We finally left for the field station on Tuesday morning. The excitement of the moment as well as the anxiety of the unknown was apparent for many of us. I could see it in their faces as well as within me. We were shuttled along with our gear down through town and then onto the staging area a couple of hundred meters onto the sea ice. There are a number of expeditions that also use the sea ice to load up their gear onto the assorted vehicles. Our caravan included a Piston Bully (a large box shaped truck on treads), a hagglund (similar to a Piston bully, but is attached to a box like passenger carriage), and four snowmobiles. The piston bully and hagglund pulled three trailers, and a laboratory on skis. It was an amazing exit from the station area with all of the vehicles powering up and then blazing off in a cloud of snow. It was about a two-hour trip to the site, in which support crews had already set up the dining tent and workroom tent. Fuel for all of our vehicles sat there waiting for us as well as service men setting up the phone and Internet service. We spent the rest of the day setting up camp; putting up the Scott tents for sleeping (two to a tent), The toilet (a seat over a box inside a Scott tent), the kitchen, and workroom.
Well, it has been a few days and finally, we have Internet service this evening. I want to get this out to you tonight, so I will keep this short. Things are going exceptionally well here, both in terms of the project as well as with me. We are gathering seismic data at more than twice the rate that we anticipated. The weather has been perfect for collecting data, clear, sunny and most importantly no wind. However, the temperature has remained cold. It would be an understatement to say that it is colddddddd! Out temperature gauge stopped functioning at minus 10 degrees F. or about minus 25 C. Imagine trying to get into our sleeping bags in those temperatures. However, hey this is Antarctica and outside of the getting into and out of bed, the cold has not bothered me much at all. Also, the beauty of this place is so amazing, that even a little bit of discomfort is completely swept away by the magic of these moments. The site where the camp is surrounded my 3,800-meter high mountains to the west, active volcanoes to the east and a dormant volcano to the south. This place is an impressionist painters dream, a place where the sun circles around the entire horizon providing 360 degrees of sun angles. I have watched how the light and shadows change on the various mountains and volcanoes around us. Also as the beginning of the seismic line is 17 km from camp, we were able to see new mountain chains and frozen bays.
