11 April 2009 Lake E hardware store, work on the ice and a hike on the crater mountains.

Journal

Today was another full day out here at Lake E. On the drill rig we recovered more sediment cores today than many of the previous days. As I mentioned yesterday on one of the Ask the team questions, I've been occupied with many different activities. Yesterday I built a wooden cabinet for one of the water pumps. This simple task was considerably more difficult here at the lake. As with many construction projects, we had to make several trips to the hardware store... except at Lake E where can you go? Fortunately, the crew has anticipated such needs and we brought several containers loaded with hardware. These containers had what we needed and we successfully completed the project.

Hardware 1 — The Lake E Hardware store...Hopefully someone planned for everything that we need.

Hardware 2 — Nuts and bolts, nylon straps, engine oil, pipe... all available if needed.

Today, we needed fresh water to drink while out on the lake so we bored a hole in the ice and helped ourselves to crystal clear cold water.

Fetch a pail of water. — Julia fills the drinking water barrel from a fresh hole drilled in the ice.

In the afternoon, I returned to camp with the lunch bus and met Julie for a hike up on the crater mountains. It was great fun to hike with another geology junkie...stopping to look at rocks and other unique tundra features. Here are a few images from our hike.