Category: Lherzolite

Geologists are on the Ice!

jcottle

can you buy ivermectin over the counter This morning we woke up at 5am, and headed from our Hotel in Christchurch to the International Antarctic Center to check in for our flight to McMurdo.

Getting our gear together prior to the flight

We then headed to the passenger terminal with all our gear and checked in.

Forrest, checking in.

We then boarded a C-17 military plane for the 5 and a half hour flight to McMurdo. As you can see, it doesn’t exactly look like a regular airliner!
Graham and Forrest enjoying the inflight entertainment…

Some spectacular views from the windows on the way down. Here are some photos of the Antarctica a couple of hours north of McMurdo

The C-17 lands on an ice runway about 20mins drive from McMurdo station. The ice here is about ~2m thick. Beneath that is normal sea water.

Forrest and Graham enjoying the view!

Here’s a short video of the trip we took today. We’re now getting our gear together and will hoepfully be leaving McMurdo for our first field site in about a week. We’ll keep you posted!

Last post from the field (hopefully!)

jcottle

Hey Ya’ll, This should be our last blog update from the field! We are scheduled for extraction tomorrow morning, of course, subject to weather. We have had a busy day breaking camp. We prepared a sling-load full of our heaviest gear and dug out our tents, which were buried beneath >1 m of compacted drift snow. Hopefully the wind doesn’t pick up tonight, or else we will be digging out all over again tomorrow morning. It will take three Bell 212 Helo loads to get us and all of our gear out.

Because this is our last field blog, we thought that we would include some photos of some different aspects of the camp. Here we are looking a bit disheveled after seven weeks out here.

 Here is our blog station (yes, of course that’s a lherzolite xenolith). I like to eat tots while I blog, and sometimes they get on John’s computer, but I’m sure he won’t mind. Tots have been a staple here– “Napoleon, give me some of your tots. No, get your own!”. It’s amazing that we have all lost so much weight, despite eating butter fried tots most nights. Bryan lost 20 lbs! He is just a wee boy now.

Here’s Captain Oates as Penguin Perry (Antarctica Penguins music video to come soon).

 Well, next time you hear from us, we should be back in Mac Town. We have arranged to have a phone chat with a Santa Barbara elementary school class on Saturday (the kids’ Friday). John, I hope there having tots for lunch when you visit! Panorama Glacier out…