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The entire team is back in McMurdo, but there is still more work to be done. All of the camp equipment has to be inventoried, cleaned, separated, and returned to the Berg Field Center (BFC). Team members carefully organized and stored the equipment upon arrival in Mac Town so that the sorting

The team moved to Site 5 on December 8, 2008. Site 5 is the location of one of the soil pits dug by Dave Marchant (See 22 November 2008 journal entry). Dave uncovered a volcanic ash layer directly on top of cobble-rich ice (the cobbles represent an ancient rock fall onto the glacier accumulation

As one of the first to step onto the ice, I felt like a lunar explorer who didn't know what the surface would feel like under my feet!And, I knew that with every step I was standing where no human had ever stood before. On Friday the Oden was tied to an ice floe and for the first time, teams

On December 5, Cindy Dean, Environmental Education Compliance Coordinator at McMurdo came to Beacon Valley to film the drilling operation which will be included in a film on science in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica. Cindy conducted interviews with Dave and the team and observed the drilling and core

I went back to McMurdo on December 1 to post journals and returned to Beacon Valley field camp on December 3, 2008 in time for a drill site move. Dave and the team decided to abandon the hole at Site #3 after drilling to 16.05 m and hitting dirty ice. They selected a new drilling location (Site 4)

Today the team took a hike to a "Bigfoot" location in Beacon Valley. "Bigfoot" is the name given by David Marchant to debris-covered glaciers with unique imprints left by sublimated ice. "Bigfoot" locations in the Dry Valleys are of further significance because they are analogous to features found

The first thing we did this morning was to check the floats. It appears that most of the foam sealant has cured. Bob then drilled a hole in each float. He then injected each float with ""Plastic Welder II" and then screwed the floats back onto the frame like it was before we started to fix SARA. Now

Once again SCINI is the star of the show. Today Stacy, Bob, and SCINI were on a webcast for the Exploratorium. The Exploratorium is a museum in San Francisco that believes that a museum should be a learning experience. They set up filming in a small building that is usually used to observe seals

Stacy told us we could come in at 9:30am. Of course, Francois arrived at 7:30am, I arrived at 8:00am and Scott (the newest sick child) arrived about 9:15am. It's time to start returning everything and pack up. The first thing we did was make piles of things to be returned. These included drill

We have reached the calm seas and spectacular beauty of the sea ice! After 4 days of very rough travel across the Drake Passage, the last two days have been extremely pleasant for all. The broken and melting sea ice is about one meter thick with almost another meter of snow on top of it and it