Hey so I’ve been here for nearly a week now. I had a minor snafu in Miami- our plane was
delayed 7 hours- but it resulted in me getting my own room in one of the nicer
hotels in Punta Arenas (with a bathtub, which is all I ever ask of a
hotel). A further water snafu at the
hotel resulted in me getting their super sweet hot tub deluxe room for the last
two nights, which upped the awesomeness ante quite a bit.
We’ve spent the past 5 days prepping gear- ECW (extreme cold
weather gear), food, fresh food, frozen food, cots (!!), tents (really really
big tents), sleds, shovels, cooking equipment, fuel, generator etc. Camping in Antarctica is a completely
different ball game. A lot of our time
is spent waiting for other things to happen- this is the first trip south for
the R/V Point Sur, it’s normal stomping grounds are out of California- so we’re
all figuring it out together. We got to
tour the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a true ice-going Antarctic research vessel and it
was really, really impressive!! You can
compare the sizes and see that our boat would fit on the back of the Palmer!
The leader of our expedition is Ben, he’s a grad student at
the University of South Carolina and this is his project. He’s assisted by John E., an Antarctic
veteran who is in charge of logistics.
Also from South Carolina is Marissa, an undergrad doing a thesis and
John P., a Ph.D student doing his thesis in Morocco. Malka is an expert in sedimentary geology,
she did her thesis at Columbia.
Today we’ll move onto the Point Sur and we’ll leave
tomorrow. It’s been super fun packing
all the gear, everything for Antarctica is so big and hardy, the tent stakes
are 1” diameter pipes cut to size!! Or
plans are up in the air- our primary field site in the Larsen basin is iced in
and our secondary site on Joinville island isn’t looking much better. We’ll first cruise down to Joinville and see
if we can set up a camp, then go down the western side of the Antarctic
Peninsula and look at granitoids (good for me, this is my area of
expertise!). IF we can get into
Joinville, we’ll then return and set up a 5 week field camp there. If we can’t, we’ll work our way down to
Palmer station and figure out something to do there.
So no matter what we do, it’s going to be awesome. Not sure how much blogging I’ll be able to
do, but there will be one set up by David Barbeau at U south Carolina, so
google that if this isn’t updated.
Adios!
