Friday, January 16

Oatmeal with pineapple, coffee, juice box, toasted English muffin with peanut butter for breakfeast

Tomorrow is underwear changing day…..everyone was counseled to bring a second set of long underwear. Ryan and mine needed changing several days ago already.......

Hikes today. We were all dropped off at 3 differenet points. Ziiggy and Ryan at Lake Vanda, Michelle and pat at the head of Wright valley, and they hiked down to lake Vanda:



Paul and I were dropped near the head of Onyx River, and hiked 7.75 miles collecting 5 points along the way. Here's how I roll:



Good weather at the beginning, but very windy by the end. My backpack was acting like a sail. I did a good job at keeping up, the boots make a huge difference. We wanted to make it back to our survival bags in time to get some ice from a glacier for the scotch. However, the helo spotted us first on their way into the valley to pick all of us up, and stopped by us first, even though we were last dropped off and closest to camp. We would have had time if they picked us up last. We were about 200m from the bags when they saw us.

Along the way, we saw rapids, several new washes, delta endings, 2 mummified seals, and ½ of a coconut. We were dropped off at lower right hut, which had a mummified seal scull on one of the guy lines.


Here is the Lower Right Valley Hut it is attached to:


Behind us, the opposite direction that we'll be walking, is the Ross Ice Shelf. Remember the Onyx River begins very near here, and flows away from the sea:



Paul near the head of the River:


A better view of the Ice Shelf after we climbed up the valley a bit:


A lot of the day spent walking through sand:


Further down the river was running fairly rapidly:


The wind is usually strong in Wright Valley, regardless of season, so the glaciers are kept from coming down by wind. They actually evaporate mostly instead of melt:


Mummified seal, somewhere between hundreds and thousands of years old:





Paul near a "wash-out" that probably happened this season:


Me with a couple of the small glaciers on the other side of the valley in the background:



The coconut Paul found. This was a big deal. We marked it's location with a hand-held GPS, and Paul later called a biologist at McMurdo that was very excited, and was going to come out and date it as soon as possible:


After getting picked up in the helo, we could see Lake Vanda, that the Onyx drains into:


Our campsite from the air:




Pat made rice and chicken and vegetable stir fry, very good. BFC Kate sent us food re-stocks, including chips ahoy, cheese its, jerkey, and several flavor packets for cooking.

Tomorrow Paul, Michelle, and Ziggy will go to some peaks. I may help Ryan with some close points. Pat is going to call in another couple audio postcards. He did one from Lake Vanda today.


And, of course, every night..........