A short entry and a ton of pictures from Mt. Boreas
11/8/04
10:55 pm
So we’re moving camp tomorrow afternoon at 4:10 pm, a full day before we anticipated. I still have to write home, so this will be short. Yesterday the wind came. I finally got a good katabatic wind. It sucked. Out in the field it wasn’t so bad, because we were working hard. We dug a whole suite of new trenches and pits (which we filled in this afternoon) up on the moraine near camp. But last night the winds really picked up. Like up to 40 mph. It was violent. It is the same way again tonight. The tent flaps like a sail, but it whistles along the side right near my head. The whole wall of the tent near my cot is blown inward, so I’m hugging the wall all night (or the wall is hugging me, depending on how you look at it). The door flaps in and out too. I slept like shit. It was really noisy and I was a little concerned after Adam told us to tie our boots and parkas to our cots in case our tents blew away. At about 2 AM, Adam woke up and started pounding in new stakes at his tent and at ours I guess. Doug woke up. I debated. I was so warm and comfortable. I knew we had done a damn good job putting the stakes in originally, and I figured that Doug and Adam could take care of things. Apparently it was a warm wind and the sky was incredible. I finally got some sleep from like 3-8 and then after waking up got a lot of shit from Adam and Doug for not helping. I should have just gotten up. I didn’t sleep the entire time they were out there. The mornings have been really shitty. I have a lot of trouble getting out of bed and then am usually overtired from lack of sleep. The only good sleep I get is from like 3-8 AM and I wake up right in the middle of it to pee. I think I’ll be better about getting up when Dave and Jim are around. I’m trying to think of what we’ve done in the past few days. We walked around Mt. Boreas to Wright Valley. It was beautiful. The ice falls were unreal. Our stove just ran out of fuel, I need to get into bed. One of these days I’ll transcribe the written notes in my journal (wishful thinking). Oh well, sometimes it’s better to enjoy the moment instead of worry about writing things down.
It's starting to get late now, so I'm just going to throw up a bunch of pictures from the Olympus camp. Most of these were taken along the hike around Mt. Boreas to Wright Valley.
A frozen lake we encountered on our hike around Boreas. I practiced my lutz. The ice was beautiful and in some places you could see down a few feet. Other spots were filled with air bubbles and cracks. So much fun. And really fucking slippery.
Two nearby mountains known as Mt. Circe and Mt. Dido on the other side of Mt. Boreas.
A view of upper Wright valley and Wright upper glacier. The chopped up terrain in front of the glacier is known as The Labyrinth and is pretty incredible. It was carved millions of years ago by glacial meltwater.
The ice falls. Where the East Antarctic Ice Sheet spills over into Wright valley. Yeah.
Lower Wright Valley. I don't know if you can see the little red/black dot on the horizon at this resolution, but that is Adam, about 200 yards away. The valley is enormous.
Along the hike, we came across an old cache set up by Kiwi bedrock geologists in the 1960s. The jerry cans were still full of gas, even though the paint on the outside had been sandblasted off. The white things are actually bleached and windblasted cardboard boxes. We didn't open those. Probably food. We took GPS coordinates and went on our way.
Fossil imprints left by a large worm only found in Antarctica (name is something like Beaconoites). It lived in shallow seas and kind of filtered the mud for nutrients and left all of these impressions that were preserved as more and more sediment was deposited. As the layers above were eroded away, the fossils were exposed. Some of them are huge, like 2-3" across. What up Big Worm.
A view of camp on the way back. Did you catch the Friday reference in the last caption?
A nice shot of Boreas and unnamed peak. Kate and Doug are heading to the snowbank to collect snow for water. All of our water comes from that snowbank.
A fallen soldier during the move.
