Our team has left the field and returned to McMurdo to process soils and prepare for our next trip back to Lake Hoare.
Looking at the calendar we are now under the two week mark. This realization makes me think that I want to take advantage of every possible opportunity this experience has to offer. We have checked out skis to attempt another trail, I have seen some people on bikes (though it is a little bit muddy around town), and I am overdue to try to get my fitness back before hitting the slopes of Snowbowl and the trails of Sedona.
When we return to Lake Hoare we will be gathering replicate data for our experiments. This means we will visit many of the same places one last time before we are done. Given the busy schedule we kept the first week we will probably not have time for too much extra hiking. We are requesting more time on the ground at some of our helicopter sites so I am looking forward to seeing more of these incredible areas.
Our lab samples and preparation have proven to be more intricate and time consuming than had been predicted. I had mentioned before that Antarctica operates on a six day work week. That is actually sounding pretty good at this point. Since our deployment to the field we have worked every day. So this is our twelfth day of straight work. A couple of those days were a little bit easier at Lake Hoare but we are making up for it lately with twelve plus hour days. We are trying to meet a deadline for flying back to Lake Hoare tomorrow. This means some long hours spent in the lab mixing soils, adding preservatives, labeling tubes, and hours in the freezer adding .25 grams of soil to tiny Falcon tubes.
Colors of the Taylor Valley
Lab time
Work space