. =(
I'm cute and fluffy
This little one still has an umbilical cord attached
Talkative
Floppy
Seals and Mt.Erebus
Kevin and LT - see the skua flying to their right??
A bird!!! Skua!
Clear sign of a seal birth!
LT and Kevin head up Turtle "rock" (more like "hill")
All those black dots are seals - the red flag (on the left) is marking Stacy's site (we could get over to it because of dangerous tidal cracks in the ice)
Our shadows - Mt. Discovery in the background
Seal mamma talking to Julie(?) or her pup(?)
I'm indicating with my hands that I could hear seals vocalizing under the ice while I was sitting there. Totally cool.
Mamma
Mamma and pup
This mamma was digging around in the snow
Kevin and our lovely Tucker
Big reds in a white landscape!
Turn up the volume!
Yeah! I got to get out of little America for a few hours!
Scott Base
The bar
Dane and Matt - GAs that came out with us the Little Razorback
Going to check out the ice caves on the Erebus Tongue
Kevin in his hot drysuit underwear and bunny boots
Julie in the ice caves
Lydia and Emily
Mt. Erebus and the Erebus tongue
We were diving right under this ice at Little Razorback
Our dive site
Little Razorback
Our hut at Little Razorback
Me looking good in my drysuit undies
Evans Wall - that awesome dive site!
Erebus Tongue ice caves
Mac Town has some neat art around it
Discovery Hut
Kevin and Julie's shadows with Discovery Hut
McMurdo in full summer (no snow!) and Discovery Hut
Hut Point (our dive hut) and the Observation Tube
Air field
Skua
Beautiful wing patterns and cool predator tail!
More cool McMurdo art
Kevin getting prepped for the Scott Base skirt party
Oh my!
David gets his tutu on
Iceberg from Evans Wall - Mt. Discovery in the background
More icebergs
Inside the ice cave at the Erebus Tongue
Kamille and David in the ice cave
Jennifer and Kevin
David doing the penguin slide
Gorgeous view of McMurdo Sound from the Erebus Tongue
Barne Glacier
Julie and the big ol' Barne Glacier
Kamille and Kevin demonstrating the size of the Barne crack in the sea ice
The Barne crack - yikes!
Weddell seals and the Barne crack
Tina
Erebus from another angle
The Nimrod Hut and our team. This hut was built by Shackleton in 1908 during the Nimrod Expedition (and the Adelie penguin colony in the background)
The garage used to be here - it housed the first motorcar that was brought to Antarctica. The car got stuck in the snow and overheated.
"Graffiti" from an explorer with Scott's group that arrived a few years after Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition
Polar shoes?
I think this was their heater!
Predator and prey
Skua and the Barne Glacier in the background
Skua and Erebus
Goofy slips
Is it slippery?
Cape Royds - not a bad spot to be a penguin
Nimrod Hut and Mt.Erebus
Cool skua behavior!!
Adelie penguin colony at Cape Royds
Funny penguin commentary from the team about an Adelie penguin fight over an egg
Lonely penguin on the left tries to get a mate whle the mate bickers (?) or express love toward one another and their egg
Predator!
Check out our egg!
Julie and the ice edge!
Kevin
Cape Royds - it is pretty amazing to think that this was home for Shackleton in 1908 and 09
Kamille, Kevin, Stacy, and Tina
Happy Julie in Antarctica!
Up and down and up and down
Flying to Bratina Island to do fish head counts and search for inverts that got stuck in the ice and pulled to the surface of the ice
Bratina Island
Stacy directing the pilot on where to land us on the ice
The ice here was even more huge and nuts than New Harbor
Team Fish Head!
A sponge that was pulled up
Bratina Island and a tiny Tina
Some of the bryozoans we found on the ice
Crazy spicules from a sponge
Antarctic toothfish head (eaten by a seal and tossed onto the ice from a seal hole)
Trying to find the otoliths
Toothy!
Where is that bone?
The beginning of the dead seal count - at first it was neat to find a dead seal (as you can see). Then we found more and more and more and it started to get depressing. They come up through tide cracks here, then the crack closes and they can't get back in the water. So they starve. It sucks.
We were all realizing at this point that these seals were trapped. The pup on the left followed us around begging for milk. His dead mother was nearby. Although that is how natural selection works, it sucked.
This little guy wasn't going to make it. It was horrible...his mother was dead....
Life is really sad sometimes. The dead mother and the pup in the background.
Another pup that suffered the same fate
Skate on the ice!
Kevin demonstrates what a skate looks like
Fish head walkers
Our way home
Coming to get us!
Tiny dot of a hut at Arrival Heights
