Take a look at almost any map of Antarctica that has place names on it and you will find McMurdo Station on Ross Island, but it is a little more difficult to locate the site of our field camp on the shores of Lake Fryxell. Lake Fryxell is located in the Taylor Valley within the Transantarctic Mountain Range of Antarctica. Much of the Taylor Valley and other valleys in the Transantarctic Mountains are free of glaciers and snow unlike much of the rest of Antarctica. This is due to the Mountains being so high that they act as a barrier, blocking the movement of the glaciers into the valleys. As a result, the Dry Valleys are one of the largest deserts in the world and I am working and living in them!!! How amazing is that!
Your challenge- can you find these sites on another Antarctic map?
Unloading more gear from the helicopter!
We arrived at Lake Fryxell after another short helicopter flight from McMurdo Station. There was very little space in the helicppter this time, because of all the food, personal gear, and science equipment we brought with us. In addition, our team has increased in numbers by one! Birgit Sattler from the University of Innsbruck in Austria joined the DOM team just a couple days before we left McMurdo. Look forward to an interview with Birgit coming soon!
The Lake Fryxell hang-out pad
The Lake Fryxell Camp is much nicer than I expected. The Jamesway is the kitchen and living room of the camp, and there are five other small buildings that house science labs, storage and power units. The ‘bedrooms' for those at camp are tents scattered around the area behind the Jamesway and labs. Our power comes from very sustainable systems- solar panels and a windmill! We even have a bathroom here, though it is not hooked to a sewer system (more on this in a later journal- I promise!)
A beautiful place to do science!
The DOM team is sharing the Lake Frxyell Camp with a couple other science teams over the next couple weeks. Right now, four scientists from Virginia Tech and Penn State are out here studying the microbial systems around areas of snow pack in the Dry Valleys. As soon as they leave there is another team coming to study the chemical and biological make-up of Lake Fryxell. It is really wonderful to have a large group out here- games and conversations are much more fun with large groups.
Such cozy homes
After a great spaghetti dinner, that included bread from our friend Nick the Baker at McMurdo and a rousing game of Apples to Apples, I retired to my tent to settle in for the evening. It was 11pm and the sun was still high in the sky- we now have 24 hours of daylight in Antarctica. The only sound was the turning of the windmill and the wind flapping the fly of my tent. I found myself laughing aloud at the habits I have acquired after years of camping in Washington and Alaska. I am so used to quickly hopping into a tent and zipping up the door to keep the spiders, flies, sand fleas, or other little critters out of my home that I automatically did the same down here. After recognizing my habit I also realized that there was absolutely no reason to zip up doors to keep out critters, as there are very few visible critters in the Dry Valleys- plenty of bacteria and some microscopic worm-like organisms, but nothing to crawl or fly around my tent. I do not think I will go so far as to break my habit, but it is pretty darn cool to know that I do not have to worry about the creepy-crawlies!! ☺(Uncle Jeb says "hello" to Megan West!)