The infamous shitbox. The view was spectacular, looking right down into McKelvey valley. Notice the lack of wind barrier. To use:
1. Remove big rock.
2. Pull pants down just enough to avoid crapping in pants.
3. Take care of business...quickly.
4. Replace big rock.
10:55 pm
So we’re moving camp tomorrow afternoon at 4:10 pm, a full day before we anticipated. I still have to write home, so this will be short. Yesterday the wind came. I finally got a good katabatic wind. It sucked. Out in the field it wasn’t so bad, because we were working hard. We dug a whole suite of new trenches and pits (which we filled in this afternoon) up on the moraine near camp. But last night the winds really picked up. Like up to 40 mph. It was violent. It is the same way again tonight. The tent flaps like a sail, but it whistles along the side right near my head. The whole wall of the tent near my cot is blown inward, so I’m hugging the wall all night (or the wall is hugging me, depending on how you look at it). The door flaps in and out too. I slept like shit. It was really noisy and I was a little concerned after Adam told us to tie our boots and parkas to our cots in case our tents blew away. At about 2 AM, Adam woke up and started pounding in new stakes at his tent and at ours I guess. Doug woke up. I debated. I was so warm and comfortable. I knew we had done a damn good job putting the stakes in originally, and I figured that Doug and Adam could take care of things. Apparently it was a warm wind and the sky was incredible. I finally got some sleep from like 3-8 and then after waking up got a lot of shit from Adam and Doug for not helping. I should have just gotten up. I didn’t sleep the entire time they were out there. The mornings have been really shitty. I have a lot of trouble getting out of bed and then am usually overtired from lack of sleep. The only good sleep I get is from like 3-8 AM and I wake up right in the middle of it to pee. I think I’ll be better about getting up when Dave and Jim are around. I’m trying to think of what we’ve done in the past few days. We walked around Mt. Boreas to Wright Valley. It was beautiful. The ice falls were unreal. Our stove just ran out of fuel, I need to get into bed. One of these days I’ll transcribe the written notes in my journal (wishful thinking). Oh well, sometimes it’s better to enjoy the moment instead of worry about writing things down.
It's starting to get late now, so I'm just going to throw up a bunch of pictures from the Olympus camp. Most of these were taken along the hike around Mt. Boreas to Wright Valley.
A frozen lake we encountered on our hike around Boreas. I practiced my lutz. The ice was beautiful and in some places you could see down a few feet. Other spots were filled with air bubbles and cracks. So much fun. And really fucking slippery.
Two nearby mountains known as Mt. Circe and Mt. Dido on the other side of Mt. Boreas.
A view of upper Wright valley and Wright upper glacier. The chopped up terrain in front of the glacier is known as The Labyrinth and is pretty incredible. It was carved millions of years ago by glacial meltwater.
The ice falls. Where the East Antarctic Ice Sheet spills over into Wright valley. Yeah.
Lower Wright Valley. I don't know if you can see the little red/black dot on the horizon at this resolution, but that is Adam, about 200 yards away. The valley is enormous.
Along the hike, we came across an old cache set up by Kiwi bedrock geologists in the 1960s. The jerry cans were still full of gas, even though the paint on the outside had been sandblasted off. The white things are actually bleached and windblasted cardboard boxes. We didn't open those. Probably food. We took GPS coordinates and went on our way.
Fossil imprints left by a large worm only found in Antarctica (name is something like Beaconoites). It lived in shallow seas and kind of filtered the mud for nutrients and left all of these impressions that were preserved as more and more sediment was deposited. As the layers above were eroded away, the fossils were exposed. Some of them are huge, like 2-3" across. What up Big Worm.
A view of camp on the way back. Did you catch the Friday reference in the last caption?
A nice shot of Boreas and unnamed peak. Kate and Doug are heading to the snowbank to collect snow for water. All of our water comes from that snowbank.
A fallen soldier during the move.
The infamous shitbox. The view was spectacular, looking right down into McKelvey valley. Notice the lack of wind barrier. To use:
1. Remove big rock.
2. Pull pants down just enough to avoid crapping in pants.
3. Take care of business...quickly.
4. Replace big rock.
posted by LankyPoobah at 10:55 PM
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