Saturday, November 1

Jennifer writing

Today was the day for preparing to go to New Harbor. Stacy, Jennifer, Jonna, Jim, and myself started off in the morning by packing, labeling and weighing all our lab and dive gear so that it was ready to be loaded onto helicopters for our flights on Monday morning. When it was all tallied up we realized that for ten days in the field we would require somewhere between 1500 and 2000 pounds of cargo (450 lbs. of which was food). This doesn’t even include all the fuel and mechanized equipment that has already been moved to New Harbor on a traverse in early October (totaling another few thousand pounds).

In New Harbor, we need an amazing amount of gear to survive and reduce our impact on the sensitive environment. On the traverse, they were to take over the ice, via vehicle, 17 55 gallon barrels of JP8 (diesel), 12 55 gallon barrels of MoGas, 12 100# cylinders of propane, 5 U-barrels (U being for urine), 5 grey-water barrels, a six wheeler, 2 snow machines, 12 SCUBA cylinders, and the dive compressor. While in New Harbor, we pack out all our waste (including human waste) to minimize the ‘footprint’ of our presence on the environment.

While we packed, Craig and our volunteer for the day, Brad the Boy Scout, went out to retrieve the current meter. After Craig fixed the chainsaw by taking the chain and chain bar off to clean them, he put the entire thing on backwards. Without knowing this fumble, he and Brad took off to saw the ice out of the hole and retrieve the current meter.

Amazingly enough, we finished all the packing by noon, and then Stacy and Jennifer prepared for a last clean-up dive at Turtle Rock. By then, Craig and Brad were back, so Stacy and Jennifer apprehended Brad for their dive tender and they took off. In the meantime, we dragged all the cargo down to the helicopter pad for our Monday departure.

Once the day’s work was over we all rushed to eat and then to prepare our Halloween party costumes that were still being formed in our minds. Although Friday was Halloween, the Station celebrated it on Saturday evening because Sunday is the day off for everybody. The party is held every year in the gym; they have a DJ, a costume contest, they serve drinks, and most people go all out on their costumes. Our bunch was still getting their last minute costume preparations together when the party started. Thank goodness, Stacy had been down here a few times before and she really had all the great makings for any costume (as long as it involved glow in the dark paraphernalia). We arrived at the gym in time for the costume party and it was amazing to see how many people were there. Luckily our crowd was easy to spot as we all were holding glow in the dark drink glasses and wearing other glowing items. We danced all night long and into the morning…it was a great time!

And, I guess the chainsaw does work backwards…