November 14,

Well, this is Aaron writing today. Yesterday was pretty snowy and windy, so we couldn't do much work. Luckily Stacy scheduled a day or two of slack time to account for just such an eventuality. We have finished up the Explorers Cove site, but have at least one more dive at Cape Bernacchi, which of course is the far site and is very difficult to get to in bad conditions. Well, we could get there, but I don't think any of the divers would make it back with all of their appendages. We were all a bit nervous that the weather wouldn't clear and we'd have to bite the bullet and mount an expedition out the Cape Bernacchi Robert F. Scott style. Luckily the weather broke. So we all breathed a collective sigh of relief when looking out the window in the morning.

It was beautiful the whole area was blanketed with snow. Rob Robbins said that this was the snowiest he had seen the dry valleys in his 25 years of being down here, and that was before the storm came and dumped all the snow on us. So we decided to make an attempt at finishing up the Cape Bernacchi site. That meant we had to transport all 8 of the buckets with the experimental cores in them, all the diving gear, and three divers (pictured here, in case you can't tell, it's Oliver, Stacy and me on the end) onto two skidoos and their Nanson sleds, which requires a feat of packing. After much head scratching, we managed to get everything loaded and sent Dan ahead with most of the equipment to blaze a new trail out to the site, since the snow covered our old one. We waited until he radioed us from near the site before we left, to minimize our DFT, or "Diver Freezing Time". Unfortunately, he had to double back several times and he also got stuck a number of times, so it took him a bit longer than we anticipated, but he made it. After Dan's Herculean efforts trailblazing efforts, we were finally off, guided by Dan's comforting skidoo tracks and mysterious symbols scrawled in the snow which we gathered were some sort of indication of which trail to take. Often it was apparent what trail to follow as you could see an area of heavily disturbed and broken snow where Dan and Antarctica went head to head in a confrontation of biblical scale, but Antarctica always seemed to win as Dan always turned around. I don't think Dan took it very well.

The dive went very smoothly. John and Stacy got in the water and down to business quickly. It took me a bit longer as my pesky mask kept freezing before I even got in the water, plus the waste strap on my tank broke. I thought it was an ominous portent of things to come, but amazingly we finished the entire experimental deployment in one dive. It's really impressive how much more efficient we have become during the course of this trip.

In the evening John and Stacy dove at the Polar Haven to video the circus, which was John named the rack that he placed out in the distant past. Andrew and Kathy went for a dive at the ice wall, which is a spot where, surprise surprise, the ice makes a vertical wall. I tended them, so I couldn't see it myself, but it sounded pretty neat. There were even scallops frozen into the wall. They went down to take pictures of the wall, but by the time they reached it they had used up all their film, pity.

Aaron