"Launch" Update

As Co-I (Co-Investigator) of this project, I just received email notification that we are scheduled to leave for the field tomorrow morning. They use "Launch Time" for the scheduled helicopter take-off time. That means I may be out of contact for two weeks. If I am able to use a wireless access point at an automated weather station, I may be able to send an entry or two, but don't count on it.

The weather report is for snow tomorrow, so if visibility is too bad, we won't get to go until Monday, there are no flights on Sunday. If you see a a post from me tomorrow, it will be because we are delayed two days.

We spent this afternoon on final prep. After we weighed and tagged all of our electronics (about 12 cases worth) we then had to fill about 6-8 5 gallon water containers, and get tents, sleep kits, verify they had all our food staged, and then went and got our backpacks that come with radios, pee bottles, water bottles, a thermos.

The "helo techs" helped us get all of our stuff loaded onto a couple of trucks, which they then took down to the helo pad support building for staging tomorrow morning. It will take 3 total flights to get all of us and all of our gear and supplies to our base camp in the Dry Valleys at Bull Pass.

A few more photos. Here is the recycling station out side our room. These things are on every floor of every building multiple times. You have to sort everything you throw away.



Here are some of the "taxis". You can get a ride anywhere around the station by flagging them down:



Or, there are a few "bus stops":



There is even the "Chapel of the Snows":


All for now, the next photos will be from the Dry Valleys......