Hurry Up and Wait
Having completed all of the trainings, except for a 10 minute course on lab safety, we started to prep for our field deployment on Wednesday morning. For our group it means gathering the gear necessary to complete our science and stay reasonably comfortable while we are in the Taylor and Wright Dry Valleys.
Since we are not hurried to arrive due to the still snowy and frozen soils we hope to collect, we were able to take some time for recreation and exercise. There are probably very few places with these snow conditions and the ability to set off well after dinner and still have plenty of daylight to get a full three hours of skiing.
We also took some time to check out some of the other projects that are taking place in the area. We are sharing lab space with a team from Texas that is looking for environmental contaminants. An important and necessary job since every other project is predicated on making observations and taking samples free of pollutants. There is also an aquarium that is complete with a variety of sea life, an intricate plumbing system that draws water directly from the Ross Sea, it even has a touch tank with some amazing creatures.
To balance out a day off from the six day work week we also took a tour of Scott Hut. This hut was used for many expeditions but was erected by members of the British Discovery expedition in 1902. This expedition was led by Captain Robert Scott who successfully reached the south pole on his later Terra Nova expedition. This achievement was however, bittersweet. Scott's team had arrived five weeks after his Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen and his South Pole expedition.
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